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Tibx - Incremental Backup to Dropbox - Is it Magic?

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I'm very confused....

I use ATI 2020 and uploaded a 40GB main .tibx backup to Dropbox and that was absolutely fine but when I came to add an incremental backup ATI obviously incorporates it into the existing "main" backup so the backup "size" increased by 5GB (to 45GB in total) (basically as we all know there is no extra small incremental files like there used to be before tibx files)

So..... how come the upload to Dropbox was a LOT faster than 45GB? It seems to have uploaded just the 5GB incremental, but how can that be when the actual file on Dropbox looks (and is) exactly the same as the 45GB on my PC?

Do you think Dropbox has some built in magic so it allows for incremental uploads even though the overall file size is much larger....

I just can't understand it?? 

Any ideas anyone?

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Steve, welcome to these public User Forums.

I can only suggest that Dropbox is using a Delta approach to identify only changed data for large files similar to that which Acronis uses for backups to the Acronis Cloud.

The main disadvantage of using a Cloud service such as Dropbox for your Acronis .tibx backup image files is that your backup scheme will eventually create a new Full backup to start the next version chain, where you will again be uploading another very large (40GB + ) file.

I guess so - but it’s amazing that the incremental change is incorporated *into* the 1 file and appears as 1 file but the older file is still 1 file! 

I guess Dropbox can “see” inside it and just add the difference!!

I’ve really no idea how it can do that though 🤔

It is probably using some form of changed block tracking mechanism to recognise the new / changed / added data to the file without needing to upload the whole file over again.