Incremental Backups Don't Appear to Work

Well it does work, just depends how your doing it! when you initially set up the backup regime as an incremental backup ATI will do a complete backup as the first "base" recording then at the time you have nominated all those files/folders that have changed between the base and now will be recorded in a new file as a separate backup.

ATI is clever that when you come to restore it uses the later files from all the backup events.... a way I can check this is to look at the place where the backups are placed, the attached pic will show you the first backup being large, and then subsequent backups sometimes smaller, but of differing sizes depending on the activity.

I have a primary OS on an SSD and therefore don't use system restore, I backup every second days as my system restore.

So is does work just depends on how you set it up, there very good tutorials here done by Grover, have a read of those

Also, check your degragging schedule. A defrag between an initial full image or an incremental backup and subsequent incrementals will cause the outcome you're describing. It seems at least Win7 sets a nightly defragging schedule by default.

David Morgan wrote:

Well it does work, just depends how your doing it! when you initially set up the backup regime as an incremental backup ATI will do a complete backup as the first "base" recording then at the time you have nominated all those files/folders that have changed between the base and now will be recorded in a new file as a separate backup.

ATI is clever that when you come to restore it uses the later files from all the backup events.... a way I can check this is to look at the place where the backups are placed, the attached pic will show you the first backup being large, and then subsequent backups sometimes smaller, but of differing sizes depending on the activity.

I have a primary OS on an SSD and therefore don't use system restore, I backup every second days as my system restore.

So is does work just depends on how you set it up, there very good tutorials here done by Grover, have a read of those

Hello David,

Thanks for the reply, yes of course, I appreciate it works properly for most people. And yes, I also appreciate it's probably something I am doing wrong or misunderstand. The problem is, it's hard to see what! I have selected a backup scheme of 'Incremental'. Given that I am backing up the same data to the same device, under what circumstances would it NOT produce an incremental backup?

I completely understand the principle of how incremental backups work and how they are used in restore.

Gork wrote:

Also, check your degragging schedule. A defrag between an initial full image or an incremental backup and subsequent incrementals will cause the outcome you're describing. It seems at least Win7 sets a nightly defragging schedule by default.

Hi Gork and thanks.

The defrag schedule is weekly, and it is possible that the initial problem was encountered due to an intervening defrag moving things around.

However, defrag will have no effect on carrying out a backup of a single folder repeatedly, and as I said, this produced full size backups of that folder even though there are no changes to it.

I can only think of two possible causes:

1) The trial version of the product is not the same somehow (doubtful), or
2) When I initially used my EHDD, it was mapped to E: because something else was in a USB port. On subsequent use, it has been mapped to D:. This could have upset ATI (although it shouldn't ...)

Hello Paul,
Suggest you follow one of GroverH's how-to guide as David recommended to confirm your task configuration settings.  They can be found under the Useful Links section on the left.

shadowsports wrote:

Hello Paul,
Suggest you follow one of GroverH's how-to guide as David recommended to confirm your task configuration settings.  They can be found under the Useful Links section on the left.

Thanks shadowsports, if you mean '28705: Grover's How to Backup 2012 from within Windows', yes, I have been through that. A very sensible and well written guide, and everything is straightforward, but alas gives no clue as to my problem.

Let me please try and establish something here:

If I have a folder called 'FRED', which contains ten files, and I back that up on incremental, then a full backup of FRED is produced containing ten files. If now I backup 'FRED' again, and I haven't changed FRED, I would expect either no incremental backup, or a very small one just as a strap into the initial one. What I actually get is a duplicate of the first one, same size.

I'm just looking for someone to say 'This is probably because you haven't done ...'.

Paul,
Would you mind confirming that your task is identical to this listing except change the 6 & 4 to match your needs. If a match, what settings are you using instead of 6 and 4?

Are the 10 files ten different days of incremental backups (1 file per backup--no archive splitting)

Hi GroverH and thanks.

I set up a backup scheme exactly as per yours. I save the scheme (see first image), and then backup. I then do a second backup, using the same scheme (see second image). The results are shown in the third image, where you can see two full backups of the same thing.

Thanks for you assistance.

As I view your storage folder path, both tasks seem to point to the same folder and same task name which may work for some but not according to my suggestions for separation of tasks. My personal suggestions would be to create two new tasks and point the each task to its own individual backup folder--such as
Mybackups\task1\task1-.tib
Mybackups\task1\task2-.tib

Assign your own names to the sub-folder and backup file name.

GroverH wrote:

As I view your storage folder path, both tasks seem to point to the same folder and same task name which may work for some but not according to my suggestions for separation of tasks. My personal suggestions would be to create two new tasks and point the each task to its own individual backup folder--such as
Mybackups\task1\task1-.tib
Mybackups\task1\task2-.tib

Assign your own names to the sub-folder and backup file name.

When you say 'point each task to its own folder', did you mean:

Mybackups\task1\task1-.tib
Mybackups\task2\task2-.tib

? Otherwise both .tib files are in the same folder. Anyway, assuming this is what you meant, I have done this, with the same result:

Looks like I'm not the only one with this issue:

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28469

Edit: and here:

http://forum.acronis.com/forum/26252

Here's something interesting. The Acronis tab on the Properties of the backed-up folder has a datetimestamp of the initial backup. So subsequent backups didn't flag the folder.

OK, this is sorted now. I'm not sure if it's not clear, or I'm an idiot - probably the latter. I didn't realise that in order to get an incremental backup, it was necessary to press the 'Backup Now' button on the BACKUP LIST, NOT on the 'Configure' window. Pressing it on the former creates a new schedule, and thus a full backup.

Perhaps everyone else realised this, but I'd better document it in case anyone else trips up likewise.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Paul,
I saw your post #12 showing a resolution to your issue. As I had already completed this response, I am going ahead and posting thinking maybe it has additional information or info that others might use. Image #19 at this link shows a little bit about the "Backup now" usage.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/28705
-------------------------------------------------
Referring to attachment in post #12;

Unless I am misreading the capture, What I see is 3 tasks with only 1 backup run or 1 version each. First run of any task will always be a full backup type. I do not see one task with 3 repetitions (versions) of the same task.

Each Acronis backup task is a standalone not related to each other. A backup task begins as

1. Selecting a partition or group of files which are to be included in the backup.

2. Selecting a backup scheme (1 full plus and the next six runs to be smaller size incremental backups) with 4 repetitions of 1 full +6 inc runs per backup task.

3. assigned a target folder. (A different backup folder for each task (or the same backup folder but a different sub folder per task. D:\myBackup\Paul1\

4. assigns a unique name to the *.tib backup file. Paul1Files--.tib

5. Assigns a unique name to the backup task. Paul1-Files

6. Runs the task via an Acronis schedule or by using the "backup now" option (other methods available).
To look at the backup files in Windows Explorer, several methods available but probably the easiest would be select the backup task named Paul1-Files. Right click on the "edit settings" option for this specific backup task and click on the "open locations" option. The window should open into the
d:\Mybackup\Paul1\ folder
and display a listing of all the backups files that have been created using the Paul1Files-.tib name assigned as the backup file name.

Summary:
So the first backup for any each task will always be a full backup. Each of the next 6 times you open TrueImage and click the task "backup now" (or scheduled backup time arrives or click a task created desktop shortcut) option, you should get your incrementals for this specific task. If the user has selected the 6+4 option as the settings for the custom incremental backup, then 28 backups would be created and (full +6 inc[x4]) before the cleanup rules would become effective. After backup 29 created, the first 7 would be deleted.

All of the above would be from one task. If you wanted to backup a different set of files, then you would create an additional task with its own unique task name, with its own set of settings and path with the backup files being stored in a folder or sub-folder with a different name such as a task name of "Paul2-Files" and a path such as D:\myBackup\Paul2\Paul2Files-.tib