Why incremental backups in Windows Vista are larger than expected

Why incremental backups are larger than expected?

VistaJuice — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 08:31:29 GMT

The Filing Cabinet has a nice explanation on this. I'm glad they wrote it since I was really beginning to wonder - why! Incremental backups are suppose to save the amount of space over the full backup - which they...

re: Why incremental backups in Windows Vista are larger than expected

peconi — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 08:32:07 GMT

I actually wish that the backup program was a bit smarter. It would be nice if it would occupy a little bit less space than from 1-3 gigs each day in my case. I do not even change that many files but I guess Vista does.

Petar

www.VistaJuice.com

re: Why incremental backups in Windows Vista are larger than expected

henok — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:56:37 GMT

this is not acceptable.. so what should a user do? there should be some configuration so the Backup is smarter than what you described above.. in its current form it's unusable.. so it's pointless if you have a good reason why it gets bigger than the full backup.. as a user i could care less how and why.. i just want it to work as i expect it to work based on general rules.. incremental backup is to save space.. period.. you guys should go through all the headache into creating the Backup application so it's smart enough to handle what you just explained above. the million dollar question is.. What now? the backup is growing like crazy.. and there is not even an option to delete old backups!! Right now a hobby tool, SyncToy does a much better job than the Vista Backup!!

re: Why incremental backups in Windows Vista are larger than expected

John Hanley — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 21:31:25 GMT

I have the following 'notion' although not sure it is well founded:

When I first began doing these automatic backups, it seemed that the incremental backups were quite large, often almost as large as the 'complete' backups. From this article above, any little change to a file or folder will cause it to get listed for incremental backing up again, and that antivirus programs were a common cause of small changes being made. Since I changed my antivirus program in December, 2007 from Norton to Avast, my incremental backups seem smaller and that perhaps Avast is not messing with my files as much as Norton did. That is about as scientific as a wild guess, but I do seem to experience smaller incrementals than I used to. Does that make sense? Thanks.

re: Why incremental backups in Windows Vista are larger than expected

cfsbloggers — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 21:00:43 GMT

Hi, John

Yes, it is possible. Different anti-virus have different modus operandi, and it is possible that your old anti-virus was modifying more files than the new one.

--Malu