Nonstop Backup – Frequently asked questions

Why does Acronis Nonstop Backup pause on its own? – This is the designed behavior of Acronis Nonstop Backup. When the system load rises to a critical level, Acronis Nonstop Backup receives the overload alarm from Windows and pauses itself. This is done to aid Windows relieve the load caused by other applications. The overload can be caused by running resource-intensive applications (for example, performing a deep system scan with your antivirus software).

In such a case Nonstop Backup automatically pauses and you cannot restart it. After pausing, Acronis Nonstop Backup gives the system one hour to relieve the load and then attempts to restart.

The automatic restart count for Acronis Nonstop Backup is 6. This means that after the first automatic restart Acronis Nonstop Backup will attempt to restart five more times with intervals of exactly one hour between attempts.

After the sixth unsuccessful attempt, Acronis Nonstop Backup will wait for the next calendar day. On the next day the automatic restart count will automatically reset. When not interfered with, Acronis Nonstop Backup performs six restart attempts per day.

The restart attempt count can be reset by doing any of the following:

  • Restarting Acronis Nonstop Backup service;
  • Rebooting the computer.

Restarting Acronis Nonstop Backup service will only reset the restart count to 0. If the system is still overloaded, Acronis Nonstop Backup will pause again. An Acronis Support Knowledge Base article at http://forum.acronis.com/forum/14958 describes the procedure for restarting the Acronis Nonstop Backup service.

Rebooting the computer will reset the load and the restart count. If the system overloads again, Acronis Nonstop Backup will pause.

Why does Acronis Nonstop Backup sometimes cause a high CPU load? – This is the expected behavior of Acronis Nonstop Backup. This may happen on restart of a paused Acronis Nonstop Backup if a considerable amount of protected data has been modified during the pause.

For example, if you manually pause the Acronis Nonstop Backup that you use for protecting your system partition and then install a new application. When you restart Acronis Nonstop Backup, it loads the CPU for some time. However, the process (afcdpsrv.exe) then goes back to normal.

This happens because Acronis Nonstop Backup needs to check the backed up data against the data that have been modified during the pause to ensure protection continuity. If there was a considerable amount of data modified, the process may load CPU for some time. After the check is done and all the modified data is backed up, Acronis Nonstop Backup goes back to normal.

Can I have Acronis Nonstop Backup storage on an FAT32 partition? – No, only an NTFS partition can be used as the storage. This limitation is due to the fact that Acronis Nonstop Backup needs the sparse file attribute to function (for example, to perform autoconsolidation). The sparse file attribute was introduced in NTFS.

Can I set up Acronis Nonstop Backup storage on a network share or NAS? – No, only internal or locally attached drives can be used. Acronis Nonstop Backup does not support network shares, mapped drives, NAS drives or any other network attached devices – neither for protection nor as a storage.

Can I set up custom clean up rules for Acronis Nonstop Backup storage? – There are no user-customizable automatic clean up rules for Acronis Nonstop Backup storage. Instead, the program uses built-in backup autoconsolidation to ensure the optimal usage of storage space.

Backups older than 24 hours are automatically consolidated. Acronis True Image Home 2011 will keep daily backups for the last 30 days and weekly backups until all Nonstop Backup storage space is used. The consolidation will be performed every day between midnight and 01:00 AM. The first consolidation will take place after the Nonstop Backup has been working not less than 24 hours. If you turn off Nonstop Backup for some time, the consolidation will start after you turn it on again. For more information see Using Acronis Nonstop Backup.

How does manual clean up of Acronis Nonstop Backup storage work? – You can clean up Acronis Nonstop Backup storage by deleting the backed up data for a certain period of time. For example, you started Acronis Nonstop Backup of your system partition on August 15, 2010. It has been protecting your partition since that day. Let’s suppose that today is December 15, 2010 and your Acronis Nonstop Backup storage is almost full. You decide to clean up unnecessary data to free up some storage space. To clean up the storage, select Operations ® Clean up… on the Nonstop Backup box in the Home window. Acronis True Image Home 2011 displays a window allowing you to select a period of time for deleting the backup versions created during that period. Let’s suppose that you did not make important changes to the system during a period from September 1 to December 1. Select the period and click OK. The program will delete all backup versions created during the selected period and consolidate the remaining backup versions to keep their consistency. Let’s consider some cases to explain which data is deleted and which data is kept. First let’s consider a system file, for example, notepad.exe. It was backed up during the initial full backup on August 15 and naturally did not change since then. In this case the file will remain in Nonstop Backup after clean up. And now suppose you installed a game on September 15, played for some time, and then uninstalled the game on October 5. In this case all files related to the game will be deleted from Nonstop Backup. One more example: you started to write your master’s thesis using Microsoft Word on November 16. In this case, all thesis file versions backed up from November 16 to December 1 will be deleted and only the versions from December 2 to today will remain. To sum up the above, all data modifications made during the selected period will be lost. All files that did not change since the initial full backup made on August 15 and all data modifications made before September 1 and after December 1 will be kept.

How can I pause Acronis Nonstop Backup? – There are two ways to pause Acronis Nonstop Backup:

  • Right-click the Acronis Nonstop Backup icon on the tray and click Pause;
  • Start Acronis True Image Home 2011 and click the pause icon on the Nonstop Backup box in the Home window.

How can I turn off and delete Acronis Nonstop Backup? – To turn off and delete Acronis True Image Home 2011 you can click Operations -> Delete backup on the Nonstop Backup box in the Home window.

Nonstop Backup – Frequently asked questions