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Backup within a booted Windows drive

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When backing up *within* a booted Windows drive:

Whats the difference between the regular and sector-by-sector method? Both Backup-files are same size, so the sector-by-sector backups seems to get compressed as well?

I dont get it. Isnt the sector-by-sector method only useful in case of a backup made from "outside", e.g. from Acronis Recovery CD?

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A normal backup stores only the sectors containing data on the disk. It can be non-compressed (your used space) or it can be compressed slightly (normal is about 65% of used space).

A sector by sector backup writes every sector on the disk to the backup files so the file size will be the same size as the disk; or if you are doing a partition backup, the file will be the same size as the partition size. Used space is ignored on a sector by sector backup as all sectors are included.

sorry, but the sector-by-sector backup is AS big in file size as is the normal backup. Both seem to get compressed. Disk is a 16GB SSD, 80% full, backup is 7 GB in size

The sector-by-sector backup is also compressed by default. The the final image filesize really depends on the drive and how well the data read can be compressed. It's possible to have both image types come out very close in size.