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Disk full error - help!

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Hi all,

I'm trying to do a data backup (True Image 2010) of about 500GB worth of files. I've set compression to "High" so am hoping the backup will only take about 350 - 400GB. There is about 480GB space on the destination drive that will host the backup file.

Yet oddly I am getting a 'disk is full' error only a quarter way through the backup process (think this was during the 'creating partition image' stage). At the point of the error the new backup .tib on the destination drive is only 99GB in size!

Any idea where the problem lies? AFAIK the source and destination drives behaviour shows good health, but I could be wrong.

Thanks!

 

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K D, difficult to give you an answer to why you are seeing the disk full message without more information, in particular, without the log file for the backup task to show what actual messages are being reported.

If you have any bad sectors on the source drive, this could force the backup to be run in sector-by-sector mode which will be a lot larger than if not using this mode?

I would recommend doing a CHKDSK /R on both the source and target drives involved to ensure that you have no filesystem or sector isues on those drives.

OK thanks Steve. So assuming the drives are both ok, a compressed backup doesn't need some sort of extra space to create the partition image? I.e. you create a 400GB backup, but the destination drive needs an extra 400GB to store the backup image, in addition to the actual backup archive!

Best

No, to the question about the space needed.  Your 400GB backup should only only need that amount of space, assuming that this takes into account any compression being used.  You should normally achieve around 20% compression depending on the type of files included in the backup, so would expect the backup file to be less than 400GB if that is just the original source data size.

OK perfect thanks. Yes if that is the case then the 'disk full' error is a bit suspicious, I shall have to assess the physical state of the source and destination drives.

K D wrote:

OK thanks Steve. So assuming the drives are both ok, a compressed backup doesn't need some sort of extra space to create the partition image? I.e. you create a 400GB backup, but the destination drive needs an extra 400GB to store the backup image, in addition to the actual backup archive!

Best

K D,

You cannot restore a backup to the same drive that the backup is located on - they will need to be on different disks,as attempting to restore from a backup and write over the disk at the same time, would not work. You can restore to the original OS drive, or better yet, an new or secondary drive (to preserve the original drive - just in case).

Best scenario = 3 disks (1 original OS drive, 1 drive to write the backup to and another 1 drive to restore to)

Acceptable scenario = 2 disks (1 original OS drive, 1 drive to write the backup to.  Restore the backup to the original drive)

Unacceptable scenario = 1 drive (not possible to create a backup to this drive and use the backup to restore to the drive - not for a full disk or parition backup anyway - file/folder sure, but why would you store your original files and the backup on the same drive anyway - if something happens to the drive, you lose the original content and the backup all at once).