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Incremental backups to large?

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My first full backup of a secondary hard drive was about 90gb. The incremental backup of the same drive (without very much activity on the drive) was another 78Gb. I thought it would be much smaller since very little had changed since the original backup.?

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Hello Glen,

Thank you for using Acronis Corporate Products

Could you please provide us with the exact title of your product?

There can be several reasons of the encountered issue:

- Defragmentation - An incremental or differential backup created after the disk is defragmented will be considerably larger than usual. This is because the defragmentation program changes file locations on the disk, and backups reflect these changes.

- Creating an incremental or differential backup after recovering the full one – An incremental or differential backup created after the full one was restored will be considerably larger than usual. This is because restoring a backup archive changes file locations on the disk, and backups reflect these changes.

In Windows Vista disk defragmentation is enabled by default. For information how to reschedule or disable it, see Microsoft Windows help page: Start Disk Defragmenter.

- Using fast incremental backup method to back up partitions that have Microsoft Outlook .pst file – This issue is only with fast incremental backup. It does not occur when creating a regular incremental backup.

- Acronis True Image Home 2009 issue – The algorithm of incremental backup archive creation is different from the regular one of Acronis True Image Echo and is similar to its fast incremental backup method. Hence, incremental backup archives in Acronis True Image Home 2009 can be considerably large.

Please do the following to avoid the issue:

1) After defragmenting a disk, create a new full backup of it.

2) After restoring, create a new full backup of what you restored.

3) In Acronis True Image Echo, do not use fast incremental backup method to back up partitions that have Microsoft Outlook .pst file.

For Acronis True Image Home 2009 there is, unfortunately, no solution at the moment.

Thank you.

I am having a similar problem. I am successfully creating a full backup every 7 days and I am creating daily a Differential backup.

The problem I am having is that I would like these backups to automatically erase previous backups that are 7 days old. I want my Monday backup to erase & replace the previous Monday backup, Tuesday erase Tuesday etc.

I had Acronis installed on my previous computer and that is exactly what it did. On my new computer, Acronis makes the backups correctly but does not delete the old backups. As a result my backup disk overflows.

I thought I had copied the settings from my old machine but obviously there is a problem. Can you advise me how to automatically erase week old backups?

Hello Robert,

Thank you for using Acronis True Image

According to our database, you are using Acronis True Image 10.0 Home.

I may recommend you to use the Backup Location feature. You can manage backup rules (you may specify location size quota, maximum number of backups, storage period limits). Also you will be eligible for backup policy.

Acronis True Image Home offers three types of backup policies:

1) create full backups only;
2) create full backups with specified number of incremental backups;
3) create full backups with specified number of differential backups.

At first backup on a schedule, a full backup will be created. If the choice was (2) or (3), the next backups will be incremental (or differential) until the specified number of incremental (differential) backups is reached. Then again a full backup and a set of subsequent incremental (differential) backups is created, then again a full backup and so on.

First of all please make sure you created backup location (Create and Configure Backup Locations -> Create Backup Location -> follow the wizard instructions to complete backup location, e.g. you may use one of your partitions). Then you will see a window with backup rules (you may specify location size quota, maximum number of backups, storage period limits).

When backup location is created you will be eligible for backup policy. Click Operation -> Schedule Task -> Select Backup Type -> In Backup Archive Location completely unfold Backup Location folder and choose previously created backup location (in folder line you will see “No file name is required in this area”), click next and you will see backup policy window.

Thank you.

I'm having a similar problem with version 10.0. I'm using Acronis® True Image Home® version 10.0 (build 4,942). I have a daily incremental backup scheduled, but once in a while I have a huge incremental file. Like the one shown in the attached PDF, this occurred after I did a recovery of one file from the incremental (NOT a full recovery). This 19GB file is even larger than the original full backup of 15GB.

I understand Acronis' response that this is a problem with TI 9.0. I would like to know if this is the same for version 10.0. Or if upgrading will resolve it. Thanks!

Attachment Size
25771-88174.pdf 246.42 KB

Hello ttsroll,

Let me help you.

It seems that the restored data changes file locations anyway and as a result you get such large incremental archive. So I may suggest you just to start a new 'chain' of archives to work around the problem.

Additionally, as Oleg mentioned, please make sure that you don't have any defragmentation software running in background as it may significantly increase the archive size.

Please reply to this thread if the issue still persists or if you have any additional questions.

Thank you.

To run a backup job that deletes itself once a week: Select WEEKLY and THEN SIMULTANEOUSLY ALSO check each day of the week. If you're doing "disk" (or image) backups, all sectors that have changed will be backed during the incremental/differential backup the next day. This is different from a file backup in that IF a defragmentation has occurred, the sectors that have been moved (although having the same data) will have to be backed up. As a result, running image backups incrementally will result in larger backup file sizes if defragmentation has occurred. To eliminate the defragmentation problem, just select file backup (data backup) instead of disk (image) backup. Restoring a data backup may place the file on a different sector on the disk, but the data will be the same. A disk backup will give an exact (or mirror) image of the disk at the time of the original backup.

Hi everyone,

Using Acronis True Image 2017 for backing up my files.

I've setup Acronis to run incremental backups, but when I format my desktop, every first backup after that is a full backup.

As readed in the old posts, I'm not doing a disk image, I'm backing up a folder with a normal structure (files and subfolders).

Understud that It should only start with a full backup (after a disk format) if it is a disk image. Am I right?

So why It's doing the full backup after this kind of operation?

Another detail. The folder I'm backing up it's stored in a NAS drive. So, when I format my system drive, NAS drive stays intact.

Besides It takes too long, It compromisse my NAS drive access, as it's not fast as a normal drive.

Hope anyone can help me.

Thanks,

André

André, welcome to these user forums.

This forum topic is now approaching 7 years old and was written for a much older/obsolete version of Acronis True Image.

Please raise this issue/question in the Acronis True Image 2017 Forum where we would be happy to try to help you find an answer.