Backup: Increasing backup size for no reason.
Running daily backup with compression of Win-7 Pro 64 system disc. The backup file size is increasing by 100-200MB per day for no particular reason. Windows Update is switched off and I can find no large files that would explain this. I assume its some logging or the like, but how can I find it? I do have Avira and ZoneAlarm running, both have logging switched off. I run CCleaner regularly too.
Its an SSD. Something is writing files daily, but it doesn't show up as a LARGE file so I'm guessing is smaller archived log files. I just can't find them. 2 GB in the last week. None of the usual drive cleaning tools have any effect.
What kind of backup is being done? Is this a fill disc backup each time? Differential? Incremental?
Full disc backups.
rdgrimes wrote:Full disc backups.
Is that only making Full disk backups every time, or are you making Incremental or Differential backups in between making full ones?
Easiest way to see what's changed is to mount the backup as volumes (assign a drive letter to them by right-clicking the .tib and navigating to Acronis True Image >> Mount). Once you've given them a letter, then run multiple instance of something like treesize free or mindems foldersize free and look for some type of noticeable change.
There are lots of different log files throughout the Windows file system and user appdata. And speaking of appdata, logs and databases that probably change frequently too (things like Chrome/Firefox profiles, itunes, etc., Outlook .pst, virus logging and definition updates, etc.). 100-200MB a day of changes is probably pretty normal even under minimal usage/changes.
Yeah, I'm used to seeing a few hundred MB change up or down from day to day, but this is way more than that. 2GB in a week, maybe 10GB in the past month. Hadn't thought of mounting a couple of the images and will try that.
Another month and another 10GB increase in the backup size. I tried a couple of those programs to look for changes in the images, but I can't make sense of them, nor see any way to tell what is getting the most writes by size. Only thing I know for sure is that this is not due to a single file increasing in size, something is collecting smaller files.
Let me ask a few questions...
1. What is the size of the SSD (total and used)?
2. You say you are doing full backups daily of an SSD drive. Are you doing any incrementals or differentials, or is it a complete full backup every time?
3. Are you backing up everything, or do you have exclusions set up?
4. Are you seeing any increments in the usage on the SSD drive itself or is it all seen on the .tib only?
5. Does it ever go down or does it get larger every single time you backup?
6. Have you looked into how much writing is going on on the SSD. I use Crystal Diskinfo to monitor my SSD writes.
Did you try mounting some backups and looking at the expanded folder sizes of them? If 10GB has gone by in a month, if you have an older backup and a new one that is much bigger, it should still be possible to find where these changes are coming from.
There are still lots of places large files could be changing and would be hard to know without some type of comparison to verify - especially if default exclusions are not being used or have been modified where it could be backing up other normally excluded system files that are only created after booting up or after a user has been logged in.
Other application updates, %temp% files, virus signature updates, logs, etc, could still make it grow. I backup my system with 4 different products (including Acronis as the main one). They are all relatively the same size each day and not uncommon for them to keep growing.