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dOES INCREMENTAL BACKUP REALLY WORK ?

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Hello

I have an external backup disk and I run Acronis true image with this simple backup plan:
Each 7th backup is full, all the rest are incremental. I run Windows 7 and two Hard drives: C which is small SSD which holds the OS and D which is larger.
Few days ago I replaced my D hard drive and wanted to use my backups to restore the data to the new Disk.

So I ran an incremental backup and then replaced the D hard disk. Then I tried to restore from the backup and was surprised that the latest incremental backup did not contain anything from my D drive, only C.
I had to search 3 versions before until I found a backup of D and I tried to restore from there. After that I noticed that some files and settings were missing - as if my disk went 3 days back in time. The last incremental backup did not have my current disk D state !

So I ended up performing a new full backup and restoring from it.
Can I trust acronis incremental backup ? Was I doing something the wrong way ? I expected that I can restore my system to the time my last incremental backup was taken...

Thanks

Guy Shilo

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Yes, the incremental is very dependable. The problem could be what or how you selected what was to be included within the backup. It sounds like d was not user marked for inclusion within the backup.

Look at link #2 and note the first few pictures which illustrates the use of the disk option backup.
Then be sure to select both disks to be included within the backup. Also note illustrate 11-Inc which can be found inside link 2 by clicking the green colored forwarding link.

cease to use the old tasks and create a new task with revised settings.

Hi GroverH,

Thanks for a very thorough "how to" on making a disk mode backup. I too never used that feature, I always make full backups of each partition separately. I have used my backups many times to restore a damaged OS and those backups always worked fine.

Question: Was I just lucky that they worked when I restored them? If I choose the disk mode as you suggest, would I still have the option to restore one partition from the 3 on the HD or must I then restore them all because I backed them up that way?

Why is an incremental backup allegedly faster & smaller to make than a full one? Doesn't TIH have to still look at every item to see what was changed and what wasn't?

Thank you very much! Of course I am using TIH 2014...

F Wolf

Thank you GroverH, I will try that.

And about incremental backups: An incremental backup only backs up the blocks/files that were changed since last backup.
In order to restore your disk/partition you will need a full backup that will be the base and then you use the incremental backups to apply the changes that were made to your system since that full backup.

Since incremental backups only take changes into account they are smaller and faster.
I guess that "looking for changes" occurs all the time. The Acronis service marks every changed block/file and this way it knows which blocks/files to take when backup is ran.
When restoring it just applies all the changes recorded in the incremental backup.
(Im not sure thats the exact explanation but I come from database world and thats how it works there, I guess its similar).

Guy

F Wolf.

If I choose the disk mode as you suggest, would I still have the option to restore one partition from the 3 on the HD or must I then restore them all because I backed them up that way?

The disk image backup will allow any type restore from single files to single or multiple partitions or the entire disk. It really has no downside except maybe if user is limited in space and needs to store the backup on different disks which might justify backup of single partitions rather than the entire disk.
The disk option backup is easier to restore for the average user.

Note: when restoring an incremental backup, the restore will first restore the full (backup base) and then each and every incremental sequentially up to and including the selected inc to be restored.