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How can I see individual files in an incremental backup?

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Hi there,

let's assume I have done a full backup of 50GB and then every day an incremental backup. There are lots of incremental files now. How can I look into an individual incremental file and see what files are in there (what changed on that particular day). Or in other terms, how can I browse a delta file without seeing the content of it's parent?

The reason I am asking is the size of the increments. I did a backup and immediately after it was finished I did another incremental. It was 600MB and I would like to know what has changed on my system within less than 10 minutes to cause so much data.

I use True Image Home 2010.

Thanks.

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my name:

Delta files: you can mount the image file as a virtual disk drive to be able to explore it using Windows Explorer. When you mount an image file (by right-clicking on it and choosing "mount") you will be given a choice of which date to use. You can view the files from any of the dates but as far as I know there isn't any easy way to view a delta file set.

Size: since TI uses sector-based imaging, any changed sectors are included in the next incremental image. Changes include when file content changes, when the location of files move, or when a disk is defragmented (which moves sectors around). Also, Windows is constantly writing log files and doing other things behind the scenes, so sometimes an incremental image can be larger than you would otherwise expect.

As an example, I do an incremental image weekly from a base monthly full image. The base image file is 20 GB and each weekly incremental image is about 2 GB. Your mileage may vary....

Is your Windows running defrag in the background? I think it is enabled by default in Win7.

Delta files: you can mount the image file as a virtual disk drive to be able to explore it using Windows Explorer. When you mount an image file (by right-clicking on it and choosing "mount") you will be given a choice of which date to use. You can view the files from any of the dates but as far as I know there isn't any easy way to view a delta file set.

So, in essence, there's no way to figure out what is taking up space in your incremental or differential backup. I keep popping the top off my 1TB backup drive, and I'm trying to get a feel for what I can to manage it.

Jerry:

Please edit your post #4 to remove my email address (there is a bug in the forum software that displays private email addresses when quoting).