What makes an incremental backup get large?
I have a quite new Win7 system with something like 15GB used on the system disk. I also have a backup archive (incremental) with a base and 3 incremental backups. I'm using the default compression level. Here's some size info:
Base full backup: less than 12GB
Inc #1 was taken about an hour or so after the base: less than 1GB
Inc #2 was taken 2 days later: about 3.5GB
Inc #3 was taken 3 days after #2: between 7 and 8GB
This system is used to do email, visit internet sites, and a few excel spreadsheets and miscellaneous docs. It hasn't had any apps installed since the base backup was taken. There was one Windows Update (only one item). The automatic defrag facility says it is turned off (I turned it off long before the base backup was taken to avoid excessively large incremental backups).
The base was smaller than I expected but as long as everything is in there I'm OK with that.
Inc #1 was bigger than I expected since all I had done was experiment with ATI since the base was done. Not so much to worry about.
Inc #2 was surprisingly large.
Inc #3 is gigantic!
Incs #2 and 3 add up to something almost as large as the base! This really seems excessive to me.
Is there something in Win7 that is causing ATI to include way too much stuff in the incrementals? Remember that I have the defragger turned off.
--Larry
I stated twice in my original post that the automatic defragger had been turned off. And after the big incremental I checked it again.
It is off. I will check yet again.
--Larry
I took another look at the system today. The automatic defrag facility is OFF and it says the last time it ran was when the system was brand new (and well before I installed ATI).
For reasons I don't understand, the system disk has a lot more space being used -- about double what I thought it was. I suppose that could explain the large incremental backups. I did another incremental today and it was small (but it has only been a day since the last one).
I'll just watch things and see how they go.
--Larry
Don't know if it has any bearing on your problem but System Restore can cause large increases in size.
Yes, I thought about System Restore using more space. But I don't know how to tell what space it is actually using (as opposed to the max it might take). I know that on WinXP there is a way to gain access to C:\System Volume Information\ which contains the system restore data. Maybe I will look into how to make the same thing available on Win7. Of course an easy way is to disable System Restore which deletes all the restore points and frees up the disk space. A look before and after doing that would give me a clue. But I'd rather not delete all the restore points.
I've noticed that Micro$oft Security essentials is creating a restore point every time it installs an updated virus/spyware definition file. That happens at least once a day. Maybe I don't really need all those restore points. I'll look into that.
--Larry
PS: The Win7 PC predecessor system was an XP system that ran for over 6.5 years with a 60GB system disk but only about 30GB ever got used. Now with Win7 the disk storage seems to be growing rapidly. And the user, my wife, is doing the same things on the new system. Oh well, I suppose Micro$oft owns the disk making companies so they both make more money! :-)
I think I have my Restore Points set to about 2GB rather than the default. It allows a rollback for a recent change and I use TI images for anything more. Haven't really needed to go back though.
Hardware requirements normally grow with each version and that includes applications as well since either demand or marketing insists on more features to be added. Then there are the things that could have been programmed better.
Would anybody really want to go back to the earlier days where a PC could only easily use 640K base memory and anything else required the black art of memory management and then not every application could use it. If you didn't have a physical memory problem then you could possibly run out of Windows resource space. I remember buying a person who worked for me a new computer with an 84MB (not GB) HD and everybody wondered what he would ever do with all that space. That drive back then probably cost about 5X what a 1 TB drive can be bought for today even without accounting for inflation.
However, I do see your point