TIH 2011 media, slow backup, incremental too large

One more piece of information: If I select all of the partitions except for the C-drive, then a full backup takes less than 3 minutes as expected. (The other partitions have about 12GB of used space.) So it looks like somehow the C-drive contents are confusing TIH 2011.

(p.s. I have been using True Image Home for about 4 years. This is the first time that I have seen a problem like this.)

When an incremental backup is created, what TI is including is the changes in disk sector location. So, if you move a file or if the Windows 7 auto defrag is still set as active or if you store your backups inside the system disk, all of the preceding will be included in the incremental.

Did you turn off auto defrag? TI will include all the files relocated. Defrag can be set to only run prior to a ful backup.

Is the changes to your Windows System restore being included in the incremental backup?

When an incremental backup is created, what TI is including is the changes in disk sector location.

I agree that is what SHOULD be happening. But as I said, when I performed back to back incremental backups without even leaving the TIH environment, the second incremental file was large (~33GB) and slightly larger than the first incremental backup made just before. So the only way any sectors could have been changed is if TIH changed them during the first incremental backup.

I'm just trying places to look.
Check the path to your backup *.tib file.
Then edit your task and double check very carefully to make sure the backup path is not being included in the backup.

The backup path is definitely not being included in the backup. I am selecting the entire internal disk for backup, and the backup path is on a second physical eSATA attached drive. Again, I am running from the TIH 2011 bootable environment, not from within Windows.

Stephen,

I ran the 2010 version Rescue CD this afternoon and had no problems creating a small incremental backup file. In fact, I ran it 3 times, the first inc was 1Gig, the second and third were approximately 300 MB. The original full several days ago was 25G.

Is there any chance the backup task is set for differentials?

Maybe simulate doing a restore and look at these files as the column headings will identify the type of backup being done.

I have to admit, I am not sure of the cause.

Grover

I have successfully run a backup from the rescue CD hundreds of times as well, but it is not working correctly on this laptop for that one partition. When simulating a restore, the column heading shows the type as Incremental. There seems to be something about that one partition that is seriously confusing TIH, I just cannot figure out what or what to do about it. :-(

Is the 300MB partition the only partition not to have a drive letter assigned?

If yes, you might consider adding a drive letter and see if that solves your issue. In fact, with the information in this thread, you might want to consider opening an official support ticket.

Grover, thank you for trying to help. Assigning a drive letter did not make a difference. I am out of ideas at this point. I would open support ticket, but Acronis says my support ended 12/30/2010. :-( I would be glad to work with them if they want to figure out what the bug is, but I am not willing to pay for a support ticket at this point. If not, it may be time to check out the competition.

Steve

Stephen,

In post #4, would you be so kind as to edit your posting and remove my email address from the posting. This address was not put there by you but is a glitch by the forum software and no email addresses are supposed to appear.

Thank you.

Let me think more about your backup problem.

For what it is worth, I booted a Paragon Software Backup and Restore 2011 rescue CD and backed up this laptop. The backup went fine (and fast). It had no problems with the partition that is giving Acronis TIH 2011 a problem.

Thanks for the edit!

One thing that would cause the incrementals all to be large is if there is a bunch of bad clusters on the disk and TI is capturing all the changes.

Try checking the disk for errors
CHKDSK C: /R

After completion, check the events section for the results.

How did Paragon do with the incrementals?

Chkdsk did not detect any errors or any bad clusters. Paragon has differential (which will be the same as incremental the first time), and it was as expected (small).

Stephen,
This thread is getting so long, I'm not sure what has been covered. As this issue relates to using the CD, have you tried downloading the alternate "Bootable media" CD from your registration page. After burning the download as an image, this alternate is the same as the installed version except for different drivers. This make work differently.

Likewise, if you were to create an alternate boot CD using the WinPE info provided in the Plus install, this would use Windows drivers instead of Linux. Item 8-I inside my signature index below.

As another data point, I just tried a full backup specifying a sector level backup, followed by an incremental sector level backup. The result was that the sector full backup took LESS time than the non-sector backup, although it was slightly larger (48GB TIB file versus 44GB TIB file). The incremental sector backup produced a tiny (15MB) TIB file as it should have. So again, it looks like a bug in Acronis TIH in normal mode.

I looked on my product registration page for my 7 registered products, but I did not find the alternate "Bootable media" CD image. Can you be more specific on where to find it?

I suspect this is not a driver problem though since:
1) When I select the 3 other partitions to backup, the backup is quick and an incremental backup of those 3 is tiny.
2) When I backup on my other laptop which has identical hardware and the same version operating system and partition layout, backup is quick and incremental backups are quick and tiny.

This the view using 2010 and the 2011 is the same. This is for the English version.
http://forum.acronis.com/sites/default/files/forum/2009/11/5933/TI_2010…

You seem to be confirming a hardware conflict or lack of drivers. Maybe support will look in.

I just built a BartPE TIH2011 Plus Pack CD and tried it. It worked great! A full backup took 14 minutes and the TIB file was 38GB (versus using the Acronis media which took >1 hour and created a 44GB TIB file). A back-to-back incremental backup took less than 30 seconds and created a TIB file of 5MB (versus using the Acronis media which took >45 minutes and created a 33GB TIB file).

By the way, the hardware here is an HP ProBook 4520s with an Intel Core i3 processor and 3GB of RAM. This is a very common and popular laptop.

Update: The alternate Bootable Media also works fine. So it looks like only the media built via the "Bootable Rescue Media Builder" has a problem.

Great!

It sounds like you solved your own issue.

Hello all,

Thank you for posting and thank you for all your help Grover.

Stephen, let me provide you with additional assistance please.

I am glad that you were able to workaround this problem. The symptoms you indicate could mean that the bootable media creator components on your computer somehow became corrupted. As a solution we recommend to launch the installation file and select to repair the current ATIH2011 installation.

If you need additional help please let me know.

Thank you.

I performed a repair install of ATIH2011 and the Plus Pack, rebuilt the bootable media, and then tested it. You were right! It worked fine! Thank you! My confidence in the product has been restored.