TIB Backup File - Great variance in size

Running ATI 11 with Vista Home Premium. (all latest builds)

I regularly back up with ATI 11 (from system disk WD500GB to secondary internal WD500GB, or various types of external HDD). The size of the backup TIB files was usually about 85GB, using "normal" compression, with my system drive showing up to 115GB usage.

Then I needed to restore off an ATI backup and suddenly the usage on my restored system drive was only about 55GB. I have been assuming this has something to do with the loss of Windows Restore Points (and possible loss of Windows Shadow Images, though Shadow Images not supposed to be available in Vista Home Premium)-- and then as new Windows Restore Points (and possibly Shadow Images) collect the usage of system drive increases very quickly. (after resetting Windows Restore Utility to backup on C: drive - the ATI restoration usually not only wipes Windows restore points but also mucks upo the settings in the Windows utility)

Since restoration have done several ATI 11 backups and the size of the VALIDATED TIB files have varied between 43GB and 70GB.

Is this normal for the TIB size to almost cut in half after a restoration?

 

I haven't experienced that large variation. But I can tell you that ALL versions of Vista have and use shadow copies. Not all versions give the user access to them, but they are there. There is a small freeware program you can use to see them, and take advantage of them: ShadowExplorer. More than once they have saved my bacon on Vista Home Basic.

I hope someone else will jump in here on the issue of sizes, but the only think that occurs to me is, could some of them be incrementals?

Good luck.

 

Wandering2 - Thanks for the reply

these are full backups, so a bit of a mystery. After restoring, all programs seem to be working. After examining file folders, everything seems to be there and in about the right size (program called Foldersizes4 helped with that analysis).

Thanks for the tip on shareware ShadowExplorer. That could be quite handy - I will check it out

 

itobor:

To add to the other comments, your suspicion is correct. Vista will, by default, reserve 15% of the disk space for restore points and shadow copy files. 15% of a 500 GB partition is 75 GB. So your 60 GB difference in the first post makes sense. When you restore a TI image containing Vista restore points they will be deleted by Vista when it boots and detects them to be invalid (they are invalid because the sectors are not restored by TI to the exact former sector locations).

The next image you make will be smaller since the restore points now occupy less space on the disk. So yes, what you observed is completely normal.

You may want to consider making a couple of adjustments in order to minimize the size of your backup files. First, having 75 GB reserved for System Restore is a bit excessive so you could reduce that. In Vista you need to resort to the command line to change the space occupied by System Restore (this is something fixed in Windows 7 - there is a slider to change the occupied space). Here is an article with instructions.

Second, if you are using TI 2009 then you could exclude the Restore Points from the image since they are going to be deleted anyway. Instructions for doing that are here (see post 5).

 

Mark (KOlo)- I suspect that is correct, though still puzzled why after first restore the next Acronis ATI 11 .tib backup file was 71GB, after the next restore (not long afterwards so not much time to generate windows restore points and shadow copies) it was 58GB, and next backup .TIB file was 43GB, though again not long after prior restore. (last backup, yesterday, was 49GB, and no new restores lately, thank goodness!)

If I start to run short of space I will run command line to reduce space for restore points in my Vista Home Premium. I do not expect to move up to Vista 7 or TI 2009 for many a moon as that will certainly give rise to other unanticipated quirks and problems. It is still amazing to me that though I have fairly standard equipment all sorts of tweaks and fiddling is necessary to get everything working (at 95% - never expect 100% anymore). While the challenge of sorting out the quirks can be exhilarating (especially when successful), sometimes I just wish all would work right and leave me to actually spend time on my "life" projects, rather than on "computer" projects