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True Image and O&O Defrag

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Situation:

True Image erstellt jeweils 6 inkrementelle Backups basierend auf einem Voll-Backup.

Wenn ich nun – ohne Veränderung der Daten! – mit O&O Defrag eine vollständige Defragmentierung fahre, erreicht das nächste inkrementelle True Image Backup fast die Größe des zugrundeliegenden Voll-Backups. In meinem speziellen Fall leider über 7TB.

Es werden also ohne Veränderung der Datei-Inhalte die Dateien auf dem Laufwerk neu angeordnet.

Bei einem Sektor für Sektor (also quasi forensischem) Backup unter exakter Erhaltung der kompletten Disk-Struktur könnte ich das geschilderte Verhalten nachvollziehen. Die Festplatte als Ganzes (Bit-& Byte-Datengrab) sieht nach einer gründlichen Defragmentierung deutlich anders aus als vorher.

Das ist aber definitiv nicht meine Einstellung. Das Kästchen 'Sektor für Sektor sichern' in den erweiterten Optionen ist nicht angekreuzt. Die Dateien (also die verwertbaren Inhalte) wurden nicht verändert, nur verschoben.

Wie kommen die inkrementellen Riesenbackups also zustande? Wird insgeheim doch ein sektorbasiertes Backup (anstatt Datei-basiert) durchgeführt? Hängt das irgendwie mit VSS zusammen? Würde Acronis Snapshot (anstatt VSS) als Snapshot-Methode Abhilfe schaffen? Oder ist True Image ab einer bestimmten Anzahl von Dateien nicht mehr in der Lage, die Dateiliste anständig zu sortieren und vergleicht daher nicht identische Dateien (natürlich mit entsprechend katastrophalem Ergebnis)?

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Therese, what type of backup are you creating here?  From your description it would look like you are making a Disk & Partitions backup, not doing a Files & Folders backup.

This difference is important as the Disk & Partitions backup works at a sector level, and when you do a full disk defrag using O&O or any other defragmentation program, you are 'touching' a very large number of sectors as data is reorganised on the drive.  In such a case, then the size of any incremental or differential backup will be significantly larger and can approximate the size of doing a full backup.

If you were doing a Files & Folders backup, then I would not expect the defragmentation to have the same effect, as you are working at a different level, where the files & folders should not reflect any change by virtue of the defragmentation being done.

Hi Steve,

thanks, that answers it. In fact it's 'disk + partition' currently.

The main reason for choosing this was I don't want to miss anything e.g. if new folders are created. But I just noticed the 'files + folders' option gives the choice to backup a whole logical drive, too. Thus I'll give it a try. Am I right to assume it's a bit smaller than the 'disk + partition' option?

LG,

Therese

 

 

Therese, with Files & Folders, new folders are normally included in the backup unless the parent folder has been excluded in the source selection.

Regarding the size compared with Disk & Partitions, that really depends on what else is on the same disk drive?  If this is your OS drive, then there will be a lot more included in a Disk & Partitions backup image than would be for a Files & Folders backup of the same drive.  The default Exclusions can also come into play with both types of backup, where such as the System Volume Information folders are excluded by default but can be very large if this exclusion is removed.

Hi Steve,

tested it in the meantime.

The F&F backup size turns out to be a little bigger and take longer than the D&P on all drives. For the OS drive of course I'm using 'Disk & Partition' as else I would loose boot capabilities.

Furthermore it looks like I've discovered a hidden bug:

One of my logical drives is a big RAID6 array (~40TB) used as 'data grave' for way more than a million files.

D&P backup and validation takes time, but is generally possible without any problems. F&F backup runs through, but validation fails every time I try it. Even if I was careful not to change anything on that drive during the whole process, validation would constantly fail.

??!?

Some hidden limitation regarding backup size? Or number of files and folders to be included in one single F&F archive?

 

Therese, thank you for the update with new information.  If you are making a backup of the big RAID6 array (~40TB) drive, then I suspect that Acronis development have never tested validation for such a large size of drive.

I would suggest opening a Support Case with Acronis for this issue to get a definitive statement from them on this issue.  They should be able to say if there are any size limitations with their software and whether they would treat this as a software defect (aka bug) or would consider it to be working within the design intended for a home use product?

Disk drive sizes are certainly getting much larger these days as the cost per TB gets lower but I suspect that not many home users have any drives approaching the 40TB of your scenario.  My own Synology NAS is only 3TB though I have been considering upgrading this to 6TB at some point in the medium future.