Large image file size - TI Home 2009, same with TI 8
I have a hard drive with several partitions. The partition I'm trying to image is a 64GB NTFS partition that shows only 24GB used. It's a brand new full backup. So I'm expecting the image file size to be 24GB at most, probably a bit less.
Instead, the resulting image files (split up into smaller files) are collectively huge - pretty close to 64GB on disk. I assume TI is saving the entire partition, uncompressed, including free space (or the file size is coincidentally nearly the same - it's about 63.9GB). This was with TI Home 2009. Using a much older version, TI 8, yields almost identical results.
Is there something odd about the partition that's causing True Image to make such large files? How can I check? What do I look for?
Thanks. Since TI 8 (to my knowledge) has no sector-by-sector option, I don't see how that could be an issue. I've seen errors imaging or cloning other partitions with True Image so I know what they look like - you generally get alert pop-ups telling you so during the process. But both times I imaged this partition (with either TI 2009 or TI 8), it completed with no errors or warnings. I just double-checked the TI 2009 log file and again - no warnings about corruption or failed sectors, etc. And this should be a good drive - no S.M.A.R.T. reallocated sectors or errors.
Are you backing up to another hard drive? Is it NTFS formatted also?
Yes, the image files are being saved to another drive. The source drive a 320GB SATA laptop drive that's in a USB HD enclosure.
I have tried this two entirely different ways:
1. Using my laptop which has TI Home 2009 installed (XP). In that case, the destination was an NTFS-formatted partition on my laptop itself.
2. Using a desktop with Windows 2000 and TI 8 installed. In that case, the destination was an EXT2-formatted partition in the desktop. (Using a driver to make EXT2 partition visible to Windows - has worked fine in the past.)
The resulting image files from TI 8 annd TI Home 2009 are very close in size but not identical (wouldn't have expected them to be - surprised they are as close as they are).
I should also mention that I'm limiting the image file sizes to 3500MB - just my guess for the maximum size in case I ever need to use these on a FAT32 partition which limits the file size. I've used this size many times in the past and have never had this issue with a huge resulting image file.
Does chkdsk /f show any errors? There can be errors in the file system itself that could cause the problem.
If the source drive is installed internally instead of being connected via the USB enclosure, does it still have the problem?