File Size question?

I'm new to this, so forgive me.

I'm doing a full backup with normal compression on Sunday's, the backup file is about 40gb.

I'm doing incremental's m,t,w,th,f,sa with normal compression. I'm finding that the incrementals about about 40gb each also. I was expecting the incremental backups be be smaller, including only the files that have changed.

What am I doing wrong? Or is this normal?

**EDIT ** This is on Windows XP with TI 10 home version

 

Couple of things that cause larger than normal incrementals although your size seems excessive.

If the disk is defragged between incrementals anything that is moved to a different sector is seen by an image program as a change even if the file content remains the same.

System Restore creating restore points can result in large increases.

Are you sure you are really making an incremental based on an existing archive and not a full backup. Also, don't change the filename, let TI handle it.

 

Thanks, what you said at the end makes sense. But I'm not sure I understand. I have two tasks:
1. Full Backup - runs once a week. Setup to create e:\backups\full.tib
2. Daily - Runs daily except Sundays. Setup as incremental. Setup to create e:\backups\daily.tib

Each day that runs, the file name that gets created is daily2.tib, daily3.tib, daily4.tib, etc...each one of those daily ones is about the same size as full. Do I need to name that full.tib instead?

 

I don't do incrementals but when creating the incremental can't you just click on the full and let TI put the full's name in the filename box?

 

I've given up on this software.... it should give you the option of file backup or disk imaging. This is not for the consumer or small business sector. In this way the backup space will be to costly in the long run.

 

Just as an update, I think the incrementals are indeed working right, it's soomething else on my pc that I'm researching.

To test incremental, I did a full, ran my incremtnal task after chaing a few files. That backup was very small. I let the pc sit for a while, re-ran the incemtnal, the backup file was 200mb. I let it sit idle for another couple of hours, re-ran, the incremental was 4gb.

This tells me that something else is going on, I'm huntung now. I'm guessing a defrag or something is running in the background.

Thanks for your help, I think I'vre got this figured out.

 

ATI is imaging software. If you want file backup, use a free tool such as SynchToy or buy something. File-based backup is a very different concept from disk imaging, and requires a different tool.

Too costly? Are you kidding? You can get an external 500 GB USB drive for $100. That will hold a lot of backup images.

 

Two months ago got a 500 for $80 delivered to my door. A little less nowadays.

 

Are you using any automatic defragging program like Perfect Disk or DiskKeeper? Itg sure sound like it.

 

It does give that option. Yes you can . of course you can. You can backup selected directories or individual files rather than entire partitions and afterwards you can copy individual files from the ATI backup archives to wherevere you please or restore them to whereever you please.

Maybe check the User Guide or the program menus to find out where you missed it. Ime, home users generally don't find those features too hard to find or use. Some things about ATI are hard for the average home user but being able to backup/restore files isn't one of them.

 

I also have a problem with enormous differential backups. After making a full new backup, I ensured that no defrag took place, nor any System Restore operations. The only change to the C-drive to be cloned involved sending and receiving a few e-mails. The day after the full backup, I had scheduled a differential. The full backup, with normal compression, occupied 215 GB of space on my external drive, leaving 83 GB of free space--more than enough, I thought, for several differentials.
About an hour after the start of the differential backup, there was an error message saying there was not enough space on the drive to complete the task. Huh? 83 GB not enough for a few e-mails? Thinking I must have missed something, I tried again, making doubly sure that I was tasking a differential and not a full backup. Same result.

At the moment I am reduced to making a new full backup every time (after deleting the previous one) as it is the only thing that will fit on my 320 GB external drive. I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what. Any ideas? Thanks.

In case that might be helpfull, here are some specifics about my system.
Acronis Home version 11.0, build 8027
Windows Vista Home Premium
Dell XPS 420 Desktop computer with quad core processor and 3 GB of RAM
Total size of C-drive partition: 450 GB
Occupied space on this partion: 245 GB
Total size of single-partition external drive: 320 GB (298 usable)
Space taken up by normal compression clone of C-drive: 215 GB

Roger

 

Build 8,027 is an old build of TI 11. It would probably be a good idea to update to the latest build (8,101).

Vista moves files all the time. I just do Full image backups on my Vista partitions because of this.

You might try doing a Full and then checking your emails and then doing a Differential and seeing if it's still very large.

 

Unbelievable! I did as you suggested--updated, made full backup followed immediately by incremental backup (after changing a few files.) The incremental backup took less than two minutes and almost no space on the drive. So you were right.
And now I have one more reason to hate Vista.
Thank you so much for the advice.

Roger