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Incomplete sector by sector backup

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I purchased Acronis True Image Home 2012 (as well as the 'Plus Pack' addon) today and I'm having significant issues already.

My set up:
Windows 7 Ultimate SP-1 [x64]
Intel Core 2 CPU and 4GB RAM

I attempted to backup an entire volume (D:\ which contains only data, no system/OS etc) by choosing a 'sector by sector' backup (ignore unallocated space). The volume is around 4.5TB on 3x SATA HDs spanned/dynamic. Obviously also GPT.

Being backed up to an external DAS box. DAS newly re-formatted/empty.

Other non-default options: unticked all exclusions (not that this should be relevant/available for S-by-S) and added option to verify resulting TIB archive.

The backup job completed and (worryingly!) also 'verified'.

However, the resulting TIB was clearly too small (only around 0.6TB in size). When mounting the archive, its clear not everything has been backed up (though some has).

Any ideas? The first thing that springs to my mind is maybe your software is only seeing the first physical drive and backing up what (complete) files it can from there.

I am rerunning another backup job atm on a file-by-file basis as a test, and it seems to be working correctly at least (ETA seems sensible this time). However, this is NOT what I want, nor paid for.

Really not impressed so far....

I'm just glad I didn't blindly trust the software (including passing validation tests!). Being able to trust backup software is surely the very minimum that can be expected...

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Anon,

You should not select the sector by sector option. It just adds a lot of unused space to your backup. This option is there essentially for disk "forensics".

The default options of a disk and partition backup are just fine, except maybe for the default "version chain scheme", to my taste anyway...

Note that the validation just increases your level of confidence that the integrity of the backup file (chain) has been achieved/preserved. It doesn't verify at all the *fidelity* of the backup.

If you used the default "backup my system", there is a high chance it is not what you need.

What you need is a disk and partition backup that includes your entire disk: click to create a custom disk and partition backup, when the windows comes up, click on the blue "switch to mutliple partitions", then click on "swith to disk mode", then check the box for the disk where your system and apps are.

You can decide to include big compressed files like videos, music, photos and back them up with the synching function.

The other thing you need to do is to create your recovery CD and boot your computer on it, restore a couple of files from the backup above.

Thanks for the advice. Nice to see someone from the community sharing knowledge.

Attempting to backup using the above options for C:\ (OS and PF). Will retry with D:\ after.

Question (for any MVP's, or actual Acronis employee's):
Hypothetical question 1: I have a 2GB file, I back it up (file-by-file mode). I rename the file. I re-run backup job. It re-back's up the entire 2GB file, correct? Or say its an AVI with metadata, I change the metadata (a few Kb diff), it still backs up the entire 2GB file, correct?
Hypothetical question 2: I have a 2GB file, I back it up (disk mode). I rename the file. I re-run backup job. It DOESN'T re-back up the entire 2GB file, just the sectors that have changed (in this case the OS pointers/metadata OR sectors storing the metadata change), correct?

I just want to make sure I understand exactly what the app is doing/expected options.

Hello Anon,

Thank you for your questions. Let me help you with them.

Acronis software can create three types of backups - full, incremental and differential.

To answer your questions from an incremental backup perspective. The first backup will be full followed by incremental which will reflect the changes made to the file, both in file level backup or partition backup. If you rename the backup file our software will lose the reference for creating incremental backups and will create a new full backup instead. Please take a look at this KB article that shows the difference between types of backups.

If the metada in your video file comes as a separate file, our software will track only the changes made there, if the metada is within the video file container, the whole video filed will be backed up.

Please let me know if you have additional questions.

Thank you.

That doesn't really answer my questions at all...

I understand the difference between different back up 'plans' (full, incremental, version chain, whatever) I'm talking about how the software deals with backing up actual DATA, i.e. file by file versus sector by sector.

One of the key reasons for my purchase of this software was the *advertised* feature of (efficient) backing up of ONLY sector changes, opposed to (inefficient) backing up of entire files, especially when dealing with large files with potentially only a few Kb changes.

So, can you at least answer this simple question: does this software (with up-sold 'plus pack'!) actually backup sector by sector spanned/GPT disks as advertised, or not?

Removed due to double post. Your forum software doesn't even allow removal of posts by author....!

Anon,

Both incremental and differential's only image altered sectors in your case. When you view the inc/diff image either in File Explorer or by mounting the image the complete archive appears stitched back together.

Well, I've not been able to test what you've said because unfortunately I can't even get it to do a 'changes only' backup.

I have two backups: one of C: partition (OS) and one of D: partition (Data). Both have had one backup run against them, therefore both are full images. When I try to run a second backup run (either with 'incremental' OR 'version chain' set) it still tries to backup everything again. For example (on C: partition backup), original full backup "Local_disk_(C).tib" = 63,129,730,048 bytes. On second (supposedly differential version chain backup) "Local_disk_(C)(0).tib" = 69,229,825,024 bytes.

Ideas?

Anon,

If you add an existing archive or alter an existing task from a 'one off' image to either an incremental/differential or chain, TIH will often start the archive afresh, so an existing full will be ignored and a new one created alongside. You will also get what appears to be a full if the drive has been defragmented between images.