size of a full backup question
my entire PC is 947.4GB , when I created my first _full_ backup, the size was 549GB
So I guess Acronis shrinks the backup somehow right?
Is there a way to understand the size of a full backup before completing it?
Attachment | Size |
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screenshot_-_19_05_2016__11_56_58.png | 14.51 KB |


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My drive to be backed up is 392 GB. The normal back up has in the past been around 252 GB. I have not upgraded from original 2016 and yet this time the backup was reduced to 173 GB. I did a restore and then I no longer had 392 GB but it was reduced to217 GB. Does this mean that I have lost some data? this is on an HP desktop using 2016 but not Universal.
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Mike,
I have no way of knowing the anser to your question. Does all your data appear to be there or is some of it missing? If some of it is missing what is missing exactly? When you create a backup are you doing so as Entire PC, or as a Disk and Partition backup? If as a Disk and Partition backup and your choice was the disk itself did you include all partitions on the disk?
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I only have one program missing as far as I can tell. I was only backing up the C: drive and all its partitions. I wonder if it could be in the exclusions. I notice that it has a whole list of exclusions, however I don't think it had any exclusions when I backed up before, though I can not be sure. Should the back up include exclusions or should it blank and would that account for the smaller backup?
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Mike, I think to an extent, yes. Regardking the default exclusions, I would think you may want to remove anything to do with browsers (Chrome, etc). Is it necessary to backup up all of those, no. However, if the default exclusions are enabled for those, you won't have your browser favorites or settings either. So, whatever is living in those directories is being filered out unless you remove those exclusions and that wilil account for some of the size difference since they are filtered out by default (hopefully this changes in 2017 though).
Also, your actual hard drive space as you see it in Windows File Explorer is being used up by your pagefile, hibernation file and if using Win10, an additional swapfile.sys. These are all hidden files by default and nothing that needs to be backed up, yet eats up space on your C: drive. A lot of the size of these will be based on your physcial memory so, if you have a lot (16Gb or more), these files can be 1.5 - 2 x as large with default Windows settings. By default, Acronis excludes those, which is a good thing so that can account for some of the size difference too.
Me, personally, I remove all of the default exclusions, except for the ones in the attachment. As such, you should end up with a backup size similar to what you'd find if you took an offline backup with your bootable recovery media, outside of Windows, if the computer was completely shutdown (not a fastboot shutdown where the hiberfile.sys would still be active).
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360672-129565.jpg | 20.3 KB |
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Thank you so much for the information. I will use the exclusions from your jpg. Would you know how well Acronis Universal works if I wanted to move my system to a new computer?
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We use it on a regular basis at work and it does the job nicely. Basically, it just resets the drivers to Windows out of the box to make the system bootable on new hardware.
There are other things to be careful of too though. The motherboard/bios of the new sysetm must support the OS install type (for instance, if the new system was Legacy/MBR, but the new one only supports UEFI/GPT, you're probably out of luck). If the bios is compatible, getting it configured to recognize the transfered OS is somethign the user has to play around with.. .things like enabling or disabling legacy mode, disabling secure boot, setting the boot order, etc. You also should have the SATA mode set the same in both system for the initial boot (SATA, RAID, or AHCI). Finally, if the original image was taken with an OEM Windows license (say a Dell) it may boot, but may not license on the new hardware (if say it didn't come with the same type of license or you have custom build with no OS). You'd have to call Microsoft and convince them to give you a new activation code in such a case... but if you have a boxed license then reactivating it on new hardware should be fairly easy. If both systems are Windows 10 already, no worries there either then since Windows 10 licensing is based solely on the hardware and if it's already been registered on both systems, you can swap images to your heart's content.
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Great information. Again thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.
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You're welcome. Glad to help out!
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