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Incremental backups too large

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Hi everyone! I am using true image 2016 and i am trying to backup one hard disc that contains approx 1,5 tb of video files. Every 2-3 days i add new files, so i want Acronis every morning to create one incremental backup.

After the initial backup, the incrementals are approx 15-16gb, even if nothing is changed. This happens even if i perform backups one after another.

When i add lets say 50 gb of data, the backup size is still 15gb larger.

I tried defragment and create new backup but no luck. The destination disc is an external 4tb.

I have read the Acronis recommendations https://kb.acronis.com/content/2712 which did not help

I would appreciate any help

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Nikolaos, welcome to these user forums.

Given the type of files you are wanting to protect, video files, which are already highly compressed, then I personally would use a different approach to protecting them by using synchronisation software instead of using Acronis to make full and incremental backup images.

If you use defragmentation on your source drives when using Acronis incremental backups, then in essence you are making changes to a very large number of disk sectors which will in turn render the next incremental backup to be very much larger than if you had not used defragmentation.  This is because Acronis looks at the changes to sectors to determine what has changed and then backup those changes.  It is possible that an incremental backup after defragmentation could be larger than the original full backup image size.

Thank you for your answer! i will search anyway but could you reccomend me any good software? As for defragmentation, i did it as Acronis is suggesting if you have this kind of isuue (which did not helped anyway)

Nikolaos, one program that I use is SyncFolders which is free for personal use and can be downloaded from http://www.syncfolders.elementfx.com/ - there are many other similar programs available that other users may recommend.

It is possible to check what files are changed/added to the incremental backup? I have a feeling that daily incremental backups are too big - with normal use,  web browsing etc.

My excluded directories:

:    Normal Exclude:    Files matching mask Match criterion:    hiberfil.sys, pagefile.sys, $Recycle.Bin, swapfile.sys, System Volume Information, *.tib, *.tib.metadata, *.~, *.tmp, C:\Users\Mihalko\AppData\Local\Temp, E:\Temp\Temporary Internet Files, C:\Users\Mihalko\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache, C:\Users\Mihalko\AppData\Local\Opera Software, C:\Users\Mihalko\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles, C:\Windows\CSC, C:\Users\Mihalko\Dropbox\  

 

Even when I just start and shutdown/restart (I have automatic backup at shutdown/reboot) the size of the backup is 300-500MB.

Papagaj wrote:
Even when I just start and shutdown/restart (I have automatic backup at shutdown/reboot) the size of the backup is 300-500MB.

It depends to a certain extent on what type of backup you are doing here - if it is a Disks & Partition backup, then changes are detected at a sector level, and given the high volume of changes that Windows makes even just in starting and shutting down immediately, then the size you are seeing are probably reasonable.

If you are doing a Files & Folders backup, then I would expect the incremental backups to be significantly smaller for doing the same start / shutdown action, as it is unlikely that there will be any changes to the source data unless you are including System Folders such as AppData etc.