Incremental Backups making multiple copies and HUGE file sizes

Hi all,

I got Acronis True Image a month ago and quickly set up automated Weekday Incremental backups. The first backup went fine, approx 3 gigs which was expeced. Everything ran fine until today when i noticed that all week my backups have been crashing. I went to my backup server (another box on my network) and saw that there were literally 30 backup files. All between 1 and 3 gigs. I know i dont add 3 gigs of data to my computer a day, these should really be a couple megs at most. I just want to know why my backups keep creating new files and why they all seem to be "full" backups instead of incremental. If anyone can shed some light for me it would be greatly appreciated.

thanks.
mcm

 

Imaging programs like TI map sectors. File contents that are moved are no different than a created file. Causes for movement are Windows activities such as optimization, defragging and file creation, copying and deletion activities.

If Windows Restore is active on the drive it create large increases in backup size with the addition of Restore Points.

 

thats great but that doesn't explain why the thing stopped working. All my error logs say is that it ended with errors. It doesn't go into any more detail.
I suspect it could be the quota i have on my backup machine but its required, i dont want to end up killing my backup machine with these massive incremental backups. Does this software remove the ones it doesn't need after some time? Is it ok for me to delete some of the older ones?

thanks

 

To restore from any given INC, you need the FULL and all the INCs in between. If any have been deleted, you’re SOL.
If you create a schedule so that the FULL is overwritten from time to time, the INCs will also begin to write over themselves. That way you can have better control over the total number of image files you have at any one time.
But you must keep in mind that once the FULL is overwritten, all the remaining INCs are useless. That’s why some people create schedules that incorporate 2 FULLs and the corresponding INCs.

 

ok, so what do you recommend as the best course of action to ensure i dont fill up my server with backups? And if i just left it could i possibly get thousands of these files?

thanks
mcm

 

Can’t answer that because only you know what your needs are as far as archiving/recovery are concerned.
You could schedule a FULL every Sunday and an INC on the rest of the days.
You could forget the INCs, like I do, and schedule a differently named FULL to run everyday (MonFULL, TueFULL …).
You could have 2 sets of FULL/INC to run on alternate weeks.
On and on …

"And if i just left it could i possibly get thousands of these files?"
Yep, a never ending string.

 

Hello mcmcom,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Could you please describe the issue in more details: what is the exact name of the product that you use? CYou can find this information in the Help -> About dialog (it should be a 3 or 4 digit number)? Please also explain your step-by-step actions which you took that led you to this issue.

Thank you.
--
Aleksandr Isakov

 

Acronis TrueImage v9.0 (build 2,323)

I picked the folders and files i want to back up (less than a Gig total)
and selected Incremental backup. Thats it, its a wizard based system and was easy to configure. I set it to backup on a server we have but within a month the server has used up all 200 gigs. Each incremental item is as large as the full backup. Ranging from 1g to 2g's. Its quite annoying especially since i was informed in this thread i can't delete any of the older ones?

I want one file, that will incrementally update itself daily, and never go to 30x the size of the contents to be backed up. it seems a bit of overkill to have this, as it just ends up crashing ANOTHER computer.

mcm

 

Your build is an antique, try the current build, 3677.

You shouldn't be getting large files if they aren't warranted but remember each differential contains every change since the full so the size can accumulate as the backup proceeds.

The reason you have to keep them is that due to a bug TI can't validate the archive without all of the intermediate differentials. If it weren't for that or if you want to live dangerously, you can delete them since unlike an incremental, you only need the full and the last differential.