Lost cloud backup
Build 6526
I have a backup to cloud that is approx 650GB in size.
After many days it completed and all seemed good. However today (several weeks later) it tells me that only 195GB is backed up (looking on the web page for my account) and it is again going through the backup process.
Clearly this is very disconcerting as there is not much point of a backup if either:
1) It never backed up in the first place (though it tells you that it has).
2) It 'loses' some of the backed up items, requiring another very lengthy backup.
Has anyone else experienced this? I did a search but got so many hits for other cloud related topics that I felt the need to ask in a new topic
Hi Andrew,
Have you changed the default datacenter?
Thank you,
This brings up an observation I had, may explain for some users?
My C drive has 60 gigs of data on it, the completed cloud backup was less than 20 gig.
Is everything in the backup and is the cloud storage compressing 60 gig down to 20?
I have run incrementals a couple times and those take just a few minutes so it would seem all my data is backed up (?)
Hard for me to understand why anyone would want to back up 650gb of data or a complete system to the cloud and risk not getting it back when really needed. I can see throwing a small amount of data up to the cloud but 5 - 10 gb or more ?
Sometimes I see folks actually trying to back up their entire system to the cloud... OMG are you serious ?
My opinion and thoughts:
Back up to an inexpensive removable drive and store it offsite if you need to... MY 180gb system drive backs up in less than 75 minutes and a tested restore was completed in slightly less time.
I cannot imagine trying to put that in the cloud and expect to recover when I really need it.
Now, I can see pushing up 100 or so small files but gigabytes of data or system images ??? no way....
When your HD goes "blink" gone.... Your recovery image may be available or may not be...may be complete or may be corrupted or simply not available online at the moment...
Another reason: Some of that data may be personal and I "Definitely" do not want that in the "Hacker Cloud"
Steve
Steve / Perdido Beach -
"OMG are you serious ?" <- Very. You sound a bit 1990's / 00's.
Acronis is aiming and marketing it's product as backing up your entire system to the Cloud. So yeah - I am serious about it - I am sure Paul W the poster is serious about it.
Paul Wratislaw :
I had the exact same issue... I have 900Gb backing up.
The first time I did a test restore the restore failed and said it didn't have all the data.
I got told to wipe the data and start from scratch again.
Weeks later it completed again... Test restore - Failed - Files not backed up.
Got told to create *another* new test data set - Succeeded. Test restore - Failed, files not backed up.
And after all that, I suddenly get a message saying I've used 70% of my 3Tb? And I still haven't had a single successful fricking restore.
3 months and counting for "success".
Just to add my experience so far with restore from cloud for what it's worth.
I have done 3 test restores and all have worked perfectly.
I have done several test restores from my local images using 2015, all have worked perfectly.
All restores have been complete with no errors.
My version too is 6526.
Steve / Perdido Beach -
Clearly anyone using any company's services should first trust and have confidence in that service. If you do not trust Acronis to keep their cloud infrastructure secure then you should not use it.
That decision has to be made before you attempt to back up to it and if the backup process is buggy/unreliable then that may cause you to review earlier decisions about their abilities to keep your data secure.
Personally I would not back up to the cloud anything (unencrypted) that contains data that could damage me if it got accessed unlawfully. Certainly there are things I would rather not be copied, holiday/family photos being a prime example, but there is nothing there that would really embarrass or harm me (except maybe a few beach shots from when speedos were cool), I certainly do not have a plain text passwords.txt file!
So to me the risk of someone accessing that data versus the risk of me losing that data is an easy judgement to make.
The thing that worries me more is believing that I have a backup only to find out, when the drive hits the fan, that I was wrong, and that is why I originally raised the topic.
I am suitably cautious so I also back up to an internal hard drive plus also a raid NAS enclosure, but the cloud is my off-site backup for the 'an asteroid hit my house' scenario.
In pre-cloud days I used an external drive, but was not disciplined enough to keep up the regimen of backup, take offsite, bring back onsite, repeat, to the point where I now have a redundant external drive.
Re. the original topic.
I subsequently modified my approach in setting up the backup.
I now have several smaller backups. Each backup is for a directory. This is helped by the fact that I am quite good in the way that I organise my data and help. There is also another benefit, see *bottom of the post.
I have found this easier to manage and will also be quicker to restart a backup should I have issues with it.
Since doing this I have had no issues with my cloud backups and restores.
I currently have approx 950GB backed up.
*Bottom of the post!
I was initially caught out by a strange behaviour of the Acronis program.
For my first cloud backup I (as an example) backed up C:\Pictures (moderate size) as I wanted to see how it went before adding more directories. I called this backup C Drive.
Once it was complete I thought, I'll add the C:\Videos directory to that backup.
To my horror the program decided (confirmed by a Acronis Support) that it would start the whole backup again, i.e. re-backup the Pictures and then the Videos. The Acronis Support guy suggested that a way round this would be copy the videos into my pictures directory. He agreed that this was not ideal (really!?!) and that he would pass my feedback to their dev dept.
Hence I now have a separate Videos backup, a separate Photos backup a separate Documents backup and so on.
Note that any added sub-directories (e.g. c:\Pictures\holidays does not cause an issue (as this would make the software useless), it only occurs when you add more directories to an existing backup via the user interface.
Maybe they have improved this 'feature' since then. When I have the time I will test it out.
Paul