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Initial full backup a few weeks ago and another one today vary in size significantly

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Using Acronis 2014, I created a full image of my Windows 7 disk and partition several weeks ago, the size of which was 64.3 GB. As I had made many major changes, today I decided to scrap that one completely and create a new FULL backup all over again. So, I deleted the previous one and created a new full backup archive. Now, as then, I selected "Create new backup archive" (I have never used "Add to existing backup archive", yet). Though there is no previous backup in this folder, today's FULL backup is only 18.6 GB!! I would like to know why this is happening because I want to leave no stone unturned and prevent any nasty surprises if and when I have to restore. It almost seems as if this backup is not complete. Are there any flags I need to clear within True Image, just in case it thinks today's is an incremental backup?

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Jim, welcome to these User Forums.

Sorry but difficult to say why you are seeing a difference of over 40GB in the size of your full backup if you are actually backing up exactly the same data each time.

If you have the log files for the original full image backup and the subsequent new full backup, then these logs may be able to show more information on what is happening here.  You can post log files to this forum using the option below to Add a new file by clicking on the Upload button.

A screen shot of your Windows 7 OS drive showing total size of disk and used size / free space remaining may help too.

Okay, Steve. Thanks for the quick response. I appreciate it. Let me try again and report back to you.

The log for the latest one is shown in the last screenshot. I do not have the log for the December 9th backup. The size of the original one was:

image

But the latest one's size is:

image

image

Jim, were both these full backup files created in the exact same way, i.e. both created using the ATI 2014 application running within Windows?  The reason I ask is the file names are different which suggests that you may have created the Full.tib 64GB file outside of Windows using the Rescue Media, whereas the Latest_full_b1_s1_v1.tib was created using ATI running in Windows.

The key difference in these methods is that there are no default Exclusions set for the Rescue Media, therefore a lot more data is included, such as pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, and System Volume Information (were Restore Point data is held) - this could account for the difference in sizes!

You can check this by exploring or mounting the  .tib files and seeing what is present in terms of large files / folders. Note: you may need to enable viewing hidden / system files in Explorer to see the above files / folders.

Thanks for the assistance, Steve. But, I do not see the Image Mounting Utility, in this screen shot. I don't have it installed, rather, I use the CD to boot. I went through each menu item but saw nothing to do with image mounting.

So, what is your learned opinion? Which one should I use and which one to discard?

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Jim, the option to explore or mount .tib files is only available when ATI is installed, so not an option in the offline application.

The way around this would be to take the option to do a Files & Folders recovery from your .tib file which should allow you to explore the contents using the rescue CD and see what files are there.  In this case check to see if the pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys, and System Volume Information folder structure is present or not?

I went through every menu option in Truimage after I booted using the CD. There is absolutely nothing by the name of Files & Folder Recovery anywhere. Did you mean that I do this while in a Windows session, perhaps? Even that does not work because when I right-click the .tib file, nothing jumps out.

Jim, I don't have a copy of ATI 2014 Rescue Media to demonstrate the options here but they should be fairly similar to the 2018 Rescue Media as the application hasn't changed very much in this area.  All the main user interface changes are in the Windows ATI GUI.

See the following screen shots from the 2018 Rescue Media that should give you an idea of how to approach this for checking the contents of your .tib files.

ARM01.jpg

Click on the option to Browse for backup...

ARM04.jpg

Navigate to where your .tib file is stored and then select it, click on OK.

ARM05.jpg

For the Recovery method, select as shown - Recover chosen files and folders, then click on Next.

ARM06.jpgARM07.jpg

Choose a new location for where to recover files to.  Note: there is no need to actually recovery any files, this is just to get to the panel where you can see the files held in the .tib file.

ARM11.jpgARM12.jpgARM13.jpg

You can navigate around the .tib file structure and see what is there.