Interesting image size?

I Have A 40 GIG HDD, which has an 6 GIG hidden Sony recovery partition and a C Drive with 12 GIGs used and 19 GIGS free space. I did a full disk (hidden partion plus 'C' partition) image back-up and the resultant image file is 23 GB large. Does that make sense, and why? 6+12=18 with no compression. I used 'normal' compression, etc. I am using TI9 v.3633 in Boot rescue CD mode. .

 

How can the image file be bigger than the files?

 

Unless I've misunderstood you, the image isn't bigger than the original.

Your harddrive without the hidden partition is 12 + 19 = 31GB + the hidden partition = approx 37Gb which would be about right for a 40Gb HDD after formatting, and your image is 23Gb - which is about 20Gb of (12 + 8'ish) and the remaining 3Gb - well that I can't explain apart from either a cluster size problem - an overly large MFT or perhaps a diagnostics partition that isn't noted by Sony - might be in a non FAT/NTFS format.

Colin

 

Hello Azdon,

Out of interest, do you have many multimedia files on your HD (e.g. JPEG, MP3, MPEG, WMV, AVI, VOC, etc)? These are already heavily compressed, which, if you try to compress further, can actually end up slightly larger.

Regards

 

The cluster size in the hidden partition is 2kb, and in 'C' TI reports 4kb cluster size. It says boTh are NTFS. When I try to mount the image file TI says it cannot assign drive letter to this hidden partition in the image. TI shows the drive as hidden=6GB and C as 31GB. My Computer shows 'C' drive with 12 GB 'used and 19 GB free. I calculate then 12+6=18, not 23.

There arn't any movie / picture files, but the 6 GB hidden partition probably has a recovery image plus diagnostics, etc

I attach screen shots showing all this:

 

I am sorry, I have 5 screenshots but I don't know how to attach them here

 

Here the pic is:

 

and properties of the mounted image

 

LASTLY, the image I made. Any insight here would be appreciated.

 

ok, here are all 5 of the screenshots showing:

1. the 23 GB image file showing the 'C' partition (31 GB)and 'hidden' partition(6 GB)

2. Details of the two partitions.

3. assinging drive letters to image prior to mounting

4. unable to assign drive letter to 'hidden' partition

5. properties of image of mounted 'C' partition

In summary, 'C' has 12 MB of data, 'hidden' has size of 6 MB. Total equals 18 GB. Image is 23 GB. I am really confused. When I previously imaged a drive with 13 GB of stuff, but no other partitions, the image file was only 8 GB.
This question is really acedemic. The real question is this normal and if I ever need to will this image work to restore a corrupted or replacement drive exactly as it was when this backup was made? Or did something go wrong?

 

No one, not even Acronis, has any thoughts on this?

 

Are you using the Acronis Secure Zone?

Maybe look at your hard drive information via the Disk Management function.
Goto Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Computer Management/Disk Management.

Basically, your backup file szie should be about 50% of your used disk space.
%windir%\system32\diskmgmt.msc

 

Thanks for the reply Grover,
No, I have not set up a SZ. The Full disk image was done from booting Rescue CD, full. to USB external HDD. Disk Management shows same info TI does. One disk (37 GB), two partitions, C of 31 GB (19 free), and a hidden one of 6 GB (~2 free).
I agree, thats why I am seeking help.

 

Most peculiar.
Couldn't help noticing that you're storing this in "SONY Backup" folder, but the Mount Image screenie shows "Compaq Setup" for Partition K. Are you looking at the same image? Howcome a Sony laptop image says "Compaq"?

 

Good spot Arthur. Makes you wonder whether Azdon is trying to mount a Vaio image on a Compaq machine. I've never tried mounting an image of one machine on another so I'm not sure whether it can be done .

Regards

 

Mounting an image from disparate systems (as a virtual drive) is not an issue since ATI only peers at files not content. I was just wondering whether Azdon is looking at the right tib file, ie the one from his Sony Viao, not the Compaq.

 

Perfectly correct. I have used this method to recover nearly everything from a computer with a trashed OS. Peering works, so does copy and paste or my fav. Drag and drop.

Xpilot

 

Hi Arthur & Xpilot,

Thanks for your confirmation that TI can, in fact, plug/mount an image of one system on a different system. Never too old to learn .

Regards

 

Does anybody know the causes/effects and solution for the white cross in the red circle as shown in the yellow bar at the top of the drive ?
The only time I have seen this on a drive of mine I could write to it with no problem but reading from it was impossible. My rather drastic solution was to format the drive and start again. Though I don't think that would be appropiate here.

Xpilot

 

Gentlemen,
Thanks for all the comments. I have no idea why it says 'compact' in the hidden partition. The computer is a 4 month old VAIO VGN-FS790B. It came that way from Sony. I am not trying to restore it, just making a backup in case anything ever happens. The only modification this notebook has had is to increase memory fron 512 to 1 GIG. I did mount this backup image on a new Dell desktop in order to view the files (TI isn't installed yet on the laptop). But that doesn't explain the 'compact'. All this on both machines has been done in the rescue boot CD mode. The screenshots are from the mounting on the Dell. I was experimenting with TI9. Ultimatly I plan to buy another copy of TI and install it on the laptop as well as on the Dell, but I wanted to test if the boot Rescue CD made on the Dell would work to back up the Sony too. I was really surprised at the image size (not that it is a problem) and wanted to know why. Like everyone, I would like to 'believe' that an image taken of the drive is accurate and would, in fact, restore everything in the event of a crash, etc. Thats why we buy TI. When the image file is bigger than all the data backed up I begin to wonder what happened. To clarify what I said in the beginning, attached is a screenshot from 'Disk Management' on the Sony Notebook, copied to the VAIO's memory card, to the Dell for attaching here. Notice here it calls it EISA configuration. Perhaps TI just reads it different.

 

And my half-baked theory for today on this matter (which means it is nothing but a blatant guess combined with a few assumptions ) is:

Compaq is showing up because EISA bus was developed by Compaq and some others just prior to PCI.

Having this "EISA" partition at the front of the disk has mixed up TI and it is counting the free space rather than the used space as the image size. Unless it actually made an image of the free space, heaven forbid!

 

Seekforever,
Even if it did that makes total 'data' size 18 GB, not even close to the image size of 23 GB. Unless you mean the C partition, which doesn't seem right since I see the 'C' files when I mount the image. TI won't mount the EISA partition. The 'files' on the 'C' partition are in the 12 GB, not the 19 GB

 

Maybe TI backs up a Partition marked with "Compaq Diagnostics" Type with the fall-back method for copying, because it is not a supported filesystem. So instead of copying only used blocks, TI would copy the whole 6 GB of the diagnostics partition (and maybe not compress them).

My T42's Setup and Diagnostics Partition was marked with "Compaq Diagnostics" also, seems to be a common way to hide this partitions from Windows. But since i threw away this Preinstallation Partition, i cant test if Ti backs up the whole diagnostics partition instead of the usual used-blocks-only method.

The history of the "Compaq Diagnostics" thing seems to have started with the Compaq-PCs with a 286 or 386 series cpu, which had the BIOS-Setup not embedded in the flash-rom, but on a special partition of the hdd, which could be booted by the BIOS if you wanted to set the clock or other BIOS options.

 

I meant it erroneously used the values for the free space instead of "used" and added up all the free space on the disk which comes out around 22GB or so. Just blind guessing but the number is darn close.

 

Hi b k,
Thanks for your input. That still makes the image 5 GB bigger than the total hidden partition plus used space on 'C'.