Why is my differential backup nearly as large as my full backup?

I am curious as to why my differential backup is nearly as large as my full backup. My differential backup is appended to my full one, meaning Acronis knows that it is to add whatever changes have occurred since the full backup. What puzzles me is that I ran my differential backup immediately following my full backup. I was not thinking that there should be much of anything to backup.

I do have Norton GoBack installed, but made sure to clear its history AND disable it to be sure that it wasnt writing any history information as my full backup was progressing. I am now going to perform an incremental backup to see if it may be any smaller, but I cannot see how since both types of backups should be exactly the same after performing the full backup. I am backing up to DVD R/W optical media.

Does anyone know whether this is normal behavior for Acronis?

 

I think I may have some idea of what is going on. I was trying to set up a task to perform the differential backup and I think it was going ahead and doing another full backup instead of the differential. (It did not ask for any disks from the original, full backup). I am going to read the users manual to see if I can set up a differential backup as a scheduled task? Will it be able to automatically remember the contents of the original, previous backup?

Another question--do I have to have the original disks of the full backup each and every time I perform a new differential, or can I just put in the last disk of the last differential I ran?

 

Hello jeremywms,

Thank you for choosing Acronis Disk Backup Software.

Yes, you can set up a differential backup as a scheduled task but you should store the full image on the hard drive to perform it.

I'm afraid no. If you want to create the differential backup, you should indicate the location of the full image at first.

Yes, you should have the original disk of the full backup in order to create the differential one.

Please note that the differential image contains all changes that have been done after the full image creation. To restore a differential image, Acronis True Image must match the differential image with the original image.

You can find more information on how to use Acronis True Image 9.0 in the respective User's Guide.

If you have any further questions please feel free to ask.

Thank you.
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Tatyana Tsyngaeva