backup drive getting full

Installed Acronis about 1 1/2 months ago. Scheduled "incremental" backups each Friday. My drive C has only 31 gigs of used space while my backup drive G is now up to 120gig of used space. Soon it will be full. Not sure why it is taking up so much space in the drive since it was set to only change files that had been altered in the past week.

Any suggestions as to how to stop the eventual filling of the backup drive would be appreciated. Still new at this but learned to backup or loose what you have on your disk.

 

If you are doing defrags, imaging programs see any moved sectors as new information and this causes the resulting incremental to be large.

 

Hi tbhudson,

You need to look again at the way you have scheduled your backups. As you have found your archives are just growing. The first thing to establish is how many backups covering what length of time you need as opposed to how many can actually be squeezed into your storage.

My own view is that the most recent backup has the most value, as a restore from that point loses the least amount of changes. I do keep a fairly short history of backups mainly to be able to recover from any nasties that infiltrated the system and have not been detected straight away.

If you stick with weekly backups you would find that you will have space for 4 to 5 full images covering at least a month. The task of managing the backups then becomes trivial, all you would have to do is look at the free space once a week and start deleting old backups when there is no more room for the next one.

I am not suggesting that you abandon incrementals but they make the task of managing backups more complicated. When using a string of incrementals there is also a " boom and bust " situation. At the point of deleting the original base image all its dependant increments become orphaned and un-usable.

There are some users hereabouts who have devised schedules which will automatically overwrite older backups. There have been many threads on the subject.

Xpilot

 

Thanks for the help.
I had just recently done a defrag and it may have caused the problem. About two weeks ago, I suffered the blue screen of death. Cuaxed the computer back to life and have had no problems since. With paranoia in mind, I now do a scheduled incremental backup each day at 3pm. (Paranoia is my friend) Better to fill a disk than loose everything. The company I work for would be quite upset.
Should i reformat the backup drive and start over? Still have plenty of room but better safe than sorry.

 

No need to reformat IMO. To make space, just delete the images you think you will not need.

With incrementals, however, you should keep in mind that any incremental, to be restorable, must have all the previous incrementals available, as well as the starting full image. Therefore, you may delete the incrementals from the tail, down to the full if you want, or the whole set. Don't delete just some intermediate incrementals (say the large one that followed the defragmentation). All later incrementals belonging to the same set would be orphaned.

Deleting unneeded images to make space on the backup drive for new ones is standard procedure. One is bound to do it, eventually. I do that by deleting several images in one sweep (not one by one before each new image) so as to create larger contiguous sections of free space and so reduce the fragmentation of the image files that will follow.

 

Still being new with this program---where do I find these files to delete? Not sure what exactly to do next but appreciate the help.

 

You installed Acronis about 1 1/2 months ago. I therefore assume it's TI ver.9. If so, you must have the image files (they have a .tib extension) either in plain view (from Windows Explorer) on drive G: or inside the Secure Zone residing on that same drive (that's possible only if you did create a Secure Zone before you started imaging).

If you did create a Secure Zone on G: and sent the image files there, you can't see them from Explorer and you can't delete them by yourself. You see them from TI when you start the Recovery wizard, but TI itself will delete them automatically when free place comes short. If this is the case, modify your schedule so that it will start again with a new full after one month of incrementals. You should not continue doing incrementals over a single first full image indefinitely. Have a look in the User's Guide for the rules TI follows to delete old images when space is needed in the Secure Zone.

EDIT: Forget what I said about the Secure Zone. That can't be the case because you wouldn't be able seeing G: filling up gradually (from Explorer). So the files have to be there, visible and accessible - browse the drive with Explorer.

What I said about limiting the number of incrementals for each full, holds true, anyway.

 

I NEED HELP this thread seems most appropriate

Sorry to butt in your thread but I have huge issues right now and cannot much focus on anything so....like I said, sorry.....admin....if I need to be moved or whatever.....just say so.

To make a long story short.......
first off
I have Acronis True Image Version 9.0 (build 2302).

I've recently lost my very techy boyfriend. (brain injury)
Among many of my issues of late seems to be the computer he built for me and gave me at Christmas this past year. (oh by the way.....he didn't die......he just went home to his mother cause he didn't want me to watch him suffer....yet suffer I do.....I can't contact him because his mom hates me for some reason and threatens prosecution if I contact him).


Now I'm not an idiot but not real tech savvy. I create things and maybe I will just stick to non computer craft things if this nightmare doesnt end.....But my mind is not with it is these days much either due to afformentioned. I'm having trouble focusing and I didn't even know where to post or what a partition is.

I need help. I have numerous hard drives and lots of memory thanks to his incredible intelligence and tech savvy even with the injury. My computer is constantly saying that I am low on my 'reserves' and to delete anything I'm not using or else it will become unstable (such as me at this point). I've deleted basic frivolous files that I knew were ok to delete in the add/delete area of win xp but it just keeps saying this. I think there are 4 extra drives and all of these logs I have made (which aren't many) aren't on the C drive.
Am I making sense?

My computer is either very infected or his mother convinced him I am evil and he is somehow getting into my computer messing things up.

(whew...does this person ramble or what )

So....my question is.......when I go into my "show log" it shows the entries from the beginning
Jan 8 this year with 16 entries where it is analyzing partitions and such....
Jan 8 entry where he checked to see if it was corrupted.
Jan 15 (2 entries , same deal as above)
Feb 11 analyzing partitions
Feb 15 again analyzing partitions
June 29 analyzed and then another entry to check it
Sept 12th full backup
Sept 13th full backup
Sept 29th full backup
Sept 29th checking it
Oct 16th full backup that seemed ok
Oct 16th (unk why) it appeared that a full backup was tried again
but there was a warning to reboot.....which apparently occured
Oct 16th the check went ok

Can I delete any of these entries to give me the disk space my computer keeps yelling at me for or not? Is this even why it's happening?

I ask this incredibly newbie question cause of other issues I seem to be having with some lost files and other strange happenings.

I went to make a backup and there was that reminder that it takes up alot of space so before I really did anything I didn't know what I was doing I needed to ask. Can I just delete entries from the log file. Anotherwards. If I go back to the Sept and restore from that could that possibly help my issues of disk space and even some of the lost files?

Am I making any sense here?

Also would it be wise to investigate the "Manage secure zone"?
thanks
suZEE

P.s. again, sorry to interrupt the thread and I read all of it but it just wasnt clear in my case. I've not done a defrag recently because......well womans intuition? I'm also not sure anymore how to do a restore disc and if I did do one, when he left he probably has it.

 

Hello Zee,

Deleting these log entries, which at a rough count, would save about 1 MB of space. That is not much of a saving but removing them would do no harm.

Where are you saving your backup images at the moment ? These can be very large .tib files and as they age they are usually not of any great value. So you could delete some of the older ones to free up quite a lot of space.
I assume that you are not using the Secure Zone as this is self managing and as it fills up the oldest backups are automatically deleted.

The Crystal ball suggests that you are running Windows XP and that you have not run a disk cleanup for some time. Programs/Accessories/System tools will get you there. Run it for each of your drives and select the more options tab and there select system restore clean up.

These few steps should now have freed up quite a lot of disk space. Now again in System tools run disk defragmenter.

You are actually not running the most up to date version of True image 9 Which is Build number 3677. An uninstall and update would be in order.

It is a good idea not disclose too much in the way of personal details when posting on the internet as these will be available world wide and that maybe not what you want. A bit more detail about your computer system and storage devices would definitely be in order.


Xpilot

 

Yes--I'm on 9. Checked the backup drive and have lots of .tib files. From 732 megs to over 20 gigs (several).
Suggestions as to what to get rid of? Oldest? Biggest? The smallest? Since paranoia took over, I now backup each day at 3pm so it only makes small files and fills the drive slowly, butwith the computer becoming unstable, I feel better and more secure with getting all the files back if the final crash does come and it will

 

If all the .tib files bear the same filename as the first one (by date/time of creation) with only a sequential number appended to the end of the original file name (like Backup.tib, Backup2.tib, Backup3.tib,...) and the number appended to the last file created is the same as the total number of files, then you have a great number of incrementals chained to a single full. In that case, all the files comprise a multivolume set.

You may delete the incremental files from any point forward (in time). As soon as you delete one incremental within the chain, all incrementals that were created later are unusable and have to be deleted as well. I would suggest you keep the first full and maybe a few next contiguous incrementals (if they hold important changes made after the full was created). There is no way to keep the last image created if my assumption about your situation is correct. As soon as you have made the deletions, create a new full image (with a different file name !) manually and edit your scheduling rules so that in future a new full will be created after a given number of incrementals. Search this forum to see how this is done, I don't schedule - sorry.

You may want to disable the scheduling and do the imaging manually for some time, so you learn TI filenaming rules. That will enable you to later recognize the separate sets and delete them properly when free space is needed again.

 

Appreciate the help. Will give it a try.