Differential/incremental backups

Okay, I have setup another run of Paragon that should make one complete backup of C partition and rest differentials from the complete backup at every log on, saved to the D partition. It is running in the background.

In the mean time I wanted to say that I do not know about drive snapshot but paragon is designed to ignore its own archives on the partition when it backups up the same partition. So, using your notations above, after the first backup I have A+C_image but during second backup paragon will ignore C_image + page file/hybersys file and only consider A. This is what it says in the help file. The help file also does not warn users that they can not create an image of a partition on the same partition. Anyway, lets see what happens.

And I have already used paragon to create one complete image of my C drive and backed it on an external drive. I will use that in case of hard disk failure or as a last resort.

This backup to the same partition is supposed to be a replacement of system restore and will be used for minor software related problems, virus attacks etc. I need it on my laptop so that I can restore where ever I am.

 

If this is the case you might want to partition the drive so the image resides in its own partition. A better solution (IMHO) would be to pick up a portable drive. You can get one at Costco for under $100 for a 320 gig drive (I think its 320 gig but may be 360). Personally I would not want to have my image on the same drive.

 

Regarding the first quoted §, I think archive content exclusion with Paragon is optional. I am pretty sure this is the source of this behaviour. Why ? Because you get the same result with DS which doesn't exclude anything by default (except pagefile.sys and hibernation file). If your system had a "glitch" such that a differential backup is always as big as the first backup, then the DS differential backup should be twice as big. One part for saving the original files, and a second part for saving the newly created archive. I really think all get explained if you assume that Paragon is not excluding correctly the created archive.

Regarding the second quoted § : you may also want to consider another line of products, such as FD-ISR. If you don't already have a license, I guess you can only get the basic version from HorizonDataSys, this would give you exactly what you want : instant recovery on a standalone machine, without even using a bootable CD or usb key.

Thanks for letting us know how it turns out !

 

We used PM !

 

Well, my problem is solved!!

Thanks a million MerleOne.

Apparently, all I had to do was backup to a different partition in order for the differential backup to work. I have checked it multiple times using paragon, using both VSS and Paragon hot processing and each time the second backup was a differential from the first.

First complete backup ~8.6 GB
Differential backup ~37 MB

I can not believe I wasted a whole month! doing multiple backups, putting my poor laptop through hell, in order to figure out why I am unable to get a differential backup.

Let me say that I am new to differential/incremental backup and had never made one before last month, so I am somewhat a novice when it come to using backup utilities for making differential/incremental backups.

I feel angry at the designers of paragon, shadow protect etc that nowhere in the user manual it says that differential backups are not feasible if made to the same partition. I have just gone over the user guides of paragon drive 9, acronis true image 2009 and shadow protect and granted they all say it is recommended to backup to a hidden partition or to a different hard drive, giving the usual reasons like hard drive failure/partition corruption, they do not say straight out that the differential backups are not even possible if you backup a partition to the same partition!!

There is a huge difference between "not recommended" and "not feasible". Now I understand what other poor non-computer savy people go through when they use these backup utilities.

In last month I have used Paragon, Shadow protect and even dive snapshot and none of the utilities warned me that you are trying to make differential backups of a partition to the same partition and this is not possible, please choose a different partition for this procedure. There should have been at least a warning dialog box or something.

Sorry for the long post but I had to get this off my chest. I was so angry last night that I wanted to shoot something.....

 

If you look at the second image link I posted in post#18, it shows the final paragon setting and as you can see it clearly says that during partition backup the archives already stored on that partition are excluded. What is one supposed to make out of that. I assumed that it will ignore the archives and I think it does because the second backup ignores the first image file otherwise the second backup would be twice the size of the first backup. Remember, I can get it to make complete images fine. The problem only occurs when I try yo make a differential image from the first complete image. It makes the second one a complete image too.

I have not used FD-ISR but I have used Rollback Rx and it did not work out for me. They have since then discovered a major bug in Rollback Rx which would cause the exact problems that I was facing but they are only going to release a bug fix for their latest version not fix the bug in the older version. I do not want to buy a new version as I am not sure the bug has been completely removed and I do not want to test it on my system. This is the reason I have switched to these conventional backup utilities to make one different/incremental backup per day and it should suffice for my needs.

 

Glad it works now. About Paragon excluding or not excluding correctly, all you can do is report it to their support desk, they do respond.

Just a word about FD-ISR, or rather FD-ISR Rescue, as the commercial version is now called I think, it works under a totally different principle than Rollback (which was very buggy /unstable in the past).

FD-ISR is file based and not sector based. If you have plenty of space on your C: partition, you may want to give it a try. Goto http://www.horizondatasys.com/253715.ihtml.

You also have a dedicated support forum here on Wilders.

 

Yes, I plan on buying a usb powered portable hard drive and also plan on upgrading my internal laptop hard drive from 160 to 500, which will allow me to have a dedicated partition for my backups.

I typically do not use the restore function often, so for my needs my internal hard drive will work fine for backups etc.

Still waiting for a software, like rollback rx, that unlike rollback rx works fine in all conditions without causing problems. If I ever find one I will use that as a system restore replacement instead of paragon, as paragon is not designed exclusively for that role.

 

Right. So if I was doing something abnormal, shouldn't the software had warned me that "look what you are trying to do is not possible" or something similar. It could have warned me on the step where I selected the same partition to save the image file. They could have mentioned it in the user guide too, right under the differential section that differential will not work if saved to the same partition.

That is why I was angry at the designers.

Right. And if the software says that it ignores its own archive on the partition, so this would mean it only looks at the original 10 Gig and any changes in that. It will ignore the 10 gig image file. This is what anyone will assume. This is what I assumed.

 

Okay, let me explain what I am trying to say in a user friendly manner

Suppose you have 10 GB data on your C partition and lets suppose your image of the partition is also 10 GB.

So before you setup a backup schedule that is designed to make one complete backup and rest differentials, the partition has:

Data + page file

Now you begin the schedule routine and select to ignore the page file and the image files on the partition. After first backup is done you have

Data + page file + image file

Now you work on your pc and your data gets changed. You also reboot and get a new page file. you have

Data + changed data + page file (changed ) + image file

Now, during second run, based on the settings above, the software should ignore "page file" again, plus it should also ignore the "image file".

If the second run is differential it should only backup "changed data"

Right!! This is what most people will assume. But apparently paragon, shadow protect and drive snapshot at least, will still ignore the "page file" while making a differential backup, but for some unknown reason they will not ignore the "image file", even though the option is already selected, and you will get a resultant differential backup which would include the first "image file" thus making the differential backup almost the same size as the first "image file"

This is a strange behavior and how would a user know that the utility will still ignore the "page fie" but will not ignore the "image file"?

I hope everybody understood what I said above...

p.s If you make a complete backup, instead of a differential, the utility will ignore the "page file" as well as "image file". How will one know when it will ignore the "image file" and when it will not?

 

I can understand your frustration in the time spent on this but, I feel that the behaviour you describe is actually more of a design feature rather than a flaw.....it just may not seem that way .

I can only speak for Drive Snapshot but there are situations where the user might want to do the procedure you have performed in certain situations.

Firstly, DS has command line options to ignore certain files or file types but there are valid reasons to include these. I have images from other systems stored on various partitions, if I image those partitions I may well want to include those backup images. DS has no way of knowing where these images are from and doesn't impose any restrictions on the user or make any assumptions about what the user wants to achieve, it just gives the flexibility to include or exclude these (or any other) files/directories.

Secondly, if you have a single drive system but you want to make a backup then it allows you to do just that. You could then, of course, burn that file to DVD or save it to an external drive when one was available. DS, by default, also creates a 'hash' file which is typically (according to the DS site) 0.5% the size of the backup image. Armed with this file, and only this file, you are able to create a differential. Therefore, you can delete the image from the imaged drive (having copied it somewhere safe) and still create a differential at some point which would be of the size you are expecting it to be. That differential could (should) also then be copied elsewhere as appropriate.

The upshot of this is that what you were doing was not wrong as such and you shouldn't be stopped from doing it. It just requires that you have an understanding of the implications to avoid the frustration .

Graham

 

Yes, I admit it was my fault, but I was confused by Paragon's user guide. I only used shadowprotect a couple of times as that was only to check whether the problem is not with paragon. I only used Drive snapshot just once on the advice of MerleOne on this thread.

Paragon does indeed ignore its own image file. It says to inside the manual and there is a option setting specifically for it. See the image below

http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/7350/paragon2.jpg

You can check and uncheck it based on your preference. This is what threw me off. If you are only making a complete image of the partition, this option does indeed work. The second complete image will ignore the first image file on the disk. The third will ignore the first two. I guess they do it by looking at the extension of the image file.

I naturally assumed it will work with differential backups too. Otherwise, naturally, this would have been the first reason that would have occurred to me.

Anyway, this was a good learning experience for me.

 

Yes, I think it is by design. Just my mistake I could not figure it out. Got confused by the paragon manual. It said it ignores its own image files and since I had it checked I did not think it might not apply to diff backups.

Now I know. I just wished they had mentioned it on the user guide. Of course, like others pointed out, they probably did not think anybody would backup to the same partition, so they did not include any info/warnings with it.

I also got confused due to the fact that all the complete backup images I have ever made with paragon, I have always made them to the same partition, and then moved them to an external drive or somewhere else after they were made.

Ah well, as they say "all is well that ends well".