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Backup file is too big for hardrive???

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I did a full backup of my laptop using Acronis a few months ago. Today I needed to do a restore on the laptop because it was crashing all the time. I booted using the Acronis boot disc but after it analyzed the disc it told me the backup file was to large for the hard drive. The hard drive is 111GB but the backup is 119GB. How is that possible? Its the same disk I backed up from. I had an older backup that was only 49GB so I used that for the moment but its missing a lot that the newer backup had on it.

Ay suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

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You can mount the larger backup can copy data files and directories to the target disk.

Where you trying to do a full diskmode restore?

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. How do I "mount" the backup copy? I was trying to do a full restore where you boot up from the Acronis boot disk and then restore from the full backup. Is that what you mean by a full diskmode restore?

Mount:
Mount is a term used by Acronis to enable you to create an additional virtual disk from your backup so you can copy files from the virtual onto a different hard drive. This link shows how.

sites/default/files/mvp/user285/guides/2012_copy_single_files_from_backup.pdf

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I was trying to do a full restore where you boot up from the Acronis boot disk and then restore from the full backup. Is that what you mean by a full diskmode

A disk mode backup is a backup which includes all partitions including any hidden or hon-lettered partitions.
A disk mode restore would be where you check mark the disk as to what is to be restore and if it has multiple partitions, all partitions will be restored.
So, if your backup was a backup of all partitions and you were restoring all partitions,then yes yours could be a disk mode backup or restore. The key is that the entire contents of the disk is involved. Many users are not aware of the existence of non-lettered partitions as they do not show in Windows Explorer. This is the reason for emphasis on the "disk mode" because it does include everything. The Windows Disk Management graphical view shows all partitions including any non-lettered partitions.

I have been trying to figure out how the backup is larger. The only thing I can think of is bad sectors caused multiple reads/writes but I have never seen where the backup exceeded the disk size. Have you considered getting a larger disk to receive your backup?

MICHAEL MELGAR wrote:

I'm sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. How do I "mount" the backup copy? I was trying to do a full restore where you boot up from the Acronis boot disk and then restore from the full backup. Is that what you mean by a full diskmode restore?

Yes a full restore of the disk.

If you right click on the backup file you should have a choice to explore or mount--doing either you can explore the backup as if it were a disk and you can copy from it.

Thanks everyone. Using the old backup resolved whatever conflicts were causing the machine to crash. Now that I know how to recover the rest of the files I should have everything I need. I'll just create a new backup when I'm done and try to do backups a little more frequently.