Consequense of disk defrag to differential backup...

This refers to Backup & Restore 2012 Free edition.

Could someone tell me if I'm correct in thinking that if I do a (full/baseline) sector backup of a partition, then after the backup has been done I make no changes to my system at all other than that I defrag my disk, if I then do a differential backup right after the defrag, would/could the result of the defrag be production of a large size differential backup, even if I didn't change anything else on my system??

Just trying to understand if that is how the sector backup would work, in general principle...

Thanks for any info...

Robert.....

 

Another one of my general answers without saying for sure this is how Paragon does it.

But the answer is a general yes. The imaging program compares sectors and if it is different from what was at that location before it is seen as needing to be backed up. So if the sectors for file A got moved, even if file A is exactly the same, the program will detect that the sectors in the new location are different from before and will back them up. A file backup program that examines file A in a different manner would determine it is unchanged and leave it alone.

General rule is to run the defrag if you want to defrag and then make the image.

 

Thanks again for another speedy response, Seek!

I have another question regarding the sector backups that maybe you or someone else can answer.

Last night I came across an excellent guide here that was made into a sticky back in July of 2010, posted by forum memeber Mec An. His post turned out to be quite a detailed step-by-step guide to doing incremental backups (https://www.wilderssecurity.com/showthread.php?t=277713). The info he posted was referring to B&R version 10.2, which is older than the product I'm using (Backup & Recovery Free 2012, and I'm wondering if one part of the info still applies to the B&R 2012 Free edition.

In his reply to the original poster's question, part of what Mec An mentioned was "The free program only does full and differential backups on used sectors (All deleted data is lost)". Two questions: in this reply, would the "deleted data that is lost" Mech An is referring to be meaning the files that you have purposely deleted on your system but which still exist on disk, but just marked as having been deleted and their sectors available for new file data? Secondly, if so, does this information still apply to the most current version of the free edition? I'm pretty much assuming that it probably would still apply, and hoping that it does, as this non-inclusion of sectors marked as holding deleted information would obviously make for a smaller ("better", as far as I'm concerned) backup.

Thanks to anyone who can answer this with a good degree of certainty....

 

The normal process only includes in-use sectors in the backup which means if it is marked as available for use (free) it is not included in the archive. Paragon has an option which I think they refer to as a Raw backup which archives every sector in the partition being backed up whether it is in-use or free. This is convenient if you want to make a backup of a corrupted disk to use for a recovery program without risking making the original worse. It also allows you to backup a partition where the file-structure is not supported or is not understood because of the corruption mentioned above. Even though the image program gets down to a low-level to archive the sectors it still uses the filesystem to some degree. Images of full partitions take longer to make and take more space to store.

I don't think there is a big difference between version 10 and the current one other than support for new hardware in the recovery and features tend to grow with new versions. The free program's core imaging works like the paid version with the exception that some options may not be available and you are restricted to a Linux-based recovery CD instead of being able to make a WinPE one under the control of the program.

 

Thanks again, SeekForever -- much appreciated.

Best to you (and all the forum members) for the New Year ahead, btw...