Unknown cause of increase in used disk space
Attached is a table. I noticed that my SSD C: full backups increased from 319 on 6/3 to 425 (GB) on 7/11 (orange). The full BU on 6/3 of 319 is followed by weekly incremental BU of 6, 21 and 145 (yellow). WinDirStat reports on 7/13 that my C: drive is 378; far smaller than Windows' File Properties of 468 (blue) or the 425 Acronis BU. My Users folder is currently 309 and only changed a few GB during the incremental BU of 145 (yellow).
I searched the PC for "size:gigantic." I didn't fine any huge or duplicate files that might account for 145GB. This all points to something that occured that Acronis included in the 145 incremental BU that's not visible to WinDirStat or searches. Is there a way to see what was backed up in an incremental like a log file or viewer?
Does anyone have any idea how to find and remove it so I get my 105GB back?
One strange thing that happened was that on 7/11 I noticed that the full BU task for 7/1 was successful but there wasn't any BU file. I couldn't find the file, so I deleted the task, created a replacement and ran it 7/11. I wonder if the file somehow ended up on the C: drive and is hidden.
I ran the MVP Viewer on the incremental before the huge increase and the incremental with the increase. BU sizes were 6 and 146GB with corresponding times to complete of 4:20 an 28:08 which makes sense. I don't see anything strange but then I'm not sure what I'm looking for. I'm attaching the list of BUs and viewer screen shots.
I'll try mounting the drive as you suggested but I don't think I'll find anything. Propertes for my C: drive report 468. WinDirStat sorts folders by size and reports C: is 378 with the bulk of 310 in the Users folder. Properties includes 90GB of something that file lists do not.
Rather than restore the whole BU, I restored the 5 largest folders from the 6/17 and 6/24 BU. The User folder being the bjulk of the drive. My C, 6/17 and 6/24 User folders were 310, 324 and 326 respectively. Again whatever it is doesn't show up.
What I really need is a viewer of the folders and files in the incremental BU. Is there such a tool?
Ray, the log images etc do not tell us anything more than you said previously.
There is no viewer tool to just look at the contents of an incremental file.
I would recommend giving TreeSize Free a try after mounting the large full backup file (or the last large incremental) and looking at where the extra space is being shown.
Thanks Steve, TreeSize on my C drive today shows another folder "System Volume Information" with 55.9GB that isn't shown in WinDirStat nor File Explorer. See the attached screenshots "TreeSize C drive 201180716" and its contents "TreeSize C drive detail 201180716." The files in this folder are dated 6/29 or later indicating that possibly only recent ones are kept and perhaps the big ones have been flushed since 6/24.
I also found that Acronis released Build 12510 2018-06-20 that is just before my BU file size jumped on 6/17.
I haven't yet mounted the 6/17 (before) and 6/24 (after) BU and examined their contents with TreeSize.
Again, thanks four your help.
Ray, under normal circumstances ATI excludes backing up the System Volume Information folders but if these have suddenly grown to almost 60GB that would suggest that System Protection has been turned on to enable capturing of System Restore Point data. Depending on the System Protection settings, this can increase the ATI backup image size significantly if included.
Microsoft by default leaves System Protection disabled in Windows 10 as this is older technology brought forward from earlier versions of Windows.
I checked my System Protection settings. (Control Panel, System, System protection) for my C: drive. It's current usage is 29GB. It's set for 100% so Max is 953GB. (That doesn't make sense for a my 1TB drive.) I ran TreeSize and System Volume Information is 57GB with the today's restore points 1.2 and 28.4GB.
I did a little investigating and protection was turned off in Window's Anniversary update. One justification was that using a old restore point on a new OS would be a disaster. I checked my other two computers and it's on for their C drives too. Many suggest having on so I decided to leave it on.
I also mounted my 6/24 incremental BU that is 145GB. See attached screenshot. You were right! There's 110GB in System Volume Information. As old restore points drop off, the BU sized and actual SDD space should return to normal.
Case closed - Thanks again, you're the only one that figured out what was going on.
Ray, glad that you have an answer to this puzzle that you are happy with. System Protection is a bit of mixed blessings. I just helped a friend whose computer refused to boot and not having any System Restore points along with no System Image or other backups rendered the options available to recover it at a minimum. I was able to save all the user data from the drive but then wiped the drive and did a clean install of Windows 10 then restored back the user data, but that still left my friend to have to reinstall MS Office and a few other applications that I didn't have the install media for!
A good backup strategy can make System Protection redundant but I have definitely used restore points to solve some issues in the not so distant past!
I had a similar problem when my SDD failed. It just didn't exist. I thought all I had to do was to buy a new one and restore my BU. I was using Acronis 2014 because I didn't like (and still don't) the user interface on newer versions. With it I was able to backup and restore files without issue. What I didn't know was that it wasn't completely backing up Window 10. I restore my BU but it wouldn't boot. What a shock to find out Acronis 2014 wasn't compatible with Windows 10.
I had to reinstall Windows 10. I have a folder "Downloads - Ray" with the apps and updates so I knew the apps I needed to install and it also has the updates. I use RoboForm and it contains all my licenses and passwords. Finally, I restored my Documents, Pictures, etc. and some AppData files.This typically takes about a week.
Without Acronis, I'd have a huge loss! Acronis has save my bacon many times as has RoboForm.
Ray, ATI 2014 wasn't officially supported / tested for use with Windows 10 but many users did have it installed and used it without issue, including myself for my Mum's computer.
When making a backup image of a drive, one key point to watch for is that all partitions on the drive are included. On the Source selection panel this is shown in a vague way by the text shown at the bottom of the panel which defaults to showing the 'Short partition list' and offers an option to show the 'Full partition list'. Clicking on this text toggles between these views and when in the full view, all hidden/system partitions are shown and can be selected to ensure a true full backup is captured and can be recovered. See my screen images below showing both views.
Thanks for the tip. I checked and I'm backing up all volumes on my C: drive.
This reminded me to look at the Recovery tree. Attached are screenshot of the 6/17 and 6/24 BU. What's interesting is that the System Volume Information folder is only on my PC beginning in 6/24. Neither of my other two computers has the folder for any date though System Protection is turn on in all three. It would seem to me that it should be backup.
Ray, I have checked back through this topic and your screen image of the backup log shows that you have set the System Volume Information folders to be excluded from the backup and therefore they should not be there in your Recovery panel.
At this point, having checked that this is working correctly for my own backups, I would suggest that there is a problem with the script file for this backup task and would recommend doing the following.
First, unschedule this backup task, then use the option to Clone settings for the task which will create a duplicate with the same name prefixed by (1)
Assuming you have room on your backup drive to allow, point the cloned task to a new folder and create an initial full backup then check that all is as it should be, with no System Volume Information being included. If all is ok, then set the schedule for the cloned task and remove the original task from the GUI (leaving the backup files on your drive) so that you can manually clean these files as your new cloned backup scheme progresses.
Note: Linked this topic with topic: ATI Exclusion List Ignored raised by Rob separately.
Problem finally resolved. A summary of the problem, the investigation and the solution follows.
1) I create a BU task at the beginning of each month that does a full BU followed by an incremental BU each week. During June an incremental grew by over 100GB.
2) This growth was found to be from adding the System Volume Information folder to the BU that contains very large Windows restore point files.
3) The July and another BU task, both created in July also contained the System Volume Information folder. Tasks created earlier did not.
4) My Exception list (Options, Exclusions tab) is the default list and was never edited. It lists System Volume Information to be excluded. All my BU tasks show this exclusion but starting in mid-June, current and subsequent tasks contained the System Volume Information folder. The Exception list viewed and that used by the tasks were different.
5) The solution was to replace the default Exception list. I started creating a new task, opened Options and selected the Exclusions tab. I clicked "Initial settings," checked the "Save as default," then Ok. I then ran this task and the System Volume Information folder was omitted from the BU.
I'm grateful for Steve's help is solving this issue.
Ray, thanks for the update / feedback, always good to read of a successful outcome!
It's happened again. I moved all my previous BU to another folder and created a new daily BU task; a full BU followed by 6 daily incrementals. It ran fine for the first set, then it again started backing up the system. I've submitted it to Acronis, referred them to this forum, and asked them to open it as a problem.
Both my weekly and daily tasks started backing up system files although they are excluded in Options. I worked with Acronis tech support and they created problem "[03428519] Strange increase in incremental backup file size." He suspected corruption in Acronis programs files, so with Acronis closed and all Acronis processes stopped, he renamed the Database folder in ProgramData\Acronis\TrueImageHome to Database.old and created a replacement folder Database.
He also suspected that a error on the drive might cause it to backup the system files and override them being excluded in the task. He ran a AcronisSystemReport zip file and examined the disk.txt file. It showed an error so I ran chkdsk and fixed it. However, I looked a previous AcronisSystemReport zip file and its disk.txt did not show any errors yet the BU still contained the system files. I don't think this was a cause of backing up system files.
After these two changes, my backups no longer contain system files. I conclude that there was corruption in the Database folder. The downside of this solution is that the backup history in the Activity tab for all previous backups is missing.
Ray, thanks for sharing the outcome of your support case with Acronis, hope that the solution 'sticks' and the problem remains fixed for you.