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Help with Understanding Acronis True Image 2020 Backup Schemes

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I have Acronis True Image for backing up my PC.
Here is my question.
 

  • I have a C drive that is 1.81TB with 1.55TB free so that's about 260 GB of data.
  • Originally it was 350 GB. I made an Acronis backup as incremental, and ended up with a file 880GB. This looks like it backed up the entire drive empty space included.
  • So I moved about 80 GB of games to another drive, and this time made it a stand alone backup and ended up with a file 884GB, slightly larger! Would stand alone in itself result in more data stored than an incremental backup?

What am I not getting? What setting have I overlooked? It seems to me that Acronis is backup up the entire drive, including empty parts. How do I tell it just to back up the data? I figure it if is compressing the backups, I should end up with a file less than 260GB.
Thanks!

-Dave P

 

Update: Looking at the breakdown of this 884GB Acronis save file in the ATI Application when selecting this backup,  it says Data to recover: 187.8GB- 2.7GB Pictures, 69MB Videos, 245 MB Audio, 559MB Document, 57GB System, 126GB other. Why such a discrepancy?

Also, when. setup a new backup using the parameters I used before, it tells me Estimate backup size: 271 GB, note not 800+GB?

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David, welcome to these public User Forums.

Sorry but need to ask questions rather than give answers at this point.

What type of backup are you doing here?
Is this 'Entire PC' or 'Disks & Partitions'?
If using 'Entire PC' - how many disk drives are installed in this system?

What options have you selected for your backup task?
In particular, what have you selected on the Options > Advanced > Image creation mode settings?
Have you selected to use either of the options shown for this option?
(Sector-by-sector / Back up unallocated space)
Using these options will create a significantly larger backup image than when not using them!

The other possibility here is that you have a disk or file system error present on your source drive such as bad sectors, which will cause Acronis to switch to using sector-by-sector mode of backup.

Please download the MVP Log Viewer tool (link in my signature below) and use this to review the log file for your backup operation. This should provide more information on what is happening with your backup task.

Just got done chatting with Acronis Tech Support. They seem to think I have an AcronisTI2020  "script" issue and that the entire C drive is being backed up, not just the data, even through it indicates during the backup setup that data should only be about 280GB, not 800+. Their suggestion is for a clean install of the program, which I've done as follows:

Their solution is to: 

1. Please perform clean installation of ATi2020:

Uninstall using Microsoft Fixit Tool . Here is the link :

http://support.microsoft.com/mats/Program_Install_and_Uninstall

2. Install using the below given download link:

https://dl.acronis.com/s/AcronisTrueImage2020_22510.exe

3.  Create a new partition level backup and select only C drive . Select the check box beside C drive while creating the partition backup.

Under advanced, make sure sector by sector is not checked.

I'll report back and advise if this has corrected the problem.

Steve Smith, 

I've used ATI for decades, was using ATI2017 without issue, and just upgraded to 2020 when the issue popped up. I've been doing incremental backups of my C drive, not the entire PC, and I turn off scheduled updates. In advanced, sector by sector is turned off. I just posted an update message, but don't yet see it in this thread. Acronis Tech support suggested a script issue and suggested a clean install of ATI2020, which I've done, and am now running a backup to see if the problem has been corrected or still exists.

That's a good tip about bad sectors, which will cause ATI2020 to revert to sector by sector. I run System Mechanic on my computer regularly, so after this backup, if the problem persists, I'll run a diagnostic specifically on the drive.

What system utilities do you use for PC maintenance?

Thanks!

 

PS- The backup is running and for a 280GB backup, it seems to be taking a long time to calculate data size, 10 minutes so far, but I don't really know how long it should be for a 280GB vs a 840GB data backup.

Dave, any new backup will take time to complete and with ATI 2020, this can sit for some time on the calculate status before making much quicker progress.

The backup logs should indicate if any bad sectors were encountered - the log viewer tool should give a quick indication if this is so, but the detailed diaganostic information has been moved from the ti_demon logs to be in the backup_worker logs for .tibx backups in 2020 - these are not shown in the log viewer as weren't used when the tool was created a few years back.

You can look at the backup_worker logs at C:\ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome\Logs\backup_worker.

I don't really use much in the way of PC maintenance tools other than occasionally running CCleaner and watching for any indications of other errors.  Windows 10 runs its own regular maintenance tools.

Bad sectors are really just applicable to older spinning HDD drives, not for SSD drives but other file system issues can be present on all drive types.

Post 2 was the solution that worked for me.

I started a backup, left the house for the YMCA (Houston) of which the parking lot was full, a good sign people are not becoming hermits, at least those who make exercise a priority. ;) I got back and have a successful C: drive backup of 232GB, all is well.

Steve, thanks for your attention. Are there settings in this program to compress the backup? I've not noticed that setting.

Dave, the settings regarding compression are on the Options > Advanced > Performance page but can only be changed when a new backup task is configured before it has been run for the first time.  The setting is locked after any backup file has been created by the task as are some other of the settings such as encryption.