Acronis True Image Says Not Enough Space, but There IS Enough
I have been trying to make an Image of my internal Windows 10 drive to an external drive. But Arcronis True Image 2016 keeps saying there is not enough space on the partition where I am trying to put the Image, even though the OS and Acronis True Image 2016 (64 bit) both indicate there is much more than enough free space on that partition for the size Acronis says the final Image will be. I have tried it at both normal compression and maximum compression. I am running Acronis True Image from a booted DVD.
Even via the normal compression, Acronis indicates the final image will be about 83 GB, and the free space it is going to is 99.5 GB. But every time, Acronis gets nearly all the way through doing it, and then craps out, saying there is not enough space. Acronis gives no idea whatsoever how much space it wants -- a serious failure of information.
Why? What can I do to solve this problem?
To explain all the complexities -- and there are plenty:
The external drive is an IDE drive connected via USB. (The internal drive is SATA.) It is a GPT disk. It has six partitions on it (and so must be GPT, not MBR), made when I migrated over the drive from my previous Windows 8.1 installation -- and I want to keep those if possible. One of the partitions is hidden, the 128 MB one that presumably is for the Master File table. I used an application called Partition Wizard to migrate the Windows 8.1 files over -- they are pretty much a clone, as if I migrate them to a USB flash drive, it will boot.
When Partition Wizard migrated the files, it changed the size of partitions so they would fit on the smaller external drive. What was odd is that it enlarged some of the smaller partitions, while reducing the primary partition.
I am trying to make the Windows 10 Image to the primary partition on the external drive, which had 81 GB of free space on it. But the Normal compression for the Image needed 83 GB, so I realized in my first failure for lack of space. That lack of space was real, OK.
The sixth of the six partitions is the main 15.76 GB Recovery partition on the internal drive. It was migrated over as 33.4 GB, increased for some reason. The files on it still take out the same space as on the internal. So, I used Partition Wizard to do what it said was moving the extra space from the sixth partition to the primary partition, which is in position #4. (Partition #5 is 886 MB.) Partition Wizard used the term "move" not something like "link." But who knows what it really did behind the scenes to accomplish it.
In the end, the OS, Acronis True Image, and Partition Wizard all show partition charts with the #6 partition now at 15.80 GB, and the primary #4 partition at 17.6 GB larger, at 99.5 GB -- note, Acronis sees 99.5 GB of free space on the primary partition #4.
But when I try to do the 83 GB Image to that 99.5 GB of space with Acronis True Image, it still says there is not enough space.
So, I tried using the maximum compression, which Acronis indicated will produce an Image of a little under 72 GB -- a little more than 9 GB less than the original 81 GB of free space before bringing over the space from partition #6. It craps out at about the same spot anyway, just before finishing #5 of the six partitions; it never even gets to the sixth one that I took space out of -- I would think it should at least get a little farther along before it craps out. Same message, not enough space.
I did also try Imaging from the OS on the internal drive, but that does not give the size the Image will be. It gives only a maximum size, but not an actual size, and the maximum is 126 GB. Whatever size it was really producing -- and someone I have been talking with who has some experience in this suggests it should be well less than 126 GB, and even well less than 99.5 GB -- it says there is not enough space. But again, maybe it is producing an image larger than the 99.5 GB of free space, who knows.
So, why isn't Acronis able to put a 72 GB Image on what should be either 81 GB of free space that must be there from original, or 99.5 GB of free space that is supposed to be there now and that Acronis shows in its drive/partition chart? And why can't it put an 83 GB Image on 99.5 GB of free space?
What can I do to solve this problem? A work around? Some command to enter via Command Prompt (I would worry about that))? Something else?
I used Belarc Advisor, since I already have it installed. It confirms the free space. It says there is 106.86 GB of free space on the external drive, and I alarady know just about all of it is on the primary partition, so that pretty wellsyncs with the 99.5 GB Acronis. the OS, and Partitoin Wizard says in on that partition, although it might actually suggest this is a little bit more than 99.5 GB.
Belacr advisor doesn't break that down to partitions.
I'd rather not start doing things piecemeal, and end up with only a partioin backup. I have enough space, why is Acronis insisiting otherwise?
I already know it is GPT and NTFS, I did it myself, with Partition Wizard.
This already is my largest external drive
It does sound like space is very tight as you mentioned that the original try showed 83GB needed, but only 81GB free. If it's that close, you may just be out of space and using a larger drive would be recommended.
1) Don't forget that disks reserve some space (when you buy a 250GB hard drive, one may allow you to use say 220GB, but another manufactuer may allow a little more or less - especially when dealing with SSD's where space is reserved for caching functions).
2) Data is written in specific sector/block sizes. Depending on what that file size is set at on a disk, even a 1KB file will require more space because it needs the entire sector. On a large disk, this is usually not as noticeable as on a thumb drive, but this is still a limitation. You can see what the defaults are listed at when you use the "format" option under Windows Explorer.
3) Not all files are written in sequential order - some parts of a file may be written at the beginning of the disk, others in the middle, others at the end. If there is not enough free space on the disk and there are large files, there may not be room to write them in different locations - especially when #2 may be part of the issue.
4) Just a side note, but if space is that tight, your drive is already suffering. All drives take a performance hit when there is less than 10-20% free space available on them. SSD's suffer from this even more because of the need for free space to peform caching functions which give SSD's their speed. Even if you could push the image back and just got it to squeeze in on the free space, at a minimum, you're going to have general performance issues. if this is an OS recovery, your OS won't have space for things like paging, hibernation, installing updates, etc.
If you took another drive and partitioned off 90GB of space, I'm sure you'd be good to go. It would be interesting to see how much free space would be available on the 90GB partition as well once you've rcovered.
Thank you. Bobo. But Ithinkk you'vemisread something. The space is not tight. That's why the question!
1) First, those numbers I gave are for the amount of FREE space, not the size of the hard drive. I have 99.5 GB of free space on the partition to which I am trying to Image, and Acronis says the Image produced at maximum compression will be less than 72 GB -- that should be 27 GB left over after the Image is added, or about 9% free space afterward. But Acronis says there is not enough space for even that Image, must less for the one at normal compression that Acronis says will be about 83 GB. And that 83 GB is pretty close to the size of the Win 8.1 Image I made a month ago before going up to Win 10.
2) OK. But we still are talking of an end result of around 83 GB for even the normal compression.
3) Good info. However, Acronis specifically indicates it will split files as needed to fit the space -- you don't even have an option to not split them.
4) I'm not sure what an SSD is, but this is a common IDE hard drive. Again, even after this image is added, I should have about 9% free space remaining. This is an Image file of the internal hard drive as backup -- an Image file is not bootable, it has to be unimaged to bring the files back out. This is what would be used to restore the internal drive to the state it was in when the image was done. The exterrnal drive also is not bootable, it is not performing any function but storage.
And I think your last paragraph comes from thinking the space is too tight -- you propose 90 GB would be better than 99.5 GB. :)
Thanks for the input -- now you know better what we are dealing with.
Yes, sorry that I missed the 99GB availavility ealier. The only thing I can think of is that Acronis is reading the full disk size and anticipating it as the amount needed for the image and that is the limiting factor. Of course though, during the process, it will compress and save space, and it will also filter out things like hiberfil.sys and pagefile.sys and recycle.bin as well, also making the image smaller. But, if it is anticipating the need for the full amount first, that may be the cause - whether or not that is the case, I'm not sure though. I can't find anything in the user documentation that would suggest either scenario so it may be a question for technical support.
An SSD is a Solid State Hard Drive - specs on these are typically much faster than spinning drives (lookup Samsung 850 EVO as it is one of the most common consumer drives that offers roughly 520MB READ and 520MB WRITE). IDE is old technology and typically only found on older computers. Sata is more common and can be spinning drives for SSD drives - there is SATA I, SATA II and SATA III is the most current/common on systems these days. The latest flash drives are PCI-E NVME (lookup Samsung 950Pro) which is Flash SSD storage that has direct access to PCIE lanes and not limited by SATA controller bottlenecks - these are still relatively new and not quite mainsteam, but are sought after by enthusiasts and high performance users. Pricinig for SSD and the new PCIE SSD's is very competitve now.
Well, I don't know the deep tech of what Acronis is doing, but it should know in advance approximately how large the final image will be, as it gives that information when you select a compression level -- it already has that figured out. Deos that carryover to when it does the Imaging? I dont know, but I would think so. But I do think that lsting of the size of the final Image is very bad if you actually need more space than that to do the image. They need to give us an idea of how much space they need if it is more than that Image size they list.
And it would be very helpful if they would give me an idea of how much more space they want ratehr than simply saying the want more. Gee, the Image at maximum compression is only 72 GB, and the space I'm trying to put it on is 99.5 GB, and they say it is not enough! Even the empty space on that partition before I brought over the additional 17.6 GB from the other partition was about 81 GB, still more than the 72 GB Image. So evenifthere was some issue about the space moved from the other partion, there was already enough space on the primary partition for the 72 GB Image (although I didn't try that compression level until after I brought over the empty space from the other partitioin).
Does anyone know -- for a fact, not a guess or presumption please -- whether True Image is storing temporary files on the partiion while it is preparing thefile for writing? If so, how much space do they take up with that -- if enough tens of GBs, maybe it is enough to be causing this issue. Acronis should tell us that, so we can prepare a proper space. I believe they do do that with Acronis Backup, but I haven't found anything yet that says they do that with True Image.
Or, could there be an issue from bringing space from one partition over to the other?
True Image works with Windows Volume Shadow Copy by default to create images. What that means is that a snapshot of the state of the drive is made first thing and the backup is then run according to the information contained in the snapshot. So yes the product does create a temporary file during backup. Windows System Protection uses the same feature. and the amount of disk space reserved for this purpose can be found by looking at:
Contol Panel/System and Security/System
Once there click on System Protection and then the Configure button which will reveal reserved space for Windows restore points. Add that total to your available free space and see if it exceeds the size of backup.
If so then you could disable the VSS Shadow copy service in the Services menu in Windows Task Manager and attempt to run the backup again. That will force True Image to use its own snapshot manger for making the backup instead of using Windows VSS functions. This might allow you to create your backup. Then again it might not with the limited space available on your drive.
Having said that you really should invest in an external backup drive for backup purposes as leaving only 9GB of free space is going to cause Windows to continually cough up low disk space warnings to you during normal operation if in fact you are successful at creating the backup
Let me add a bit of extra info: the message I get is that the backup failed because there is not enough free space. The error code it gives is: 0x80780048. I searched for that error code in the Acronis Knowledge Base on the Website, and it does not come up in the search, Acronis seems to have never heard of it.
Enchantech, let me clarify: I am not booting Acronis from the OS, I am booting Acronis from the DVD version. In that case, do your comments about the Windows Volume Shadow Copy still apply? I'm Imaging the entire internal Win 10 drive to a partition on an external drive, that partition part of six migrated from a Win 8.1 install previously on the same internal drive. (That partition has 99.5 GB of free space on it after bringing over 17.6 GB from another of the partitions.)
Also, how can I find out how much space that temporary file will need? Maybe that is what is blowing out my space. You told me how to find how much space my OS provides for it, but not how much space it needs. And I think the OS part is only if I boot from that OS, which I am not doing?
Thanks.
me1004,
My apologies, I did miss the fact that you are attempting this from a recovery DVD. My comments about VSS do not apply in that case.
How about verifying exactly how much free sapce is on the drive in question using old school dos commands?
Open an admin command prompt and change the directory to the drive in question. Assuming the drive in question has the drive letter J you would enter:
cd J:/ and press enter. Your result should be the command prompt showing J:/
Now type dir and hit enter.
Look at the bottom of the output and note Free Space.
Does this match what everything else is telling you?
Enchantech, I responded to your post immedatley above, but now coming back, it is not in the thread. Hmm. Well ...
I was running check disk -- chkdsk F: /f /r -- out of Command Prompt when I got your message, so could not run your test of free space at that time. (F is the external drive in question.)
In running check diskt, it just came up with the numbers you were asking. It says 294002684 KB total disk space; 104370636 KB "is available on disk," which appears to mean free space. That's 104.37 GB of free space. That would sync with the 99.5 GB free on the primary partition plus just a little bit more on all the other partitions.
All the tests ran fine, except for 7 files identified in test #4, looking for bad clusters in User file data. But each time it identifed another file, it said:
"The disk does not have enough space to replace bad clusters."
How can that be? Even that chkdsk sees 104.37 GB of free space! How can that not be enough "to replace bad clusters?"
I note, one of the bad files it identified was the Image of my former Windows 8.1 installation on the internal drive, which I also made with Acronis True Image 2016. Does that mean that Image is bad? Or is that just a false negative from ckdsk?
And, allow me to repeat a question from above:
How can I find out how much space that temporary file (that Acronis makes during the process) will need? Maybe that is what is blowing out my space. You told me how to find how much space my OS provides for it, but not how much space it needs. And I think the OS part is only if I boot from that OS, which I am not doing?
I don't think you are doing anything wrong actually. I think you have a bad disk drive or possibly a bad disk controller in that drive or possibly both.
My suggestion would be to go to the drive manufacturer support site and download any diagnostic or repair tools they have and run them against the disk. if you're lucky those tools will be successful in repairing the drive. From personal experience however I would not trust the drive to be of any use whatsoever! If it were me I would buy a new drive, attempt to copy the contents from the existing drive to the new one and call it a day.
OK, I'll go see if the drive maker has any such tool. Just FYI, this is a brand new drive, never used before other than when I made the Win 8.1 Image and migrated the 8.1 files a month ago.
Could there be an issue with the partitions, maybe when I used Partition Wizard to migrate over the files, which is when the partitions were added to the drive? Or when I used Partition Wizard to move the 17.6 GB of extra space from the last partition to the primary partition, adn there is a small partition between the two? Might there be maybe some link there from one partition to the other that might be creating trouble, linkng to the space on the last partion rather than mvoing it -- Partition Wizard tool said "move" not "link"?
Bad clusters indicate failed areas on the disk surface, since the drive is new it was probably flawed in the manufacturing process. You should be able to RMA the drive though so that is good news. Make notes of what the diagnostic tools report as that will be handy for the RMA process.
OK. But what is RMA? I've never heard of that. How do I do it?
Return Merchandise Authorization. Look for it on the support site.
Oh, OK, no this isn't a recent purchase, it was simply unsealed from the packaging recently.
I'm comming late to this thread and have to admit I did not read all of the posts. Having said that, I can tell you that TI uses space on the target drive to store temporary information during the backup. I'm not sure exactly how it works, but I think it needs much more space than you have to work with. I'm going to try an experiment by shrinking a partition on a target drive to have free space of 120% of the backup size. I'll let you know what happens. It will be tomorrow before I have any results for you.
I haven't analyzed whether you drive may have problems. I'm only considering the available space and I think your result is what I would expect.
Great, Mustang. That is some key information I have been wanting.
So, you dont know how much it uses, but you will try to get some idea - OK, that's better than what I have now.
I saw something in the Knowledge Base that Acronis Backup uses what it seemed to be saying was as much as 20% of the free space for that temporary storage. (I have no idea how it is based on the amont of free speace rather than how much you are imaging.) If so, that would be about 20 GB for my imaging, on 99.5 GB of free space. So, I woud have to think of the free space as more lke 79.5 GB.
But even at that, it still should take the 72 GB Image from maximum compression, very tight space when done but nonetheless. Of course, if it uses more than 20%, well, it might very well interfere with even the 72 GB Image.
I must say, if that is the case, Acronis should tell that, and highlight it prominantly. People need to know that. I went throgh all 15 pages that came up on a Knowledge Base search and found nothing about that for True Image.
Okay, I did some tests. I was able to complete a backup of 89 GB into a partition that had only 97 GB of free space. You problem could still be lack of space if there is not enough free space on the source drive also. As I said, I don't know how it all works.
If you are not able to prove something has gone wrong with your target drive, you should try a larger drive.
Mustang, thank you for doing that. So, you were able to do a larger image to a smaller amount of free space.
Then I have to think Acronis is misreading my amount of free space, since I can't get it to put a 72 GB file on 99.5 GB of space. I need to figure out what is causing that misread. Does anyone have any ideas? Would the move of space from one partition to the other have anything to do with it? Other than that, nothing has been done to this drive since the migrated files and then the Win 8.1 Image were put on it a month ago.
There was a suggestion above that Acronis might not be able to fit larger files into bits here and there. But Acronis True Image specifically says it automatically splits files to do that and make them fit, so I don't think that is the issue.
Could Acronis have an aissue with IDE perhaps? Might it misread space on IDE?And I say misread space, but on the partition chart Acrronis shows, it has the correct space allocated to the various partitions. So its not misreading it there, any misread woud only be during the Imaging.
I should add, my internal drive (the source drive) has tons of free space on it. The full drive is 465.64 GB, and the free space on the C-primary partition alone is 323 GB, with only 125 GB used.
Fragmentation could be an issue. Maybe True Image needs more free space to work with when the drive is fragmented. In my tests the fragmentation issue was avoided by resizing the partition prior to the backup.
All we know for sure is you have a problem. You need to find a way around it because we don't know exactly how to fix it. My first step would be to do the backup to a larger drive and see if the problem is avoided.
...
How can that be? Even that chkdsk sees 104.37 GB of free space! How can that not be enough "to replace bad clusters?"
I note, one of the bad files it identified was the Image of my former Windows 8.1 installation on the internal drive, which I also made with Acronis True Image 2016. Does that mean that Image is bad? Or is that just a false negative from ckdsk?
It is possible that to fix the bad clusters, chkdsk would have to create a new copy of that large file, but doesn't have enough space for it.
What is this big file? Is it a TIB file created by Acronis, or some other image type? or some recovery partition?
Also, when you create the backup, make sure you select only the disks and partitions you need. You could for example select the entire disk containing C:\ and the system reserved partition, unselect other hidden partitions, and then create a second backup on another disk for the unselected partitions.
Mustang, you make a good point about fragmentation. I had already looked into that. I just checked again.
The external drive is listed as -- well, the first time I looked, it said 3% fragmentation, then I disconnected it for a reason not important to his discussion, then I reconnected it. This time it showed as 0% fragmented. I don't know why I'm getting different numbers, but it is very little fragmentation.
Now, the internal, the source drive, or at least I guess the primary partition on it, is marked as 16% fragmented. It won't let me defragment that partition. But I just now found if I instead choose the volume, it is running the defragmentation. That has now completed, it says the C drive has 0% fragmentation, yet the primary partition on it listed below is still marked as 16% fragmentation and will not let me rum the Optimization on it.
Will such fragmentation on the source drive create this issue? Why can't I Optimize that volume that has 16% fragmentation?
Re the idea of a larger drive, if I had one, I would have used it in the first place. :) But don't forget, you already tested with tighter space than I have. So I have to take your comment as considering whether the drive itself is bad. I ran chkdsk on it, and it came up with only six bad clusters, one of them merely a font, and a seventh was the Win 8.1 image, which of course would likely include the other six bad clusters so come up as bad too.
PAT L: They are not necessarily large files. One is just a single font, batang font. I took down the string to all of them, and they all but the one appear to be small files, going by names like WWLIB.dll, OFFICE -(tilda)3.mspb2d40.msp, ICONCA-(tilda)4.db. Yes, the seventh is the Image made with Acronis True Image a month ago of the disk when it was running in Win 8.1, but that would come up probably simply because it includes the same clusters in it. Yes, a .tib file.
I was selecting all the partitions to backup in doing the Image. I am hoping I don't have to start whittling it down to fewer -- I would like the backup to restore exactly as the drive was when the backup was done, not as less, missing partitions that do -- something.
However, I already have figured my last course of action would be to delete the two last partitions already on the external drive, from the Win 8.1 migration there, which are the main recovery partition and another smaller one, and expanding the primary partition into that just about 16 GB of space. This would accomplish as much as not Imaging those two partitions in the Image I'm now trying to make -- and maybe it would fix some partition issue in the Win 8.1 migrated files, if there is ann issue. But I would also hate to lose those two partitions, for the same reason I would not want to lose them in the Win 10 Image.
But I am not so sure adding any amount of space will solve this, as even in Mustang's test, he was able to Image more files onto less space than my situation. That makes me think it is a reading issue, not an actual space issued. If so, I would get nothing by losing those partitions. Maybe that move of space between the partitions created this issue? Could it have linked the space rather than move it, and linked space only confuses Acronis TI? But the tool I used for that in Partition Wizard said "move" not "link," yet who knows how they did it behind the scenes.
And as I pointed out above, all that has been done to this drive since the Win 8.1 Image was added to it, in the desktop folder of the main partition, is to move space from the last partition to the primary partition. That's why I keep asking if that move might have created this issue
Mustang: gee, wait, I just realized the language you used. Are you saying the final image you tested was 89 GB or that the amount of files before they were compressed in the image were 89 GB? That is a BIG difference. We need toknwo the size of the finalimage -- maybe also the size of what you started with.
The 72 GB and 83 GB numbers I have given are the size Acronis says the final, compressed image will be, not the GB size of the files to start, which is more like 140 GB.
The 89 GB was the size of the tib file after the backup was completed.
OK, Mustang, thanks.
I just came up with something interesting that raises real questions related to the free space -- on the internal drive, the source drive; this report is not from the target drive, the external drive. This from running a System Report after booting from my Acronis TI disk. (I was not able to run that on the external drive, Acronis TI does not allow me to choose that drive, does only the internal drive -- maybe because the external drive, while the files on it should be bootable, a USB-connected hard drive is not bootable on this machine.)
Bottom line, it says there is no free space on the primary partition of the internal drive nor on the main Recovery partition, and it says both those partitions are corrupted -- although, of course, who knows what the corruption is, major or minor (no issue using using the machine, so I have to think it minor).
I'm attaching the pertinent part from the disks.txt file of the Acronis System Report -- just the pertinent parts of that, not the million miles more of code in between the two pertinent parts. Note: It lists partitions 1 through 6, but excluding #3. #3 is the hidden 128 MB partition. #4 is the primary partition, and #6 is the main Recovery partition. You can see #4 and #6 are listed up top as corrupt. And if you then look below at Disk 1 Partition 4 and Disk 1 Partition 6, you will see in each:
FreeBlockCount: 0 (0b)
I will mention, I find it distrubing that in other places in Acronis TI, it says there is plenty of free space on the primary partition -- it is disturbing that Acronis is inconsistent about this. But perhaps the inconsistency is because of the effect of the corruption.
So the question from this will be: Could this corruption on the internal, source drive be interfering in some way that Acronis TI reads the target drive, the external drive, as also not having enough space?
Regardless, it seems I will need to fix this corruption before Imaging -- how? I already know that "volume" is 16% fragmented as shown by the OS tools, as I wrote here yesterday, but the OS won't let me Optimize it. I have nothing else to use to fix anything. (I am thrown by the OS tool in the same listing showing that C is 0% fragmented -- I thought C was the volume.)
I note, the OS shows the "volume" on the external drive is only 3% fragmented.
So if that fragmentation is the corruption, then maybe the corruption on the internal drive is not on the external drive, that is, the corruption happened after the migration and imaging to the external drive -- I can't know any more because Acronis doesn't allow me to run System Report on the external drive.
I note, that OS Optimization window also shows that the main Recovery partition on both the internal and external drives is 1% fragmented, and while I can run the Optimization on those, it finishes with it still 1% fragmented. But at least those match for internal and external, unlike the "volumes."
All else on the drives are listed as 0% fragmented. And everything is reported as healthy, including the volume that is 16% fragmented.
To keep all in context, let me explain:
The primary partition is the very one I'm trying to image to on the external target drive, and I keep getting told there is not enough space for the Image. This report, though, is for the same partition but on the internal drive.
Some background: I previously had Win 8.1 on the internal drive. I migrated the files over to the external drive, and they should be bootable (although this machine won't boot from an external USB-connected hard drive). I then booted from Acronis TI disk and did the Image of the internal hard drive to the desktop folder of those migrated files on the external drive. The imaging worked perfectly, no issues. The only thing I've done with the external drive since is to move 17.6 GB of free space from the last partition to the primary partition; that space was added to that partition during the migration.
I then upgraded the internal drive to Windows 10. And now I'm finally getting to trying to Image the Win 10 internal drive to the external, to the desktop folder -- and keep getting that message about needing more space.
A key thing to mention is that all other ways of looking at the free space on both the internal and external machine, from either the OS, from Partition Wizard, and even from Acronis TI, shows plenty of free space on the primary partition on the target drive. But this Acronis System Report of the internal says no free space on that partition -- which is not the case, there is lots of free space on it.
I have finally gotten the image done, and solved the problem. The problem was in Acronis TI giving wildly wrong estimates of the final size of the image. In reality, the image was a lot larger than Acronis said it would be, and more than the amount of free space.
I got the image done this morning. By that time, I had opened up more free space, to 108 GB, on the external target drive. I also had reduced the amont of files on the internal drive that I was imaging buy about 4 GB.
I set the imaging for maximum compression, and Acronis TI said the image would be 68.31 GB. But after it was done, the image on the external target drive is way bigger, is 95.88 GB. That's 40% bigger than Acronis had estmated, a huge difference! But 95.88 GB will fit on what was then 108 GB of free space -- barely, insufficient space left now, but its notoperating, is simply storiing.
When I started this threead, the free space was 95.5 GB -- and even today's image would not have fit on that. But the previous attempt to make the image, from about 4 GB more files on the internal drive, would have been producing an image even bigger than the one today, maybe a 100 GB or so,for what then was 95.5 GB of free space.
Like I said, it would have been very helpful if Acronis had not simply said it needed more space but told how much more it needed -- that information could have been critical in figuring out what to do and what might be the probem. That information could have saved me the past month of hell trying to get to the bottom of this.
In your case, and perhaps others, probagly best to esimate about 75-85% of total space for files needed to be backed up before compression. I am not sure about the disconnect fo estimated space vs actual space neeeded though. Disk sector size will vary from disk to disk as the default sector size is not the same for all drives (plus how they are formatted - NTFS, exfat, fat32, etc.) I'm not making excuses for Acronis esitmation, but it seems safe to say that estimation is only that - just an estimate. I would anticipate backups t be at least the size of the actual data and hope that, with compression, the output would be about 30% less than the actual total amount of disk space, but best to "estimate" 1 to 1 size to be on the safe side in real world data transfers.
In your case, and perhaps others, probagly best to esimate about 75-85% of total space for files needed to be backed up before compression. I am not sure about the disconnect fo estimated space vs actual space neeeded though. Disk sector size will vary from disk to disk as the default sector size is not the same for all drives (plus how they are formatted - NTFS, exfat, fat32, etc.) I'm not making excuses for Acronis esitmation, but it seems safe to say that estimation is only that - just an estimate. I would anticipate backups t be at least the size of the actual data and hope that, with compression, the output would be about 30% less than the actual total amount of disk space, but best to "estimate" 1 to 1 size to be on the safe side in real world data transfers.