How to safely change a backup task schedule?

"I pulled the old task script from a backup and have it working again.  I still want to change the schedule but I don't want to risk clobbering the task like I did yesterday.  Should I just try modifying the schedule again using the ATI backup definition procedure?  Should I manually edit the script?  I am not going to delete the old task going to delete the old task and create a new one."

I am confused by the last sentence. You are not going to delete the old task then say that you are. It occurs to me that the way to go forward would be to clone the existing task and then modify it to you new needs and see if the new task works. Modifying existing tasks on occasions produces unpredictable results (although ATI 2018 seems less prone to such behaviour).

Ian

I obviously repeated a couple of words.  I was trying to say I and not going to delete the old task and replace it with a new one.  I've already discovered that does not work.  And from what I've tried, either creating a new task or editing the old one seems to have the same results:  I am prompted for my Windows credentials.  Entering my Windows credentials does no good - the backup fails.  Entering the NAS credentials also does no good - Acronis (or perhaps Windows) rejects them with an error message.

Editing the script is not a solution either.  The scheduling information is not in the script.  I seem to be stuck with the old unchanged backup task.

Two thoughts...

1. Delete the task without removing the files. Then Add existing backup using the latest backup. Edit that task with your new schedule. This seems to have worked for me with similar problem when other approaches failed.

2. Just start over from scratch. Create a new backup folder on the NAS and a new task to use that folder. You can still keep the old backups.

Patrick, I would tend to go with Bruno's 2nd option, assuming that you have sufficient free space on your NAS, and go for a new backup task to a new target NAS folder, using the settings that you want to use.  Leave the existing, working task in place but perhaps change to being not scheduled while testing the new task.  If all is good from testing, then remove the old task settings and go with the new one.

I just ran an experiment on my network using the approach you are doing and found that my credentials were not accepted by ATI like you.  Strange as I never had this problem before!  So I opened Windows Explorer and attempted to logon to the NAS there and found that I could not do that either.  So I then logged into the NAS web interface using my web browser, went to my user account there and reconfigured the user password.  I did not change the password here but rather just reentered it in the fields required (both initial and confirmation fields).  I then went back to ATI and when prompted for credentials I entered the password and made connection without issue.

It would appear that a recent Windows version upgrade may have caused this issue although I have no solid proof of that!

When there appears to be a problem with credentials, first check the Credential Manager (Windows Control Panel) to see if things look good there. If not, you could see when it was changed and also try fixing it there .

Nothing changed in my case.  It was not an issue with Windows credentials but rather with credentials set for the user account on the NAS.  These Win 10 version upgrades are essentially a new install of the OS and change most everything including networking.  I suspect that Windows 10, after the upgrade, determined that the NAS was not a secure connection.  Authenticating the credentials on the NAS itself fixed that issue but like I say I have no proof of that.

EDIT:  I like your option 1 for Patrick here.  NAS credentials are probably not at issue here but something to look at if a task does not run as expected to a networked device.

I'll give #1 a try.  I'e never known what that "Add existing backup" was for.  Maybe I'm about to find out. :-)

I was going to say I had already tried #2, but the new folder I created was nested within the old folder.  I'll try creating a new top-level directory.  I could also try creating a new share on the NAS and use it, but I'd rather not.

I'm not sure when I'm going to be able to try these things since this problem is on my wife's laptop and she need to use it today.  Hopefully I'll get some time on it this evening.

Ok.  I think I've tried all of the suggestions and none of them worked.

1. I "changed" the NAS userid's password (entering the same password as before).  That change applied to all the following steps.
2. I deleted the old (working) backup task and used "Add existing backup" to create a new task.  All looked good until I tried running it.  ATI gave mew the old "Enter your Windows credentials" prompt which I took as a bad sign.  I entered my Windows credentials but the backup hung with the E01E50023 error.
3. I created a new share on my NAS and tried creating a task using the new share.  I did use the same NAS credentials (which have write access to the new share) because of the Windows restriction of having only one set of credentials for a given user/NAS pair.  That also gave the "Enter your Windows credentials" prompt.

Luckily I still had my backup copy of the working script so a copied it into the script directory and successfully ran it again.

I've read in numerous places that the prompt for Windows credentials is really supposed to be a prompt for the NAS credentials but the prompt rejects the NAS credentials as invalid.  That doesn't make much sense to me since ATI already has the NAS credentials; it was able to read the NAS directory with no problem.

I've noticed that the scheduling information is not in the script. Where does ATI keep this information?

BTW, AAP blocks my copying the backup script into the ATI script directory with no option to override it.  I had to turn off AAP in order to put the script in the directory.  Is that the way it is supposed to work?

Patrick,

Is this ATI install an upgrade from a previous version like 2017?  If it is this behavior may be a carry over from the previous version.  Unlikely but possible.

It would benefit you to contact Acronis Support on this as I think they need to have a look at this.  It may be necessary to uninstall 2018 completely using the clean up tool and install again fresh to fix the problem.

AAP is working correctly as it has self protection of ATI active at all times meaning that any change or modification outside of the GUI will result in blocking the action.

This is definitely an upgrade - 2015->2016->2017->2018.  I'm a bit hesitant to do the clean install because the old backup task works now.  It might not after a reinstall.

I will open a case with Acronis support but they have to "have a look at this" from a distance.  This is happening on my wife's laptop.  I have only sporadic access so I am not going to be able to give Acronis support remote access to it.

Patrick,

I understand your position.  Have you tried to clear out the network credentials in Windows registry on the machine?  I am pasting a snippet of kb58004 which details network credentials and how to remove saved credentials which will then make the program prompt you for them again and how to check the task script for credentials entries.  This might get things corrected for you:  The kb is for TI2016 but applies to TI2018 as well.

Where Acronis True Image 2016 stores credentials for accessing NAS/network shares

Acronis True Image 2016 stores credentials for accessing NAS devices in pairs: user name and password. Password is always obfuscated, meaning that only Acronis True Image software can read it properly.

Two processes access NAS: TrueImage.exe and TrueImageHomeService.exe (see https://kb.acronis.com/content/56697 for complete list of Acronis True Image 2016 processes).

When you configure/change backup tasks, browse to backups folder on NAS in graphical user interface, TrueImage.exe process is used and credentials are set to and retrieved from the following locations in Windows registry:

• Credentials for the NAS itself when using SMB shares are stored at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Acronis\Connections\smb\<NAS name or ip>
• Credentials for each top-level SMB share on the NAS that has been accessed at least once are at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Acronis\Connections\smb\<NAS name or ip>\<SMB share name>
• Credentials for FTP server are saved in a separate key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Acronis\Connections\ftp\<FTP server address:port number>

If you are running Windows session under a non-administator account, you would need to open registry editor "as administrator" to access that key: open Start menu, type cmd, right-click it, select "Run as administrator", type in your administrator password when prompted, and when command-line window opens, issue command regedit

When you save changes in backup task in graphical user interface, the program updates the registry cache and copies values from there to corresponding script file in C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts. All the settings for given backup task, except schedule, are stored in one file with extension .tib.tis in that folder. You can open these configuration files with Notepad.

TrueImageHomeService.exe is the actual engine that performs backup, cleanup of old backups, validation, copy to second location, recovery and disk cloning (until reboot, if it is required). It takes credentials not from the registry, but from script file at C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Scripts. You can identify your configuration file by looking at 5th line of the file in Notepad - it will contain backup name. User name and password are stored in obfuscated form in between <volumes_locations> and </volumes_locations>