ATI Incremental Backup - Huge Size

One of my disks that contains miscellaneous data I have been backing up using Acronis True Image Home 2009 and it has been working great. The disk contains 108 GB of data and Acronis crunches that down to 87 GB for the full backup and incrementals were 9 GB, then 2, 1, 1, etc. This is exactly how I have hoped it will work! However my most recent backup is larger than the first one, so although I am running incremental backup, it looks like it is backing up the entire drive again. Is there any explanation for this or any way to keep this from happening? I don't want it to run a full backup every once in a while. Thanks, --Reg

 

A guess:

TI decided to start with a new full backup and will add incremental backups to it for a while. See if the backup job defines how long it will run before starting again.

Fungus

 

Two possibilities the most likely list first.
1) To Acronis, any change on the disk is a change to be placed in the incremental regardless of whether you feel that change is "material" or not.
"Change" of course includes you modifying documents, creating files, deleting files.

"Change" also includes defrag activity. If you have a utility move a file or a utility to defrag the disk then all the sectors which changed to accomplish that defrag/move will be brought into the next acronis incr.

2) You obviously have at least two backup jobs - a full and an incr.
each job has their own settings for compression. Part of what you describe could be attributed to the full doing compression but the incr not doing so.

 

Thanks for the input. I understand that TI is sector-based, but I have not done defrag or anything that should have changed every active sector on my drive. Also, there is only one backup job for this drive. One for C and one for D. I have the backups set to consolidate at 15, but this is only the 7th backup. From what I understand, there should not be another full backup ever.

 

Hello all,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

regnillob ,

What is your operating system? If you have Windows Vista, Disk Defragmenter can run in the background.

Please type "defrag" in the Start/Search box and choose "Disk Defragmenter". Untick the box "Run on a schedule".

Thank you.

--
Oleg Lee

 

Okay! That makes a lot of sense. I did that. Too bad Acronis doesn't do that for you, or suggest it. Maybe in the next point release? Would be very handy to troubleshoot those issues. Anyway, thanks I will be all set now.

 

Since I only make Full images, I wouldn't want Acronis to do it for me assuming I liked defragging but I agree that there should be an obvious "warning" about background defragging if there isn't one.