Archive file size limited to 4,194,304 KB??

Never mind.... I just learned the answer by searching this forum. Sorry to waste your time opening this post.

Best regards,
Rick A.

 

Hello Rick_A,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Would like to make a note for other Forum members who may have the same question.

Note that this is FAT16 and FAT32 file systems, which have a 4GB (4,194,304 KB) file size limit. Therefore, is you store the image to the disk/partition with FAT16 and FAT32 file systems it will be splitted into several file of the above size.

Please also note that to restore the data from the image archive, which was splitted into several files (or to create differential/incremental based on it) you can select any of its parts. Acronis True Image automatically recognizes all parts of multi volume backup archive.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

I notice that the ASZ is always formated as FAT32. Is it ok to reformat it to NTFS (before saving an image) with Diskdirector? Any real advantage or disadvantage to this?

 

I wouldn't mess with the ASZ. If TI defaults it to FAT32 then that's what it expects it to be. This is, after all, a specially tagged partition type.

 

It probably defaults to Fat32 because of backward compatibility. IE: One size will fit all.

Just curious

.

 

Since the ASZ is managed entirely by TI and you can't get access to it (under normal circumstances, anyway), I would recommend leaving it alone. TI obviously expects the format to be FAT32 since that's what it formats it to.

 

Since creating the ASZ does not give you the option of selecting the FS (if your are backing up to a non hidden partition you have already decided what FS your going to use on that partition ), then fat32 in the ASZ is good.

As was said before , using fat32 "splits the files into 4GB (4,194,304 KB) files". For some peoples method of making backups this is mandatory. As I said, one size (FS) fits all.


Other than that ,the ASZ seems to have only two things that make it special.

1. It has no Drive letter which makes it a "Hidden" partition.

And

2. TI can find it by it's label name alone (and may not find it if you give it a drive letter) IDN, and AFAIK would be a "Backup Location"

Otherwise, I don't think TI cares if the file system is Fat32 or NTFS, not even in the ASZ.
My other backups are on an external disk formated as NTFS and it works fine.

One day I will experiment with this.

 

Hello RF Hayes,

Please note that as MudCrab mentioned, Acronis Secure Zone is inaccessible by the operating system and applications other than Acronis True Image. Acronis Secure Zone uses FAT32 as file system and any other supported file systems will be converted to FAT32 automatically when creating/resizing Acronis Secure Zone. Also when you select the backup stored in Acronis Secure Zone it will be showed as one piece, even if this backup is spitted into several files (due to FAT32 maximum file size restriction).

Take a look at this thread: <Acronis Secure zone is now FAT32. Why?>. In addition, please note that Acronis Secure Zone uses FAT32 because previous versions of the program (Acronis True Image 9.0 Home, for example) can be installed under Windows 98, which does not support NTFS.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Not entirely accurate.

Disk Director shows it as "ACRONIS SZ" and Partition Commander shows it as "Backup Capsule"
I have not tested it, but I would be willing to bet that Powerquest Partition Magic would show it too.
Clearly ASZ is accessible by partitioning programs (some at least)

Yes, I understand that.

I understand that too. As I said before , it's a "one size fits all" solution.

I also understand that there are still some Win98 users out there that must use FAT 32 and it that it makes TI functional for them.

I believe I indicated that in an earlier post and I do not dispute any of that.

But there have been three newer versions of Windows since Win98. So I started thinking, couldn't TI default
FS have been upgraded to NTFS by now with the option to select FAT32 if you need or desire to use it, for what ever reason?

From what I see here, TI obviously has no trouble using NTFS . Using NTFS has no bearing on whether the partition remains hidden or not, so I can see no reason for not using (as default) a more up to date FS. ie: NTFS

Perhaps this belongs in the "Wish List" topic?

 

I think this is rather a mute point. Since the internal workings of the SZ are transparent to the user, the underlying file format is meaningless. The SZ could use the Linux ext2 or ext3 format just as well if it had been programmed that way. Changing it to NTFS would serve no functional purpose.

 

Internal workings? It's partition without a disk letter, thats all. I have been hiding my PQ Disk Image partitions that way for years.

Yes it could have been formatted with any file system (that TI could run), so why not NTFS?

Yes, I suppose If speed was not a concern. Wouldn't you like faster backups to the ASZ partition?
Not to mention that NTFS is the de facto standard FS for Windows with FAT and FAT32 being leftovers from yesteryear....For compatibility purposes with older versions of windows.
Other than that, IMHO, there is absolutely no need for them to exist any longer.

Check out this article:

NTFS file system
By Dmitrey Mikhailov
The Microsoft operating systems of the Windows NT set cannot be imagined without NTFS file system - one of most complex and successful of existing at present file systems. The given article will tell you what features and disadvantages this system has, on what principles based the organization of the information and how to keep the system in the stable condition, what possibilities NTFS offers and how they can be used by the common user.

More here: http://www.digit-life.com/articles/ntfs/

last para:
A lot of useful NT possibilities are directly connected with physical and logical structure of the file system, and you should use FAT or FAT32 there only for compatibility - if you have the task to read these disks from any other systems.

 

It seems to me that the choice of filesystem is probably strategic. Despite Microsoft's recent retrospective patents on VFAT/FAT32, the FAT32 specification is available in the public domain. I don't believe this is true of NTFS. All that exists has been reverse engineered.

If I was Acronis I would not be relying NTFS. There is nothing stopping Microsoft changing parts of NTFS in a way which was forward compatable for their own operating systems, but broke everything else. I seem to remember they did this between NTFS 4 and 5.

Even if you believe that Microsoft are more interested in WinFS than they are in changing NTFS, realistically credible NTFS interfaces for Linux are only just becoming available, e.g. NTFS-3G in the last 6 months or so. TI has been around for at least five years.

All in all whatever you think of FAT32, I think it is the correct choice - for now at least. Having said that if I was Acronis I would be looking at ditching the Linux side of things and be looking at Win/BartPE. It seems to me that a significant number of their problems are due to differences between the two environments, especially drivers. In the future we can hopefully look forward to a Windows only TI and for those who want to use a SZ, one that will be NTFS or WinFS.

F.

 

I guess I wasn't quite clear with what I was trying to say. By internal workings I meant how TI interacts with the SZ, not specifically how the partition is structured or formatted. The average user is not going to know what's is going on. All they know is that the SZ made space on their drive and is saving backups to it.

foghorne answered that question well and I agree with it.

I dont' use the ASZ so I have no reference as to the speed of backing up to FAT32 vs. NTFS. I would have thought they would be about the same as the interface bottleneck would determine the speed.

I mostly agree with this, however there are still a lot of systems in service that use FAT32 including current systems that use FAT32 partitions to share data with Linux & Windows. One day it will be NTFS that is on the way out and FAT32 will be long gone, but that's still a ways off.

Thanks for the link, I'll check it out.

 

A good point.