Acronis True Image 11 Won't Compress?

Acronis 11 Won't Compress
I'm using Acronis True Image Home 11. I am trying to create an image of my C (NTFS) and recovery D (FAT32) drive. I use the maximum compression so it estimates 45->25. It goes through the process and completes but it never seems to apply any compression because the image file is 45gb. I tried twice but didn't work. I had recently reformatted the drive so its completely clean and free of adware/viruses. I've added some programs and games, not much music or videos at all. I tried TI 11 on another computer and it worked perfectly. I first reinstalled the Windows XP, and it came out to be about 4-6gb. Then I ran the compression and it estimated about 2gb result and gave me a 2gb result with no problem. Keep in mind this system had no music jpegs or videos on it just a raw installation and it still compressed it nicely. So the issue with my system is not due to the existence of a few pre-compressed files as other forums suggested. It is the fact that it is not even applying the compression operation. Do I have to do something special like enable file and folder compression on the partition? Compress drive to save space option? Enable Disk Indexing option? Is there a windows compression service that needs to be active? I doubt it but I do not know what else to try. Any help is appreciated!

HP PAVILION DESKTOP
AMD ATHLON 64 3800+
2.4 GHZ, 1GB MEMORY
WINDOWS XP SP2

 

You do not need to enable any of those things to get TI to compress.

No chance you have XP's compression turned on so it is compressing?

Run chkdsk on your partitions to ensure they are in good shape. If TI can't make sense of a partition it will automatically revert to sector-by-sector mode rather than normal image.

Try setting compression to None and make an archive and see what size it is. Then try Normal. Normal is the default compression setting and I imagine it has been well tested and debugged.

 

I have XP's compression turned off and I already tried a chkdsk and defrag on the drives. I am running a Normal compression as we speak and will be back in a a bit with the results. Thanks for the advice.

 

Well I tried normal compression and it did the same thing. It did not compress at all. I have tried this program on many other systems but never had this problem. What in a system could conflict with a compression? I do not know what else to try. Any ideas?

 

The usual cause would be that TI thinks there is something wrong with the partition being backed up and has reverted to sector-by-sector mode.

I know that you said you've already run chkdsk, but which one? chkdsk /f or chkdsk /r? You should use the /r to let chkdsk check for bad sectors.

Try running chkdsk x: /r, reboot the PC and let the check run to completion, which may take a while. Substitute the correct drive letter in place of the x: in the command.

 

I tried another chkdsk -r and ran another backup but same thing. I don't see how it can detect anything 'funny' about the partition because it is a new partition and the hard drive has been tested. Could there be an issue with the master slave configuration? My C: is my Disk1 in disk management and backup drive is disk0. I usually try to backup from disk1 to disk0 but I also tried just backing up to the same partition to test it but it did the same thing. I need the compression because without it, I will not have enough room to backup to my second hard drive. I can do one full uncompressed image backup, but when I try to do an incremental backup of the same image it seems to copy a full backup again because it will not have enough room to complete and will take hours to complete. Are there any alternative solutions to my situation? Well, short of using another product or upgrading my hard drives. I really love this product but I just wish I could get it working on the computer I actually use!

 

What happens if you convert your backup drive to NTFS instead of FAT32?

I would expect TI to make a number of split images when imaging to a FAT32 drive, not refuse to apply compression.

Have you also run chkdsk /r on the image receiving drive as well?

Colin

 

My backup drive is NTFS and yes I have ran a chkdsk on it. But again I tried to backup to the same disk to test it but it did not compress. I also tried backing up only the C:NTFS and not the Recovery D:FAT32 but same result.

 

You are not alone in having a problem with compression. My Acronis True Image Home version 11 build 8053 has a similar problem.

I have today backed up Drive C: to drive E: The backup file produced by Acronis Home Image 11 is 59 GB in size but the used space on Drive C: is only 34 GB.

So the backup is 50% larger than the original files.

The backup is 100% larger than my last backup of the same drive done a few weeks ago.

I have put in a support call to Acronis today. There has been no significant change in data types or mix of types (WAV, Doc. XLS etc ). The only software changes have been an upgrade to Java SE6 and I think one automatic Windows XP Prof Windows Updates. The hard disk that I back up to checks out all okay using several packages.

The backup has the same problem with Normal High and Max compression.

I will see what Acronis says.

 

It might be interesting to see what you get if you backup using the TI rescue CD. This eliminates any Windows or application activity and deals with a static HD as the source.

 

Thanks for the suggestion but the backup was done using the rescue disk.

I usually backup using the rescue disk as it is much quicker.

It has been a few hours since I emailed Acronis but I have had no response yet, not even an acknowledgement.

 

That's interesting, especially that it is faster since the usual comment is that it is at very best the same or more often a bit to a lot slower with the CD.

Well, I guess you could see what it does in Windows since it uses a different program and environment.

 

Backups via Windows on my computer have taken more than twice as long as using the rescue cd.

I suspect that the way my 2 Gb of ram is used is the key to speed. When run from Windows there is less free memory.

I just ran another full system backup on another removable hard disk instead of the 80Gb drive that I first used. This time I used another 7200 rpm driver but larger - a 500GB drive with 12Mb cache. But again instead of getting an expected 26 Gb backup file I got a file size of 63 Gb even larger than the 59 Gb using the same data. The files to be backed up even according to Acronis only amount to 32Gb.

Both backup locations are disk caddy drives formatted as NTFS. I cant at the moment think of anything obvious that I am doing different to usual. I am not doing a sector-by-sector approach.

 

It sounds like your image gets bigger each time, which suggests that something is being added to the source disk between backups -- System Restore files?

 

Hi Yes it is puzzling. Still no reply from Acronis Support.

I cleaned out all but the latest System restore files before I backed up. The restore files have never amounted to more than even 1Gb.

So it was an idea worth checking. Its not the restore files.

I suppose I could backup using a trial version of another backup program and see if the backup file is properly compressed. This would prove whether or not ATI is the problem. Which one to choose though is probably the subject of another thread.

I just ran other ATI backup with NO compression and the file size jumped to 78 Gb which is crazy as there is only 32 Gb used on the drive according to Acronis, Windows and other programs that I have. The actual drive is only 80 Gb formatted when empty.

 

Do you have any form of disk encryption software running?

Is there a chance a Secure Zone has been implemented and TI is managing to save that as well as the rest of the disk?

Using the rescue media, does TI report the same disk size for the hard drive to be imaged as in Windows?

Actually looking at your last post, I would say either TI's Snapapi is all hornswoggled or the entry in registry is feeling unwell. I have had DD report strange drive size and TI restore 380GB to a 70GB drive. This turned out to be due to some strangeness in the boot sector and MFT of the drive. However Linux always reported the drive correctly. The only solution for me was to delete the partition on the drive and start all over again.

Have you tried uninstalling TI, running the Acronis registry cleaner, and either re-install your copy of TI or redownload it and see if it behaves itself.

Colin

 

Hi thanks for all the advice. My problem is now resolved.

The backup drive (Drive E) was all okay in the end. I had tested it many times with different software running defrags and chkdsk etc.

The problem was in the source drive ( Drive C). It had 6 corrupt allocation records. Although Windows Explorer and the Acronis Rescue disk saw the drive as 32 Gb of files, Acronis backed up the drive as a 78 Gb file.

It the first time that I have had any corrupt allocation records on this 4 year old computer.

So I ran chkdsk with the option to fix any errors. The Acronis backup file is now 22 Gb not 78 Gb. I will be running chkdsk on both drives regularly from now on.

I never heard anything from Acronis Technical support. I could not find anything in Acronis help about avoiding this problem.

 

You might want to keep a long chain of backups and keep an eye on the drive. If more failures show up, givent he low price of hdisks these days, you might want to repalce the drive if it is starting to go south -- it can happen slowly at first than deteriorate faster and faster ove time and by then, the backups contain the corruption of the bad drive and aren't much use.

 

This and shieber's recommendation are good ones to follow. TI must be able to make some sense out of your HD structure to work properly in its normal mode. A chdsk run on a regular basis that you feel comfortable with before doing a backup is a good idea. I try to do it about once a month but would increase the frequency if I had any problems showing.

It all boils down to the old rule: "Garbage In=Garbage Out".

 

Hello abcdjzmcbt,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

We are sorry for delayed response.

Could you please collect some information to let us investigate the problem thoroughly?

Please create Acronis Report as it is described in Acronis Help Post with all drives in question connected and powered on.

Then submit a request for technical support. Attach all the collected files and information to your request along with the step-by-step description of the actions taken before the problem appears and the link to this thread. To expedite the resolution we recommend you to use our Live Chat service after that. We will do our best to investigate the problem and provide you with a solution.

Thank you.
--
Marat Setdikov