Help, Windows Defragger Missing

Image backup programs use sector locations to keep track of things. So when a file gets moved via defrag, the sectors change and the files need to be backed up again.

If you look at the user's guide for an image backup program, they usually recommend a full backup after a defrag.

 

But where does the size increase come it?

eg. that's why I run set it-n-forget it at 12am. My backups start a wee bit later in the morning. ATI @ 3am & FD-ISR @ 5am.

...screamer

 

Hi,folks: Allow me to say this first: I have no intention to tell viewers to use product A over product B. If two apps are produced by reputable brains, they both are good and excellent. You wish to have both, if you cannot, then the choice is yours, very personal. Therefore, the question of whichone is better between perfect disk and diskeeper pro v.10 remains to been seen. The reason I chose diskeeper pro v.10 is simply because PD has caused BSOD on my trial run. Trial and error is the safest route to select the app best suited to your needs.

 

When you do an image backup, the image is keeptrack of where the file was recorded.
When you then do a defrag, the files may be moved, and as far as the image backup is comcerned, thefiles are different. So if you do an incremental or differential backup, you are backing up the unchanged files again.

If you only do full backups, then defrag does not matter.

And that will result in the issue I raised.

 

I always thought that an incremental or differential backup only kept the "newest file" and discarded any changed/older files.

I'm obviously missing something here. I don't see where defragging increases images.

...screamer

 

When you say "newest", you are only thinking of a file which has had it's timestamp updated, right ? That applies to most FILE-based backup programs. Howard is saying that an imaging program, like Acronis True Image, for instance, will NOT look at the timestamp. It will look to see if the parts of that file have been moved PHYSICALLY at all and, if so, mark those that have any part of them moved as "changed" and to be included in an incremental or differential backup. Now, it should be obvious that a defragmentation will result in a good many files being marked to be included in an incremental or differential imaging backup.

Hope that helps.

 

Thanks crofttk

I -was "thinking of" a "File-Based" backup, while referring to ATI. duh!
Your explination made things perfectly clear. Thanks again!

...screamer



Geez, I love this place.

 

Cool. Glad I could help.

 

Defragging has no effect of file-based backup.

However, as I pointed out in another thread somewhere, TI's file-based backup will not back up certain files that are deemed OK, even after running chkdsk. I described a fix, do not know whether TI has implemented the fix.

See http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure

 

Hi crofttk. That did it. I've got the default defragger back. Thank you for setting me straight on how to do a repair of XP.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to help me out with this. Very appreciated.

 

Great, Graystoke! Glad it worked out.

You may want to run Windows (or Microsoft) Update. I can't recall what your update status would be now since it's been some months since I did one of these. It's likely, however, that Windows calls home immediately, if you have a constant connection, as soon as you log on for the first time.

 

Go to :-

Start > Run In the box type without the quotes

" Dfrg.ms "

That will run the defrag program of Windows.

Personally I prefer O & O Defrag program
You will find this if you use the search engine Dogpile

 

I tried it but all I got was "Windows cannot find 'dfrg.ms'. Make sure you typed the name correctly, and then try again. To search for a file, click the Start button, and then click Search."

My computer must be broke.

I don't like looking in Dogpile. I like AltaVista. Like I always say: "AltaVista, beh-bee"

 

Try Dfrg.msc

 

Yep, first thing I did was MS Update.