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backup file sise

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Goodevening,

My back up file on a separate HD, Created bij Acronis true image 2015, is a lot bigger as all data on my LapTop HD. The laptop uses 220 GB and the backup file on my HD is 630 GB.

No idea what the reson fro this is.

Do you have a suggestion waht goes wrong. The first 6 files are full back up and all other 30 are Incremental.

 

Thx for your response 

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Wim, can you provide some screen shots showing the backup files on your separate HD drive?

Is it just one backup file that is 630GB in size or is that the sum total of a group of backup files?

There are several reasons why the size of backup files can become very large.

One is if you use the sector by sector backup method, in which case, the size will be equal to the size of the laptop HD (less 20 - 30% compression).

Second is if you do disk defragmentation which will change the contents of lots of sectors on the drive and will result in significant changes being found by ATIH for incremental files which could approach the size of a normal full backup image.

Goodmoring Steve

Thx for your response,

I made the screenshots an have attached the to this mail.

When I set up again the backup pocess using Acronis, after a HD replacement I just follwed the instructions/ proces of Acronis. So to be honest I have no idea what I am using. I programmed only back up of 2 files, documents and picture (afbeeldingen in Ducth).

The Docuements file on my Laptop  has a sise of 10,6 GB and Pictures 74,3 GB. Total 84,9 totaly out of line with the Back up file.

 

I hope I have given some more information to you to come with a good advice.

 

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Hello Wim,

Thank you for the screen shots, these are able to tell me more about the size of your backups on your Hitachi H: backup drive.

You currently have 5 backup version chains shown in the images, where each version chain comprises of 1 Full backup archive and 6 Incremental backup archive files.

MijnBack-up_full_b1_s1_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b1_s2_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b1_s3_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b1_s4_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b1_s5_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b1_s6_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b1_s7_v1

The above is just 1 backup version chain of just over 122GB size.

You then have another 4 version chains of a similar size with the names: b2, b3, b4, b5

MijnBack-up_full_b2_s1_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b2_s2_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b2_s3_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b2_s4_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b2_s5_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b2_s6_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b2_s7_v1   size 123GB

MijnBack-up_full_b3_s1_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b3_s2_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b3_s3_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b3_s4_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b3_s5_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b3_s6_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b3_s7_v1   size 124GB

MijnBack-up_full_b4_s1_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b4_s2_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b4_s3_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b4_s4_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b4_s5_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b4_s6_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b4_s7_v1  size 160GB

MijnBack-up_full_b5_s1_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b5_s2_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b5_s3_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b5_s4_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b5_s5_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b5_s6_v1
MijnBack-up_inc_b5_s7_v1  size 134GB

I suspect that you have not configured any automatic cleanup rules for your backup task.

Please see the ATIH 2016 User Guide: Deleting backups and backup versions 

To configure automatic cleanup rules for a backup:

  1. Go to the Backup section.
  2. Perform one of the following:
    • For a new backup, click Add backup, choose Create new backup, select backup source and destination, and then click Options.
    • For an existing backup, select the backup from the backup list, click Operations, choose Edit settings, and then click Options.
  3. On the Backup scheme tab, select Custom scheme, select a backup method, and then click Turn on automatic cleanup.
  4. Configure cleanup rules for the backup. Refer to Custom schemes for details.

Please follow the link above for Custom schemes for information on the cleanup options. 

I have made two attempts today to create a complete pc backup. Initially, I tried an incremental backup related to a full backup on my external HDD. There was only one full backup on the external HDD (and no incremental backups), and the backup file size was 328 GB. The External HDD had a total of 2 TB of space with ca. 1.6 TB free. My local disk that I am trying to back up is only 1 TB large, of which only about 450 GB are data, and the rest is empty. No other data sources are attached to my PC. After several hours, the incremental backup indicated that it had exceeded the size of my external HDD (i.e., the backup file would be over 1.7 TB!) and still had hours to go. That should not be possible. I canceled the incremental backup and started a full backup using the same backup configuration. Now, after several hours (ca. 5), the software is showing that it has processed 760 GB of data and still has 10 hours to go. This cannot be possible. The rate of data processing has crawled to a snail's pace these past few hours. Any idea what's going on? Again, my external HDD only had one backup file in the backup subdirectory and plenty of space for 450 GB of data. Even if the sectors are being backed up, I cannot imagine that the file size would be so large or the backup take so long. True Image 2015.

Greg, welcome to these user forums.

More information and screen shots would help us to understand what is happening, for example, what are you selecting for your Source selection, i.e. is this 'Entire PC' or are you selecting specific Disks & Partitions for the source data.  This can make a difference, as Entire PC can also include other disks that are connected to your PC at the time the backup is run.

Next, are you selecting to do a Sector-by-Sector type backup - this will require the destination drive to be able to hold effectively the same size as the total size of all the Source disks being included, as this type of backup also includes free space.  Note: ATIH can default to doing sector-by-sector mode if there are file system errors, bad sectors etc.  If there is a chance of this type of issue, then you should use CHKDSK /R on all the drives involved.

Please download a copy of the Log File Viewer app from the link in my signature and check the messages that are shown in the logs for the tasks that you have cancelled due to the size.  Post a copy of the log files to the forum so we can help you understand the content.

Thank you Steve. The backup appears to have been finished, and validation has started. Based on the size of the file, I am assuming that sector-by-sector was performed, as it corresponds roughly to the local disk. I'm just surprised that it took about ten hours to run for 450 GB data and 450 GB empty disk space. I ran CHKDSK, and there are no bad sectors.

Greg, check that you don't have sector by sector checked in the task advanced configuration page.

Also, bear in mind that CHKDSK will only check those partitions that are assigned a drive letter, but you are very likely to be including a hidden System Reserved or EFI partition depending on which version of Windows you have and the BIOS type.  

Don't backup sector-by-sector. It is unnecessary. All it does it increase the time used for the backup and significantly increase the backup size, with no benefit (except in specific cases). "Sector-by-sector" includes sectors that are not in use, that have no data on them. You'd backup empty space for no benefit.

From an administrative command prompt, run chkdsk /r on each partition of the internal drive, and on the external HD. If there are hidden partitions, assign letters to them so you can chkdsk.
Also run a drive checking utility from the drive manufacturer, as those sometimes catch errors missed by chkdsk.