Differential Backup HUGE after upgrade

Hi,

I was having various problems with the original TI Home 9.0 (installed from CD), so I upgraded to the latest build last night (build 3677) and re-scheduled my differential backup.

When I got up this morning, the program reports that Disk is Full. Why? B/c the differential backup was already 20GB big and growing. For context, each previous differential backup had averaged 3-4GB, compared to the original Full backup which is ~60GB. Note that I made no huge changes to the directories that are being backed up (3-4GB is about right), I doubled checked (and again just now) that the archive I was scheduling was the same as before (same directories, differential), and I did not install any new software or updates - except, that is, for the TI upgrade. So, several questions:

1) Is the upgrade having a hard time reading the original full backup made by the previous build, and, thus, it's simply making a "differential" that is a new full backup?
2) What should I do now? Should I simply clear some space, and create a new full backup and start anew, hoping that the differential backup gets it right now?

As a final comment, I'll say that I have not been terribly impressed with TI Home so far. This is a program that needs, given its task, to be ROCK solid, and it's been less than so in my hands. A list of my problems so far:

A) Incremental backups, daily. Made 10. Decided to look at the log. Found that 2 were interrupted without completion, meaning that all incrementals from the first erroneous one were useless. Why does the program even proceed to continue making incrementals when it's clear that they are not going to be useful? There NEEDS to be a check in the program, such as "If error in previous incremental, warn user, and do not proceed"!
B) So, switched to differential backups. The first ran as scheduled. From then on, the backups never got triggered automatically again. I fiddled with it, double-checking all the options, until I just gave up and decided to install the upgrade.
C) Except that the upgrade does not seem to recognize the correct amount of "differential" information (i.e. the original subject of this message).

I'll forward this message to the official support line also.

Thanks for any help,
-Alex

 

Did you defrag before running the differential?

 

Nope. No defrag, no disk changes of any kind. It was even before the gazillion Win XP security updates of the last week.

-Alex

 

When you did your upgrade to build 3677 you should have first uninstalled the previous build via add remove programs and then burned a new recovery cd. If you did not uninstall you could fetch up with a mongrel version.
Check in Help About that you do in fact have 3677 in place.

 

I did uninstall the previous version. And I do have v.3677 installed now.

In retrospect, the one thing that happened during the installation is that:

1) I did not restart the computer after uninstalling the previous version.
2) I tried to install v.3677
3) It failed (after starting).
4) Then I restarted the computer.
5) Then I tried to install v.3677 again.
6) Now it worked.

Do you think there's any chance this might have anything to do with it?

-Alex

 

Hello Alex,

All that uninstalling and installing will have had a signifcant affect on the layout of the in-use sectors on your hard drive. Therefore it's likely that there will be a significant affect on the size of your new differentials.

Also, you don't say what build your previous installation was but, from Build 3567 onwards, TI uses a completetly different imaging engine and file structure. Allthough the new imaging engine is backward compatible with images created by the previous versions/builds (but not the other way around), I would recommend that you now create a new full backup and start again.

Regards

 

Hi Menorcaman,

I am only backing up "My Documents" which I don't think should be affected by install/uninstall.

On the other hand, ever since I installed the upgrade, my restarting takes FOREVER. I am not sure if that's a cause, consequence or unrelated. I already tried to uninstall all traces of TI, and the extremely long restart remains.

My first build, I am not sure - it was off a purchased CD - so it could have been pretty old.

I will follow your advice and make a brand new backup and start over. In any case, it's the only advice I've received (I posted here and to customer support at the same time). Still waiting to hear anything from customer support beyond the form ackowledgment.

Thanks,
-Alex

 

Ok.

So I got my official support help reply today (Mon, Aug.14th).

They suggest defragmentation occurred as well, which I doubt since I didn't trigger it myself and I did little to no work on that Hard Drive. Nevertheless, I will go ahead and reinstall the newest build of TI and try again with a fresh, full backup following by differentials.

In response to my biggest gripe - that incrementals continue to be built even AFTER one has failed, without warning to the user, they simply say that "I should read the LOGs" and, then, this cryptic suggestion that, and I quote: "If Acronis True Image encounter a problem with creating an image
(incremental) then this image must be deleted automatically because the
operation is canceled."

So I guess command of English might be another gripe with Acronis. I interpret the "must be deleted automatically" to refer to the user, rather than to the program. i.e. I, the user, have to manually delete an interrupted image. Not sure what "the operation is canceled" means, but either way, this really confirms how fragile incrementals seem to be. A product like TI needs to be able to detect AUTOMATICALLY (i.e. read the LOGs!) that the previous incremental did not complete, and, therefore, that any further incrementals are a waste of space, time and give a false sense of security.

-Alex

 

Ok. A quick update: I got an answer from Customer service yesterday. In response to my question on incrementing backups that fail, the answer was: "I mean that if Acronis True Image can not create an incremental image then the new file will not be created."

Ok, that's better.

As far as the other problems I reported, I have started from a fresh Full backup and both incrementing and differential backups are currently working.

The long restart problem continues but that's probably not Acronis' fault.

-Alex