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Why is my second backup the same size, or close, as the second?

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I just downloaded the 2021 version from an Acronis email offer, but have not installed it yet. It reminded me that I have a question regarding my 2020 version.

I recall something being written by Acronis that in 2020, the default backup routine would be something other than incremental, but I paid no attention, because I am a very, very basic user. I back up three drives, with three separate backups, each set as an incremental one with only 2 or three backups in a chain before starting again with a full backup.

I am seeing my backup drive fill up, however, and see the first tib file as the full, but tib001 at exactly the same size or, in one case, slightly less. The data on these drives are not changing much, so I don't understand what is going on.

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If the backup task of disks & partitions was created using ATI 2020 then it will use the new *.tibx architecture. Under this architecture the full and associated incremental backups are contained in the one *.tibx file. This would explain why the files are approximately the same size. Just looked at one of my disk & partitions backups and the files are listed below. The first file is small, and it contains critical data (it should never be deleted):

Name Size Modified
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020.tibx 12 KB 15/06/2020 13:32 PM
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0032.tibx 141 GB 15/10/2020 11:56
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0033.tibx 136 GB 22/10/2020 11:57
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0034.tibx 130 GB 29/10/2020 11:57
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0035.tibx 131 GB 5/11/2020 11:58
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0036.tibx 140 GB 12/11/2020 12:07
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0037.tibx 137 GB 19/11/2020 12:02
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0038.tibx 147 GB Yesterday 15:01 PM
VIDEOEDITING Regular 2020-0039.tibx 70.3 GB Today 12:15 PM

Thank you for the explanation.

My backup drive is just 1GB, so I need to create settings that allow me to have just the little original file and 2 backups of each drive. Can you suggest what these would be? I clearly made errors. Many thanks!

Philip, I suspect that your backup drive is 1TB not only 1GB...!

What are the sizes of your backups for your 3 different drives?

What automatic cleanup settings do you have set for the backup tasks for these drives?

Please understand that automatic cleanup is only performed after a new Full backup chain has been started, so you need to have sufficient space on your backup drive to store a full backup plus incrementals plus a further full backup for each drive.

For automatic cleanup, I would recommend using the 'Store no more than X recent version chains' option, as this is the simplest and easiest to understand.  X should be set to allow for 1 less backup than the maximum capacity of your backup drive.

Example:

X = 2 would require space to store 2 backup chains (2 x Full plus 2 x all Incrementals) plus 1 further Full backup to allow for automatic cleanup to work.

Yes, of course; 1 TB. I have adjusted the settings to 3 incrementals before full, and storing 1 recent version chain. We'll see how that goes and how I may need to adjust.

Thanks much.