TIB file (image) steadily grows, why?

I have scheduled Acronis True Image 9 to make a full image of my C drive each day, my PC is on all the time.
Coming back from holidays, I notice that the images steadily grow by sometimes 20 Mb, sometimes as much as 50Mb each day.

Before each image is taken, I have scheduled defrag and Windows XP Cleanmgr to clean up everything.

I cannot see that anything is added to c:\, so why is the image gaining weight when I am out of office?

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Ingvar

 

Probably Windows system restore points. One is created automatically each day when the system has been idle for a while ( guess 30 mins). You can turn off their creation completely or can limit the amount of disk space they can fill. I choose to keep them as they can be used to correct small problems that do not warrant a complete restore. I also limit the amount of space for them so that at any one time I only have about 10 restore points Max.

Xpilot

 

Hi Xpilot,
this is amazing - I was not aware of this. Believe it or not, the size of the TIB file decreased by 2 Gb. That is 2 giga bytes. This is crazy!! It was 3 956 805 Kb and shrunk to 1 945 824 Kb. Hard to believe..
Thanks a lot for your help!

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Ingvarius

 

Hi Ingvarius,

Good of you to report back.
From memory the default storage space taken by system restore is 10% of any particular drive. This as you have found can amount to several giga bytes on large drives.
The minimum space that can be set in system restore settings is 200Mb, which is usually enough for two or three restore points. Since answering your post I have changed my settings for all my drives to this minimum setting. I now find that 3 restore points are all that I really need rather than the 10 or so that I had before. so as a result of your Query we have both tidied up our systems )

Xpilot.

 

Hi,
I went further than you, I shut the whole thing off. When helping a friend of mine who had got a virus/hijacker worm, the system restore proved worthless, the problem was still there after restoring to a point far back in time.
Now I divide my system in 4 parts, I have actually partitioned my hard drive in 5-6 partitions.
1) The OS
2) Program files
3) Hard to restore stuff, like downloaded resources
4) Impossible to restore stuff = human made data, data I write myself
I keep the swap file and temp dirs on a separate partition, 5G size, the swap file is set to fixed 4Gb, the rest is available to temp files. Programs are always installed to E:\Program files, not to C.
I use Acronis True Image 9 to backup the OS every night, to a network drive. For the other partitions, I use incremental file based backup, a utility I wrote myself(I am a programmer).
I am very satisfied with this system, runs automatically, no worries ;-)
And I also schedule Windows XP Cleanmgr and Defrag on a daily basis to really sweep the dust out of the corners
My only concern was the huge size of the TIB files, which thanks to you now is history!

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Ingvarius

 

Ingvarius,

Since you disabled System Restore (relying on TI, I was tempted to do the same, but my registry cleaner wants to have it), you can do one more favour to your system by disabling the System Restore PROCESS as well. I read it was among the most ressource hungry ones.

 

Another approach I thought of since reading this post.

1. Have System Restore normally set to 1% (about 2 GB on my main HD)
2. Before creating the image with TI, set SR to minimal (200 MB) and OK to let delete all but the last few restore points
3. Reset SR to 1% (2 GB allowed, but only 200 MB taken at this moment)
4. Create disk image (fast and small) and still enjoy 2 GB of Sytem Restore space between backups.

I just tried it, but may well prove valid in the long run. If you don't backup often, of course.

 

Hi,
since I turned off System Restore, the service is not running, so no additional resources should be occupied with this now. Is this what you mean with PROCESS?
Anyway, as long as I make a full (not incremental) backup of my OS every night using True Image, I see no point in using System Restore at all.
I wonder how many other processes I don't need and that I could turn off?

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Ingvarius

 

Yes, Ingvarius,

It was the System Restore SERVICE I meant, of course. Sorry for the slip - I'm glad you guessed correct.

On the second point I agree too: when you backup with the same frequency (or better) that System Restore uses, there is probably no reason to have the latter enabled.

About PROCESSES (!) that could be disabled: yes, I have six of them disabled, but they are all related to third party applications that think of themselves as being the most useful piece of software one ever came across and should therefore be available from memory anytime.

 

Hi Ingvarius,

If you want to find out which other Windows XP services you might be able to disable (or at least change to Manual startup), check out <Post #8 in this previous thread>. Black Viper's list is particularly helpful as it has separate Default, Safe, Internet Gateway, Gaming and Super Tweak settings.

Regards

 

Menorcaman,
interesting list!
Thanks a lot

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Ingvarius