Unexpectedly large incremental backups
Hi,
I'm testing True Image 2013 (build 6514) to see if it meets my needs and is reliable. So far, reasonably good, but I'm having issues with incremental backups. I created a backup yesterday to do one full backup, followed by incremental backups. The full backup completed overnight and was about 90 GB, which was what I expected based on a similar previous full backup. Today I've run three follow-up incremental backups, and all are around 5 GB, even though I have changed few files (and added none that I know of). Two of these incrementals were done one immediately after the other. My understanding was that an incremental should save only the changes to files since the previous incremental, so I don't understand why they are so large. I found some related posts for older versions, but none for 2013.
I'm running 64-bit Win7 and backing up to a USB 2 drive. The source drive has not been defragmented since the first full backup. Normal compression and AES encryption. I do use Outlook, and my entire C:\Users\ directory is included. Full details from the tis file are attached (renamed .txt, user info changed).
Any suggestions? Is there a way to see what is saved to the incremental backup? Does this mean non-stop backup would have similar problems?
Thanks,
Steve
Thanks for the reply. I'm having trouble seeing what is backed up in the incrementals though. When I open the latest tib (double clicking in Windows Explorer), a new Explorer window opens with 4 items, one for each of the incremental backups I've done, all named IncYYYY-MM-DDhhmm (they're not normal files or folders; right clicking gives only two options, open or explore, both of which do the same thing). Opening any of those takes me to a directory structure where I can access all files that were backed up (i.e. the full backup). Obviously each of these 5GB files does not contain all of my backed up files, so it seems they are all linked in some way, even when not using TI. How can I see only what is stored in each incremental backup?
it seems they are all linked in some way, even when not using TI.
In fact, you are using ATI when you open/explore or mount a .tib image. ATI inserts itself into Windows shell to allow you to do that. If you tried to open or mount the images on a PC without ATI installed, it would not work.
You are correct that when viewing the contents, you are effectively seeing the contents of the latest state of backup, which would included not only the latest incremental but also earlier backups in the chain.
I don't think there's any way to discover precisely what is contained in a single incremental backup image.
Tuttle is right. There is no way to see what is in the incremental, but you can see what is backed up (in particular in the User folder) and assess which file could be changing.