Saved image file doubled in size?

I'm currently running True Image 7, build 627 on Windows XP Pro.

I have 2 hard drives, Drive 1 & 2. I backup Drive 1(2 partitions C,D) to Drive 2 as one image file and I have been doing this weekly for many months without any problems.

I use the backup wizard each time. TI7 states that my backup image file size will be approximately 35Gig which is what the backup image file size normally ends up as listed on the hard drive. The Drive 1 partitions files add up to approximately 60 gig in actual file size. I have the TI7 compression set at the default "Normal".

The problem.....

I changed my Drive 2 , 120Gig Maxtor to a 200Gig Maxtor. Both drives are NTFS formated with Allocation Unit size 4K bytes. Now my backup image file size has increased to 57 Gig! Almost double of the previous backup file sizes. I reformated the 200 Gig drive and still the 57G file size on back up. I reinstalled TI7 and still the double file size. I reinstalled the the old 120 Gig drive and the backup file to that drive is the larger 57G!


I'm stumped as to why the image file is saved at 57G when TI7 states it should be approx. 35G and that 35G has been the normal file size for many months.

Any fixes or suggestions as to why this is occurring?

Thanks,

Bob P.

 

Hi Bob P.,

Absolutely EXCELLENT problem description right down to configuration info! This should be made an example of how to describe a problem! How refreshing!

Anyway Bob, you say you reformatted. To what?
Next question. What about imaging time?

Almost sounds like you've got the compression set at "Minimal" or maybe even "None". Not meaning to imply that you set it that way.

I saw something similar on my machine some time back, and right now I can not drag it out of the "depths", but I will try!

 

Formatted to NTFS, Allocation Unit size - 4K.

"Normal" compression is selected in TI7.

 

Hey Bob P.,

See "Next question" above!

 

1.5 hours for the Drive 1 image.

 

What I was looking for was the time DIFFERENCE (if any) between the 35GB and the 57GB image creations.

 

I can't give you that info as it won't save to 35G anymore and I usually just walked away for the back up and never paid attention to the time.

Now I searched the archives here and found a similar issue. Someone replied that when you delete a image file the filename is removed but the data is still sitting there on the hard drive and will actually be part of the image thus increasing the actual image file size over the projected size as the projected size is based upon active files on the hard drive. They suggested using a program called Eraser (which I just downloaded) and overwrite the deleted file space with 1s & 0s. This does make some sense as I believe I had placed an image to my D partition on Drive 1 not too long ago and deleted it. The Eraser program will prove if this theory is correct or not.


Otherwise I will take any other suggestions?

 

Well here I go again with this NTFS thing! What you have described I have never seen under FAT32 with TI. Any file deletion (any file system) always leaves the data there. Only the name is removed. If we had to run around with "Eraser" and do housekeeping on each and every delete wouldn't that be something? Nothing, but nothing surprises me when it comes to NTFS. I will not bore you with the details of TI with NTFS and A with NTFS and B with NTFS and ... with NTFS. Bottom line; absolutely refused to go over to NTFS for years. Why? Cuz it is M$ proprietary and a closed file system! But, I gave in here a short while back and did the nasty. The nasty did not last but several days! All of those days were an absolute nightmare (I run 3 OS's on 2 machines each)! I knew better in the first place so got my head straightened out and got myself back to FAT32. The only thing IMO that works with NTFS is NTFS! You have to go with the "Eraser" thing Bob. It's your only shot at this point. Let me know.

 

Petruska... Do you still have one of the smaller image files? If so compare the time stamp of when it was created vs last modified. That might give you a time difference and therefore the time it took to create the image. Compare that with the larger images.

 

37Gig file took 1hr 8min
57Gig file took 1hr 45 min


Doing the math that equals exactly the correct amount of time, 540 M per minute.

So this confirms that the files size difference is real.



I just completed running Eraser on the Drive 1, C & D partitions and it took forever! Since the reply to you saying I'm starting the run!

 

I ran the "ERASER" program and that only reduced the saved image size by 1 gig. So that wasn't the problem. I reformated Drive 2 to have an Allocation Unit of 2K and that did nothing to reduce the file size.

It really looks like TI7 has some how stopped compressing the file when I select "Normal" compression. It still states it will be approximately 37G in size but still comes out 57G!

Still stumped!

 

I sure wouldn't think there would be a reason why having a larger second drive (the target for the image) should change the compression for an image of your first drive. Then you put the small drive back and the image is still big? This is a long shot question, but did your usage of drive 1 change in addition to adding the bigger drive? In other words, are you now storing large amounts of already compressed data that you did not have before? Using another backup program, I've seen estimates be way off when I had about 40G of DV compressed video on my drive. I would assume that the TI size estimate assumes an average amount of compression that they expect to get on random data. Otherwise there would be no way of giving an instant estimate. But when a lot of the data to be compressed is already compressed in some form (like DV) vs random bits for code/text you often don't get nearly the expected compression. So anyway, just thought I'd shoot that out in the off chance you might of added a bunch of video or music or something (i.e. and therefore needed a larger drive!).

 

As a test, I saved an image of only Drive 1, partition D which has not changed in months. The actual files are sized at 22G, and the estimated image file size was to be 11.2G, the resulted image file size was was 20G! For some reason it looks as though the compression with TI7 is not working as before.