Home Forums Discussions Problems SOS AC gone crazy no more disc space

Server disc space completely used up. Most likely secondary to AC since that is the only thing running on server. Also I noticed about 200 messages stating back up has failed on my messages. Its the week end and no support. Any help is appreciated.


Dru

Shoot me a PM and I'll call you. I'll talk you through it.

Now I can't open AC on server. "Message root component missing" I then have the AC setup assistant pop up where I then choose this is my main computer but to no avail. Meanwhile I keep getting a slew of back up fail messages. Which I stopped by turning the auto service and stopping the auto back up from the client computer. I tried to run AC utilities but this failed secondary to root component missing. I tried to run repair from programs file and this failed. I did remove some Items from server to buy some space and this is allowing me to do some work on my client computer. But who knows if this is even being saved.

Indy

I did send a PM with my number hopefully you did receive.

Thanks

Dru

Hi Dru,

Saw this often on one AC 9.X server, bug never fixed.

First-level AC tech was usually unable to help, since a server with no room is your problem (even though AC caused it).

Second-tier AC tech eventually repaired things, but the bug re-occurrs randomly.

Below is what worked for me.

***

The problem is that AC's auto-backup starts cycling endlessly.

The reason is that AC's next-scheduled-backup in AC's backup-options has been corrupted and set to start yesterday and is grayed-out, so you can't change it.

So AC's backup keeps cycling until it fills the hard drive.

Meanwhile, everything on the server has slowed to a crawl because the backup is running endlessly.

***

First, you have to stop the backup from running.

If you can, open AC and disable the auto-backup, which is running endlessly.

You may have to run services.MSC to stop the AC backup service on the server to stop the backup and regain control.

Sorry, can't remember which service was the damned backup.

***

Next, you have to clean up the mistaken backups.

Open file explorer, find and delete the enormous number of *.ENC AC backups that have piled up. Then empty the recycle bin.

Deleting takes a long time if a full backup made hundreds of thousands of copies of each scanned and imported item.

***

Now you have to fix the wrong-date problem.

The trick is to set the server's date to TOMORROW, which is after AC's incorrectly next-scheduled-backup.

Now you should be able to reset the next-scheduled-backup that was grayed-out and couldn't be changed.

The reset should automatically set the next-scheduled-date to whatever future date you set on the server, the date that you really want the AC backup to run.

Now set the server date back to the correct date, TODAY.

Re-enable the auto-backup in AC.

Reboot the server and nervously check the AC backup folder for up to half an hour.

If the fix worked, no new backups will have appeared, so the endless cycle has been stopped.

Check again the next day to see that a single backup has appeared at the

correctly scheduled next-scheduled AC backup time.

Cross your fingers and wait for the mystery backup bug to strike again.

***

Check with AC tech, since they may have found a real fix or at least an easier

repair after all these years.

It may have been a bug caused by the office trying to use the server as an AC workstation. Uninstalling and reinstalling AC did no good.

The other fix is to disable AC's backup and use something else.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Carl I appreciate the help. I was able to turn off the back up. I now will try to find the ENC AC backups. How do I get to the files?

Hi Indy

Again thanks for the help.
I went ahead and deleted as you recommended.
And in doing so I saw that the ENC file in the last days went
83165 KB
8114672 kb
8118342 kb
754688 kb

So even though there is no failed back ups files it appears there was a 100 fold increase in data that was backed up in the last days. That last one was less simply because there was no more space. Sort of looks like the back up was cycling within each back up session, which is kind of odd. So I am going to leave those there so I can show tech support. This missing root issue may have come from me running the windows program to make more space and it may have deleted some component that is needed by AC. But that is just a guess. I am trying to see if I can restore this to a reset point. Only thing is I running WD 10 and I am not familiar with it. So far I come across a restore app which will restore but it states it will remove AC programs. So I did not precede. Do you know if I can re-install 10 or correct 10 in the case I did delete some component?

Thanks

Dru

Hi Folks,
Some of you know me and some don't.
I am Anthony, I am with the Quality Assurance department here at AC.
Good news is we are addressing this issue with our next release.
With the upcoming version 10.2 you will be able to redirect your default backup location to where you want.
No longer will it only go to the "Backup" folder in the AC directory, you can choose where you want it to go.
I have been testing this for the last 2 weeks and it's responding gracefully.
One thing to know, and we do not recommend this!!
If you chose a thumb drive or a secondary USB plugged in hard drive as your main backup repository, it WILL NOT WORK Only if you are running Automated Backups, Windows permission issues, out of our control,sorry.
Please use a secondary Internal hard drive on your server to be your new default AC Backup location
Please do Not put backups of your patient data on a drive that can be compromised, lost or stolen.
Thanks.

If you have any questions about this post, please contact me at anthony@amazingcharts.com

Thank you
Anthony@AC

Hi Dru,

It looks as if Indy has helped you find and work on the problem.

I recommend doing whatever Indy suggests.

To find *.ENC files in W10, open file explorer, then open "This PC," then open your C: drive, and search for *.enc in the search-box in the upper right.

The results will slowly appear and show the full path to the backup folder that should be under the Amazing Charts folder. You can navigate to it with file explorer.

Cheers,

Carl Fogel

Dru,

I had same problem. I had to delete all old back ups. I did have them saved to a remote drive. However, I still run into this issue occasionally. I still have not found a good solution.

Guys:

I certainly appreciate the input. I found the ENC files and transferred those to a back up drive. However I see in the same AC back up file, 23 folders named "importitems" contains mostly PDF files. oddly enough they are generated more or less every other day for the last 3 weeks, about 1-5 minutes apart with 1/2 occurring yesterday, so this may also be part of the problem that over whelmed my disc space. So my question is can I remove these as well? Are these folders all copies of each other such as the ENC files. Or are they unique individual folders. That is does the latest folder contain everything the first folder contains. Can I delete all but lets say the last 5?

Thanks

Dru

I recommend you configure your AC backup to verify the backup, but exclude imported items.

Use a file based backup program to backup your imported items so that you are only backing up additions/changes, not EVERY imported item each time. This will do wonders for disk consumption.

Indy

When you say a file based back program is that something like "Paper Port" program?

Thanks

Dru

Have you also noticed AC temporary backups that are present on the C drive or within the "Common Files" directory?

This may be another space hog.

Dru,

I believe he simply means a backup program that can do incremental backups that you can back up Imported Items.

Once again, if you back up the entire server every night, you don't have to worry as much about II.

First is there a reason you are running AC on the server? Plus, you can do the backup from any client. You don't necessarily need to have it run on a schedule. You can run it manually.

Finally, at one point you say KB and then at another point kb. Just making sure you are talking apples to oranges. Of course, even if you do multipley the kb by 8, you don't quite get a similar number.

Bert:

I may be wrong on this but I believe my problem was that I was backing up not only the AC data file but also the imported and image data files as well. This plus I was backing up into 3 additional back up drives. It appear that each time it backs up into the back up drives it generates a back on the AC backup folder on the C drive. So each night the program backed up onto the 3 back up drives and created 3 back up files onto the AC back up folder on the C drive. The server has a 500 GB SSD drive. Well in a weeks time that got pretty thin and could not fit another entire back session. I believe once this happened the program went into a some sort of cycle where it consumed the remaining memory leaving none for normal computer function. The solution although not perfect is not to auto back up the imported or image files. By not doing so there is more than enough memory. I will have to manually back once a month the entire program including the imported and image files so I can have a back up of that data as well. Any ways any input to further clarify this is well appreciated.

Dru