Image for Windows 2.62 Released

Yes. The resize time. This can be considerable if you have to move a lot of data.

I don't use TI but someone told me recently that TI no longer does file based restores. I know it used to. What is the current status, file or sector based?

 

Why do differential images takes just as long as a full image when using IFW 2.64? Yes, the filesize for the -diff is way smaller, but the time it takes is ridiculously long as compared other imaging apps.

Anyone else experience same?

 

claykin,

This is typical for differential images. Incremental images are quickly created. Differentials aren't. The entire partition has to be compared with the base backup image before the differential can be created. It doesn't take quite as long as a base image but it certainly isn't quick.

Some folks like incrementals. Others like differentials. If your images are created on a schedule it shouldn't matter how long they take. My differentials take 3 minutes to create but if it was 30 minutes it would make no difference to me as I don't see it happening.

 

Brian

Thx for the reply.

If your Differentials take 3 minutes, how long do your Full backups take? My Differentials seems to take nearly as long as Full. Over 45 minutes for a 60GB volume.

I can try Incremental, but I prefer the concept of only needing a single Differential to match with my Full for restore purposes.

BTW, Differential with other imaging apps do not appear to be as slow as IFW. Most others are nearly the same speed as an Incremental. Seems odd to me that IFW takes so long...

 

claykin,

My base images take 4 to 5 minutes. I'm a believer (others aren't) in separating data from the OS partition and my WinXP image is only 5 GB. I don't image non OS partitions.

The following is from the Shadow Protect userguide. It seems they have two types of differential.

 

fwiw o&o is the slowest diff backup i have ever seen...

 

Claykin, the main difference between IFW and other imagers is IFW images at the disk SECTOR level while others image at the FILE level. It's very easy to determine what FILEs have changed on the surface of a disk (file structure info), but much more difficult to determine SECTOR changes... whole USED (or RAW) disk must be scanned to make this determination.

 

Interesting. Are there any other imaging apps that do true sector level backups?

Also thanks for all the replies. Helpful group here.

 

Yes and (as Brian explained) that's not unusual. I have been a Drive Snapshot (DS) user for several years and often create differential images (DS doesn't do incrementals). It's been my experience that DS creates its differentials in roughly 90% of the time that it takes to create a full image, whereas the resulting size of the differential is (usually) much smaller than the full image (depending, of course, on the extent of changes that have taken place).

Frog, that remark really surprises me. I was always under the impression that all disk-imaging programs worked at the sector-level (as compared to file-by-file backup programs).

I thought all disk-imaging apps worked at the sector-level (although I realized that some also have file backup/restore provisions), but after reading those contrary remarks (above) I'm rather confused. Besides IFW (which I started using recently) I do know that DS is sector-based (normally backing-up and restoring those sectors used by Windows, and when DS' maintenance mode is enabled the resulting image consists of all sectors in the partition).

Aaron

 

Would appreciate some help scheduling a FULL job using encryption.

I create the job using the IFW GUI and schedule it at the last step. The script has an /enc:3 in it, but the job will not run. I now realize its because I need to manually add a /pw:xxxxx to set the password. However, I do not want to include my password as clear text in the run command in Scheduler. David from Terabyte said to use the /login switch to cache a credential then use /pw:{#username#}. I have tried to do this, but cannot get it to work. No matter what I do, IFW won't run the job.

Any ideas?

 

As far as I know, the difference is the method used to obtain the changed sectors. IFW looks at the physical drive sectors for the changes. Many other imaging programs look at the file system, check if the file has been updated since the last backup (modified date, etc.), read the sectors used by files, and then include those sectors if it changed. The actual sectors on the drive are not read to compare. This is why it's so much faster.

In my opinion, using the file system only makes it more sensitive to file system errors. Also, it won't pick up any changes that occur outside of the file system. For example, if you used a disk editor to make a change.

Some imaging programs have an option to select which method to use.

 

As a knowledgeable Acronis True Image user, which of the above categories does it fall into?

 

TI uses the "fast" method. B&R has an option to let you choose which method to use.

 

IFW/IFL/IFD have been updated to 2.65

changelog:

 

Thanks for the heads up! New versions are coming fast lately.