DRIVE SNAPSHOT AND DEFRAG

hi all
i have been over all the info about this amazing program DS 1.38 and decide to do some testing and comapre it to other like him in the market (ari,farstone,IFW...etc)

welp what i find out , maybe its clear for some and maybe this is new.

what i did is very simple

1) defrag my OS hd c:\ with ultimate defrag (last ver) and made a *.sna image with in windows.(xp sp3)

2) i install soldat (142) and made a DIFF image which took about 24 mega

so far so good ...buttt...when i defrag my hd AFTER i install soldat and to a DIFF backup it took 125 mega !!!

conclusion == > not defrag your HD after the FULL BACKUP IMAGE was made coz the DIFF backup always compared to the FULL BACKUP...

also i wounder if this isue append in all DIFF backup progs (ati,shdowprotect..etc)


* just do another test with SP 3...install about 13 mega of software back up went about 24 mega .back up after i defrag the hd it gave me 301 mega od DIFF backup (soldat also been there not defrag till add the extra 13 mega)

for me its sound bad this DIFF backup option...
cheers

 

Always an issue with sector based tools.
They are not aware [enough] of the file system, they simply see changed blocks and sectors
They do not know if it is because of file deletion, copy, defrag (it cant tell old and new location of files moved during defrag) or modification etc.
All they see is something changed, so its marked for backup or whatever.

 

so its realy useless using DIFF backup...what the use if even a simple defrag make its size more than a tripple?

cheers

 

A more correct way to say it is:

Its really useless using defrag tool with a SECTOR based DIFF backup.

There is still other tools that do file based DIFF backup which are not afflicted by this issue.

What you want is a defrag tool which can defragment fragmented files only and NOT move consolidated files, off the top of my head, PerfectDisk (which also has a special VSS compatible mode) and JKdefrag offer this mode (usually the most basic/simple) mode.

 

so what u saying ... u MUST use only fragmented files only in the defrag progy? but this method is as efficient as consolidated defrag? i used DiskTrix UltimateDefrag which got this option(files frag only)....intersting point i gona try it out and see if its work..


cheers

 

Yes.

No, but its better than No defrag...

I would recommended you do a full consolidated defragment first.
I would be interesting in seeing how well it works

 

What you got to realise is using your new restored image. The differentials after the first differential will not be so big as the the partition structure data layout will be the same for all thereafter. If you work on your pc for 1 or 2 days and take a fast differential image that amounts to 125Mb say, isn't a size to be concerned about. The importance is you backed it up. If you got the room to store 10Gig images, whats the concern with 125Mb more. It still a 1/20+ less than taking a full image.

 

its not only the size , it can take longer to restore as much the size get bigger and bigger..and i add only 13 mega and god 124...i magine adding gigs?

cheers

 

thats what i did before the BIG main *.sna image i took

cheers

 

That's why I use a real-time defragger MSTDefrag that defrags only fragmented files, on the fly. Once my differentials grow to over 1GB, I make a new base image.