Help determining why Image size is 3 times larger than previously
Acronis True Imiage Home 2009, build 9809. Vista Ultimate SP2, 32bit. Intel processor with 4 GB Ram. Build 9809 installed on 2/25/2010.
I have started having a problem with an increase in the size of my Acronis archives. Until just recently my archive sizes were running around 29 to 30 GB (why does Acronis refer to them as MB, within the program?). Now all my archives are running around 88 to 90 GB. All my backups are Full Backups. Here is an example of what I am talking about.
February 25, 2010, Archive size 29.2 GB. I don’t remember if that was before or after installation of build 9809. My guess is it was before.
February 26, 2010, Archive size 29.1 GB
February 27, 2010, Archive size 29.3 GB
February 28, 2010, Archive size 88.0 GB
March 1, 2010, Archive size 87.6 GB
March 2, 2010, Archive size 76.7 GB, this was not completed because my Drive F:\ did not have enough space left to complete the task. I deleted one of the LARGE archives and then did a manual Full Backup, and it was 87.7 GB
March 3, 2010, Archive size 89.816 GB
March 4, 2010, Archive size 90.164 GB
My Scheduled task is to create 7 Full Backups and when the eighth Full Backup is created it will delete the oldest archive. However, now that the Full Backups are running around 88 to 90 GB the scheduled task is unable to perform as scheduled because I keep having to delete the archives so that I don’t have more than three on the drive. If there are more than three the task fails because the Drive F:\ runs out of space. I use to have as many as 10 or 11 archives on it, without a problem.
When I installed build 9809 I first uninstalled build 9796 using the Add/Remove feature in Windows and then used the Acronis Cleanup Utility to finish deleting the parts that Add/Remove didn’t remove. After build 9809 was installed I created a Rescue Boot CD. All of the Full Backups will validate using this CD. I don’t see any problems with them. I use a Rack and Tray system for my HDDs that contain the C:\ and D:\ drives. I loaded the Manual Full Backup that was created on March 2, 2010 on to the spare HDD and checked it out and everything seemed O.K.
I am at a loss to understand why the Archive images have basically tripled in size, which also takes three times longer to Validate. I don’t know of anything I have changed within the Acronis program. If anyone has had this problem before I would appreciate your input to help me solve this problem.
Attached is a view of Drive F:\ as of today, 3/4/2010. Notice that there is not enough space left for another Archive of 90 GBs, so one of the older archives will have to be deleted, for the Full Backup to be created tomorrow morning.
You might also search the drive for any TIB files. It's possible that an image may have been saved to it and is now being included in your backups. (TIB files are normally excluded, but that option may be disabled.)
03/07/2010
GroverH and MudCrab, thanks for your response. GroverH, in regards to C:\, the only drive that I have Sysem restore on, there has been very little difference between the size used now and in the past. I have had auto defrag turned off ever since I started using ATI Home. I had already checked all of the drives shown in the attachment in my original query, because I thought there might be a problem there, but they all checked out O.K.
MudCrab, you probably may have solved this. When I do a Full Backup I am backing Disk 1 which has two partitions C:\ which has my operating system and most applications on it, and D:\ where most of my data is stored. When I open D:\ it usually shows the folder My Documents, where most of my data is stored. I'm not sure of the exact day, but very recently I noticed that there was one of my Acronis Image Archive files shown on D:\ , right under the folder MY Documents, so I deleted it, knowing it was not supposed to be there.
I compared the drive D:\ shown in the attachment above to what it looks like today. The result is that the size of D:\ in the attachment is 59GB larger than the same drive today.
Yesterday, 3/6/2010, my scheduled Full Backup failed because there was not enough space on my Drive F:\ ( I forgot to delete one of the x-large backups to free up some space). The partial Full Backup was 80.375 G, it would probably have been around 90GB if there had been sufficient space. After freeing up some space I did a manual Full Backup and it showed to be only 30.331GB in size. I validated it in Windows and it took only 8 minutes.
Today, 3/7/2010, the scheduled Full Backup was complete and it was only 30.266GB. For the time being,
I am hoping that what I addressed above was the problem. Also, I am back to validating these archives, in Windows and using the Rescue Boot CD, in about 8 minutes.
Nice to see a problem solved. MuidCrab is good at doing that.
What may have happened is that you edited one of your Acronis scheduled tasks and the location got switched to a different folder without you knowing it. You can simulate editing your task to what is set there without saving any changes.
Also consider using Chain2Gen and it can handle the space issues for you--with your guidance.