Acronis True Image Echo has the capability to consolidate backup files (create a consistent copy of archive while deleting selected backups)
This article applies to:
- Acronis True Image Echo Workstation
- Acronis True Image Echo Enterprise Server
- Acronis True Image Echo Server for Windows
Introduction
Acronis True Image Echo supports consolidation of filename based backup archive sets. For example, if you have a full backup and a number of incremental ones and do not need all the backup slices anymore, you may want to delete some of the slices (points in time) but the manual deletion of the incremental backup files will result in the corruption of all the consequent ones.
The filename based consolidation allows to delete backups that you do not need while keeping the archive consistency from any backup set. Technically, in this case Acronis True Image Echo will create another full backup instead of the oldest slice you choose to keep. The main differences between the Acronis Backup Server consolidation and the filename based Acronis True Image Echo consolidation are as follows:
- Filename based consolidation creates a consistent copy of the archive that does not contain deleted backups, but the source archive stays as is unless you delete it. This requires more disk space but ensures security of the archive if consolidation fails due to power failure or lack of disk space;
- Filename based consolidation deletes any number of backups, just select those you wish to keep;
- Filename based consolidation deletes any backups that are not selected (still keeping the consistency of all the incremental backup chains involved);
- Filename based consolidation can be performed directly both via the Acronis True Image Management Console connected to Acronis True Image Agent and with Acronis True Image Echo local version with the use of the corresponding tool.
Solution
Here is the step-by-step description of the archive consolidation process:
- After starting the Backup Consolidation Wizard, the source archive (a set of .tib files) should be selected:
- Then you need to select the states of the system you want to consolidate into the resulting backup archive(s):
- After that you should select the name for the resulting full backup (other incremental backups will be created and named automatically):
- Then you should hit Proceed to start consolidation:
- After the consolidation process is over, we can see that only selected backups were included into the consolidated backup:
(!) As a result of this sample consolidation you will have two backup archives: MyBackup_consolidated.tib and MyBackup_consolidated2.tib. The rule is that you will always have the number of archives equal to the number of slices.
More information
You can also take a look at the Acronis Resource Center Article on Consolidation.