Sector by sector issues
Hi,
My source drive is a new 1tb Cruical SSD NTFS ( OS and files 50GB)
Destination either a 3tb wd passport or a 6tb sata 3 drive
Using Sector by sector WHOLE DRIVE (not checking unused space option) my backup was successfully created.
BUT the size is almost 1tb ( the same size as the source hard drive)
In the past, the destination image was close to the source contents not the Sources Hard Drive capacity
The source is a new install so no hidden gigantic files.
What am I doing wrong?
Tried Acronis 2017 bootable disk too, same problem
Thanks
Jeff


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Hi, thank you for the reponse.
I am using 2019's boot disk to do the image with. I have tested with 2017s too.
The reason I use sector by sector is because some software licenses are put onto certain sectors on a drive and without a SBS image the license will not be restored.
I can understand the file being larger with SBS, but the same size as the source HD ( 1TB) even though the contents are 50GB?
Jeff
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Jeff, there seems to be some differences in how Sector-by-Sector mode works when using the Acronis Rescue Media versus using the Windows ATI GUI application.
I booted from my ATI 2019 Rescue media and tested selecting the various options for the backup data with the results shown in the screen images below:
The ATIH 2019 Help text within the Rescue Media offers an explanation for why the 'Size to back up:' is so large when selecting the 'Back up sector-by-sector' option.
Note the sentence at the bottom of the top bullet point which states:
Please note that this mode increases processing time and usually results in a larger image file because it copies used and unused hard disk sectors.
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Thank you Steve.
I understand bigger size. However,my entire system is only 5% of the drive size but creates an image size which is the full size of the source drive ( 1tb)
jeff
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Jeff, my own results suggest the same as yours, that using sector-by-sector essentially makes a full disk backup of the same size as the drive itself.
I can only suggest opening a Support Ticket with Acronis and ask for their interpretation of why we are seeing these sizes? (I suspect it may relate to other users who complained that Sector-by-Sector did not capture a true sector image that could be used to recover deleted files etc).
See forum topic: Sector by sector compression of unused space - lossless or lossy? which has a lot of information on this subject.
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Hi Steve,
The anomoly is that I just tested on another similar spec'd PC and the created SBS image give or take a gigabyte or two was the same as the contents of the source NOT the size of the source's HD.
Jeff
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