Custom Scheme - Backup Size limit
Hi All,
I've had TIH (2001 build 6696) for a few months now but things have not always gone smoothly and so consequently I have never really managed to get a workable backup method going.
Continuous backup always locked up and just sat there for days, the Version Chain scheme ploughed ahead regardless until it filled up my backup drive and then wouldn't play any more, so I thought I would give the Custom Incremental Scheme a go and see if I couldn't do better myself.
It all seems fine except that I don't know how many backups will fit on my drive (cf. Version Chain above) so I want to use the "Keep size of backup no more than xxx GB" option. The problem is that it seems to have a very shortsighted limit of 999GB and I have a 1.5TB backup drive (ends up about 1400GB) so need to be able to tell it to use around another 400GBs before it starts deleting things. The drive I am backing up is over 500GB so it won't get two full backups in there if it thinks it is limited to 999GB.
So it's a simple question, what is the purpose of an arbitrary 999GB disk size limit and how can I increase this limit to reflect actual real world disk sizes? For the want of an extra digit it looks like I am going to thwarted once again.
Hopefully someone can come up with a useful suggestion or two.
Regards
Phil
Thanks for your reply and sorry if I wasn't clear. My HD is 1TB of which I am using 500GB+. My backup drive is 1.5TB. I would expect a full backup to be of the order of 400GB so I could get three or so on there plus the various incrementals.
My question related to the automatic cleanup options. There are three choices, the first is by age which isn't much use to me, the seond is by number of backups which at the moment I am unable to precisely estimate so I want to use the third which lets you choose how big the backups should get on the disk before cleaning up. This would seem to most avoid the 'trial and error' phase you mention.
The problem is that the maximum size it permits is 999GB and my disk is 50% larger than this. I don't want 400-500GB to go unused on the disk while potentially useful old backups get deleted so I just want to be able to tell it to use as much of the disk as possible before cleaning up old versions.
If I am misunderstanding the option or there is a better way of achieving this then I would be interested to hear about it. At the moment is appears that the disk limiting option is what I want but that there is a bug which prevents a realistic size being specified on larger disks.
Philip,
I agree with Grover. The option I find the most reliable and predictable is the one where you can select how many version chains you want to keep. I have had issues with the other ones.
Philip,
One thing to be aware of, unless you intend to delete the images you no longer require (only do this from TIH itself, deleting via a file manager will cause all sorts of problems), you actually need about one archives size of space to begin consolidation. Consolidation copies all your existing files within an archive and then with this copy produces the new full, and only then deletes the original files.
I have backups to mid-2014, but ATI only sees those in 2015. So how can I cleanly delete the older ones?
Jon,
Which version of TrueImage is installed?
Which version created the backups you wish to delete?
True Image 2014 - for both.
You can try additng the non-seen via method GH21.
If you can get Acronis to see them, you can try method GH5.
GH5. How to delete backup files using Acronis Backup 'Explorer'
I can specify the 30 or so unseen backup files using GH21, but when I say "add to backup" there is no specific response. When I go to explore all backups, I get
"Cannot find version 1". It doesn't even show the more recent "seen" files that I don't want to delete.
Thanks, but now what?
Can you post a picture of the storage folder?
Were all tib files created by the same single backup task?
I am assuming that all the files are highlighted when clicking the "Add to" button.
Picture attached. Yes, by the same backup task.
All the 2014 files are highlighted when clicking the "Add to" button.
Only the 2015 files are listed by Acronis.
Thanks.
I noticed there were issues with
inc-B1_s4_v1-2.tib Aug 11
inc -B1_s35_v1-2.tib March 9
This may be part of the issue. Is the most recently created backup also still labelled B1??
If yes, none of the backups pictures can be deleted as all are early incrementals--not subject to deletion.
Have you validated the most recent inc B1?
Look again at this link and the listing of tib files.
https://forum.acronis.com/system/files/delete-backup-file.jpg
Sometimes, you can click on the listing of the first one on the left margin and get other new ones to appear.
I can only validate the 2015 files, since they're the only ones that Acronis sees. Two of them, in January, are listed as corrupted - but I can't delete them because it can't find them.
This is all really frustrating - seems a very poor design. I used Ghost for years with none of these problems.
Having seen no solutions, I don't see any choice but to manually delete all the 2014 files and let the chips fall where they may. If that invalidates all the backups, then I'll have to find another backup program.
Do you see any other choice?
If any of the backups you want to delete, it is possible that the FULL only, or Full plus sequenticals incrementals 2-10, for example, those might validate if you asked the program to validate either the Full only or to validate the 10 for example. Normally., the progrm will validate (pressing ignore multiple times) if the chain to be validated is sequential beginniing with the Full.
Yes, it would appear that manual deletion is your only choice for what you want to delete.
I found that the backups have all been incremental since early last year. So I deleted all except the original full backup, and am attempting to re-establish backups using differential, with a full backup after every 3 differentials and a time limit for saving with automatic cleanup.
It seems very hard to make the program keep changes. I re-check, and it's gone back to the old incremental only. I am finally having it backup Now, hoping that will save the changes - because "Later" didn't.
If I look at the backup destination drive, still in partition mode, it shows that it will backup that partition to itself using the same rules, even though it says you shouldn't do that. It seems impossible to have separate rules for separate partitions; setting rules for one immediately sets them for all the others - and if you change one of them, it changes the first one. VERY frustrating.