Repeated corrupt backups
Hi,
I am running True Image Home 2011 (update 3 build 6492) on a 32 bit windows 7 professional laptop.
I had been having endless problems with backups, which, although validated when made, turned out to be corrupt when I added to them. Reinstalling Acronis did not help so, although I could not find any problem in my external hard disk, I bought a new one, a Toshiba 1 tb 2.5 inch USB 3 drive.
I use two disk partitions and a flash card, and I have Acronis scheduled to back up each partition/flash drive twice per week, on different days, each one using the incremental method and each set to validate automatically when completed. I have not touched the backup options since I set this up about a month ago.
My plan was periodically to run a manual consolidation to keep the size of the backup reasonable.
But when I checked today I found that something had gone wrong with the last automatic backup of my c drive. Essentially, rather than adding a new incremental file, Acronis has overwritten the original full backup with a new full backup, having the latest date.
The log for this backup shows it doing just this, creating an incremental backup, but then writing it to a file with the original full backup file name, and taking much longer than any of the incremental backups. It was validated as usual. Neither this log, nor any others has any errors.
I can mount or browse this latest version without any problems. All the previous versions are still present on the disk and visible in the 'explore all versions view', but if I try to do anything with them I get an error message asking me to specify the location of the original full backup. Acronis then becomes unstable and stops responding. If I try to consolidate this backup, I am told that I can't because at least two versions are required.
As I say, since initially getting corruption problems, I have reinstalled Acronis, bought a new external drive and started all my backups again from scratch, each automated and scheduled. Yet this automated backup has once again become corrupt (in a different way) within a month of setting it up.
I don't find this level of (un)reliability acceptable, but apart from ditching Acronis and using Windows backup or some other software, I don't know what to do, and would welcome advice from those with more experience than I have.
Thanks in advance.
Alan Watson
This link may or may not be applicable.
http://kb.acronis.com/content/1517
Many thanks for your prompt and thorough reply. In particular, the second link has helped me identify a problem in my laptop's RAM which I hadn't suspected and should fix, whether or not it is the source of my backup problems.
Can I take this opportunity to ask you why you recommend backing up all partitions at the same time? My C: partition has system files, other software, emails, documents and various things that change fairly frequently. By contrast, my D: partition has music and photos, which I add to from time to time but very rarely amend. I don't see the point in taking a full backup of the D: partition as often as I do the C: partition. And of course, by doing everything together the extra space for the one spare backup is that much larger than it would be if the two were backed up separately.
Thanks again for your help
Alan Watson
Alan,
It really depends how comfortable you are with computers and the setup of your particular computer. The recommendation to include all partitions is coming mostly from the fact that many computers ship with hidden partitions that are often essential to the booting process... So it is simpler to recommend to backup everything.
One way to adjust for your requirements is to select the entire disk using 2011 in disk mode, but to exclude the files and folders you don't find interesting to have in the same backup.
Alternatively, you can simply exclude that D:\ partition, but make sure you include any hidden partition in your system backup.
To double check for hidden partitions, use Windows Disks Management (right click on the computer icon on your desktop, choose manage, storage, disk management).