File and Folder Backups

I have backed up "my documents", and am following it with daily incremental backups - using TI9. From day to day, there have not been many new files, and the incremental backups are small in size as I expected (~25k). I just noticed that my most recent incremental backup is 200M (20,000k) and I can't understand why - from one day to the next, there were again minimal new files and no changed files.

Just curious - why would I get such a large incremental file?

 

Did you defragment the drive? That might do it by moving all the files around an resaving them. (Do you have a program that runs defragmentations in the background automatically?)

Did you download a large file such as a Service Pack, or video file that was included in the backup?

 

Should you need to replace your drive for whatever reasons, you need a "disk" type backup and this is a backup that includes all partitions on your disk. A files and folders backup is not bootable and will not restore your system.

 

Grover -
Thank you for your reply. I did know that a file and folder restore is not suitable for restoring my system. All I wanted to do was to have daily backups of "my documents" so I could go back and restore earlier versions of files if necessary.

John -
I didn't run any kind of a defrag - unless it happened without my knowledge, and I doubt that. I knew a defrag could increase the size of a partition backup, but I didn't realize it could increase the size of a file/folder backup. So thank you.

I'm going to check to see if my son downloaded anything - but I'd be surprised if there was a download of that size. I will delete the large incremental file and all subsequent incrementals and then recreate the incremental and see what I get - I want to see if I get the 200M file again.

 

What operating system are you using? XP or Vista? Vista will defrag in the background.

Ideally a defragger shouldn't change the archive bit when it moves a file, and ideally the backup program will base it's selection on the archive bit. However, the document last saved date and time can also be used. I'm not sure what Acronis uses.

 

Hi LenC,

I see that you are not a newbie concerning Ti.
I am thinking you know what you do with Ti and that you tried to determine the reason for such a large incremental backup.

'Incremental'- and 'differential'-backups have the same purpose: To determine the differences between files and save them.
From one to annother day you get a 200M-backup instead of 25k. It mustn't be only ONE 200M-file. It could be a global change of the attributes of the existing files. Not the contents of the files were changed but e.g. the attributes 'Archive'.
Why it happens? No idea.

But you can make a test:
1. determine how large your folder "my documents" currently is
2. Copy the folder to annother place.
3. Delete all under "my documents"
4. restore the 200M-backup to the folder.
5. once more do the point 1.
6. Are there differences of 200M?
7. If not 6. then look for the attributes.

After this test you can copy back the folder "my documents" from the other place...