Large Files: File changes half way through backup - what happens?

My question mainly concerns Outlook .pst files, but I believe it will be the same for any large file.

I am wondering what happens if the file is changes half way through being backed up? Does Acronis start backuping it again? Does the backed up image became corrupt?

Thanks
James

 

AFAIK -
TI backups up "in use sectors”, not files. So if a file is changed during a backup, only the sectors containing that change would pose a problem, not the entire file. This might offer some insight as to how TI deals with this:
http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/resource/tech-talk/2003/disk-imaging-2-technology.html

 

ATI copies sectors. It makes a map of the sectors that need to be copied when it starts a job. If a sector occcupied by a file changes after an ATI job starts, the revision will not be copied.

Basically, ATI "captures" the disk at the moment the job starts.

 

TI just copies sectors if you do an image-based backup, so the image is correct at a point in time.

If you do a file based backup, open files cannot be backed up, with Windows 2000 or earlier OS.

In any case, a backup is just a snapshot of the drive at a point in time.
Files are constantly changing.

The only way to avoid the problem is to to backup from the recovery CD.

 

Hello Howard,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Actually, Acronis True Image is capable of creating file-based backups of files and folders that are currently "in use" independently of which operating system you are running. The point is that it utilizes the so-called "snapshot" technology for creation of file-based backups as well. Though, a little bit modified with respect to the technology used for creation of disk\partition images. Please note that this technology can be applied to files and folders located on local hard drives only. If you create a file-based backup of files and folders located on a network share or mapped drive there is no way to backup files and folders that are currently in use by another applications\processes.

Thank you.
--
Alexey Popov

 

Perhaps, but then TI is not going thru the file system, instead it is doing "raw reading" of the file structures and clusters.

In any case, I would not recommend TI for file-based backup until I see evidence that the issues I raised in http://www.standards.com/index.html?CreateFileFailure are remedied.