No more free space for incremental images - which ones can be deleted?

Hello!

Ok, I use Acronis TI 8.0 and I've just run out of free space for further backups. Now I'd like to know which ones I can delete and if I can delete them manually.
I don't have a secure zone, just a reserved partition on my hard drive. I started with a full backup as my first image and from there I kept adding incremental backups up to now. I read that the first and the last image are needed by the program, does that mean I can delete anything in the middle? Or do I delete anything but the last one? Please help!

Greetz,

weazel

 

Hello weazel,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Incremental backup contains all data modified since the last preceding backup (full or incremental). To restore from an incremental backup, one needs to have the full backup and all preceding incremental backups, if any.

You can delete your incremental images manually. If you want to delete some incremental images, please delete the last images.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

As you can't delete any of the images i would move them somewhere safe for the time being, make a new Full Image and then verify it. If it passses delete all the old images and start imaging incrementally again.

 

Good idea Paul!

Because I was already wondering:

Ouote: "To restore from an incremental backup, one needs to have the full backup and all preceding (??) incremental backups" - I thought a full backup would replace all backups that were made before?

So provided I have the following structure:

1. Full backup 1
2. incremental 1
3. incremental 2
4. incremental 3
.
.
7. incremental 7 (latest)

In this combination I can either delete one by one starting from incremetal 7 backwards (which makes not much sense as it's usually the backup before the current one you want to go back to).

But I can't delete incrementals 1-6 and just keep the full one and the latest, right?

Sorry, this is a little confusing to me at the moment..

So for now I'll go for Paul's solution and remember to make a full backup in between more often so I can delete all preceding ones.

I actually don't even know why I ran out of space so quickly, my incremental backups were just a big as or even bigger than the first full backup, so that seems to have been included, not appended?

Thanks,

weazel

 

Correct. Not sure why you are asking that though....

<EDIT>
Ah re-read it.

I think what Acronis Support means is you need the Full Image and the incremental backups made since that Full Image preceding this point in time (or at least the point in time you want to restore to) and not that you need the Full Image and the Incrementals you made BEFORE making that Full Image.

It's worded a bit funny but after re-reading the thread several times i think i can see the misunderstanding.....

No! You need all of them.

Example

(Name) (Date Day/Month/Year)

Full Backup 1/1/2005
Incremental 1 2/1/2005
Incremental 2 3/1/2005
Incremental 3 4/1/2005
Incremental 4 5/1/2005
Incremental 5 6/1/2005 (latest)

Each Incremental contains the changes since the last image. This is the key factor. If you deleted Incremental 4 and 5 then you can only go back to Incremental 3. If you delete 1 and 2 then the Restore will fail.

Think of it like navigating a set of directions. There are 10 steps - if you delete steps 3 to 7 you won't be able to follow the directions to your friends house!

Incremental 6 only contains the changes since Incremental 5 was made.

That's why i gave up on incremental backups. Mine PC takes less than 10 minutes to run a full image so i keep the last two images. When i go to make a new one i delete the oldest image and make a new one.

 

Hello weazel,

I try to explain: imagine that you have the following set of backups:
F -> I1 -> I2 -> I3 -> I4, where “F” is a first (full) backup; “Ix” are incremental backups. In order to restore I4 you need to have all preceding backups – I3, I2, I1, F. In order to restore I2 you need to have only backups preceding I2, I1 and F.

If you store the image archive on your hard drive we recommend you to create Acronis Secure Zone. The images saved to Acronis Secure Zone are deleted automatically if required, using the following scheme to clean up Acronis Secure Zone:
- If there is not enough free space in Acronis Secure Zone to create an image,
then Acronis True deletes the most old full image with all subsequent incremental backup images.
- If there is only one full image (with subsequent incremental backup images) left
and full backup is in progress, then this only full image (with subsequent incremental backup images) is deleted.
- Otherwise (only one full image left, and incremental backup is in progress) then
you will get out of space error. In this case you will have to either create full
image or increase the Acronis Secure Zone size.

Thank you.
--
Irina Shirokova

 

Oh ok, now I got it .

The reason I got even more confused was in fact the little misunderstanding of the "preceeding backups", but now it's clear.

Before Acronis I used to work with a program called "Second Chance" and there the images were independent from each other, you could delete anything exept for the latest image, so I have to get used to working differently now.

Thanks a lot to both of you!

Bye bye

weazel

 

Incrementals should be smaller than full. Are you defragmenting your drives a lot? That will confuse True Image when it tries to figure out what has changed.

Or are you copying a lot of big files back and forth?

 

Should be but there are a few threads that state to the contrary and so does my personal experience. Even when an image is taken minutes after another it's similar size or even bigger. Defragging is not an issue.

Second Chance is totally different. It's not an imaging program at all. SC just monitors file changes since the last checkpoint but if you made 3 checkpoints 1, 2 and 3 then you would still need to have 2 and 3 present in order to go back to checkpoint 1. So in some respects its the same.

Yes you can delete all the checkpoints except for the last one but then it wasn't making incremental images either. It was just recording file changes and backing up any files that where deleted so all your actions can be undone by reversing the actions. TI is making a one off snapshot in the Total Image case and then noting changes between the last Image and the current Image when making Incremental Images. It's like taking a photo at a given point in time as opposed to making a list of chances from one point to another.

 

Hello Paul,

When the incremental image is larger than the full one the reason is either defragmenation of disk or some mistake during the image creation setup. For example, if you create the full image of the partition C and then create an image of the partition D but make it incremental to the first one you will in fact get the full image of D partition that can be much larger than the one of C partition. Anyway, if there is no defragmentation the incremental image should be smaller than the full one, otherwise this is a problem and it should be solved.

If I am not mistaken we have already spoken about this problem. Do you still have it?

Thank you.
--
Ilya Toytman

 

We have spoken about this before bu it was raised by someone else who was running a full image and then immediately after would run an incremental image only for it to be bigger than the original full image.

I've just run an image of my C Drive to my F Drive (seperate physical disk) and it was 9.5Gb i then immediately ran an incremental image. I think i discovered where i've been going wrong. I never selected an image before when doing an incremenatal image so they always ended up being full images (i.e. another 9.5Gb file but this time i reaslised my mistake and selected an Image to increment from and the resulkt was a 5 Mb file.

Most useful because instead of keep doing a full image every day (because of my mistake i understand why incrementals where the same size) i can now do a full one on Monday and incremental every other day.