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[joethejet]

Ok, so I finally got back to this. I tried running the same back up again, assuming it would do an incremental and went to bed. When I woke up, it was still running and had a file that was like 80 gig in size. (The "full" backup was 117 gig) so I killed it. That's NOT an incremental, I don't know what it was.

A friend of mine said to check the "archive" bit and and I did for a few files and I found that for even really old files that I know are on the "full" it's still set to 'A'. Is Ghost using this to determine what to backup? Maybe that's why it's taking so long.

Also, is there a difference between an incremental and a differential? If so, how do you do that and would it take less time/space?

 Thanks!

Jet

[mdubin]

Jet:

I installed Norton Ghost 14 a month ago and have been having the exact same problem with incrementals provided the drive being backed up was NOT my c: drive. Only C: drive incrementals work. I have a few external usb drives which I use to store large amounts of data and each time I run the backup job for these drives, it goes into a very time consuming reconcilation and then proceeds to create an incremental (iv2i) file as large as the full backup. But this problem does not occur when running the backup for my C: Drive.

There are two other threads on this, one started by me and one by AllenM. You should add to the one by AllenM since Allen has been in touch with Symantec on this issue.

mdubin

[Brian_K]

Jet,

When the next incremental is running, check that the file extension is .iv2i. If it is .v2i then it is a full backup.

Do you have a defragmentation app running in the background? Any apps that automatically download "updates"? Including Windows Updates. 

Message Edited by Brian_K on 09-30-2009 08:05 PM

[Brubaker]

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joethejet wrote:

Also, is there a difference between an incremental and a differential? If so, how do you do that and would it take less time/space?

---

Hi Jet,

Yes, there is a difference between incremental and differential backups, but Ghost does not support differential backups.

FYI:

Incremental backup = All changes since the last incremental backup.

Differential backup = All changes since the last full backup.

Each method offers its own advantages and disadvantages, but neither is inherently superior. Symantec has chosen to implement incremental backups in Ghost.

[Brubaker]

Hi Jet,

There seems to be some question whether Ghost is actually making a recovery point set (base + incrementals). Please go to Run or Manage Backups and mouse over the backup job. The second line of the popup will tell you the backup job type. It should say Recovery Point Set. If it does not, the best solution would be to start over. Delete the existing job and create a new backup job using recovery point sets.

Message Edited by Brubaker on 09-30-2009 09:19 AM

[AllenM Norton Fighter]

Hi,

I'll respond more tonight, running late heading off to work. But just real quick, you can manually invoke an incremental backup by doing this: Bring up Ghost client and select Tasks on the left pane. Then on the right pane select 'Run or Manage Backups'. This will bring up a list of your various backup jobs. Now find the one for the drive you want and right click on that entry and select 'Run Backup with Options'. This will bring up another screen, then select 'Incremental Recovery point of recent changes'.

This will run a manually initiated incremental backup. When the incremental image gets created it should have a '.iv2i' extension. .v2i extensions are your full backup images.

Again, I'll check more when I get home tonight and respond some more.

Allen

[Brubaker]

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AllenM wrote:

Hi,

I'll respond more tonight, running late heading off to work. But just real quick, you can manually invoke an incremental backup by doing this: Bring up Ghost client and select Tasks on the left pane. Then on the right pane select 'Run or Manage Backups'. This will bring up a list of your various backup jobs. Now find the one for the drive you want and right click on that entry and select 'Run Backup with Options'. This will bring up another screen, then select 'Incremental Recovery point of recent changes'.

This will run a manually initiated incremental backup. When the incremental image gets created it should have a '.iv2i' extension. .v2i extensions are your full backup images.

Again, I'll check more when I get home tonight and respond some more.

Allen

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Hi Allen,

That procedure will only work if the backup job in question was defined as a Recovery Point Set. It will not work for a standalone Recovery Point.

If you want to manually initiate a backup job from the Run or Manage Backups window, it's faster to click on the desired job to highlight it and then click the Run Now button.

- If the job is a Recovery Point Set and it has not previously been run, it will create a base recovery point.

- If the job has been run before, it will automatically create the next incremental.

It's faster still to simply right-click the Ghost tray icon,  mouse to Run Backup Now and click on the desired backup job. The job will start immediately.

[joethejet]

Ok, I'm trying the right-click thing. It *is* a recovery set poing so we're good there.

It says 4 hours right now. I'm off to my softball game we'll see where it is when I get back. <sigh>

It's creating a .iv2i file so that's good so far right? 

Ok, it'sup to 7 gig at 12% done. Something doesn't seem right. Does the Archive flag have anything to do with this? Is there any way to see what files are in the incremental?

More late.

Message Edited by joethejet on 09-30-2009 07:06 PM

[Brian_K]

Jet, the first incremental should only be about 1% the size of the Base image. Something wrong.

[AllenM Norton Fighter]

Brubaker: That procedure will only work if the backup job in question was defined as a Recovery Point Set. It will not work for a standalone Recovery Point.

I am aware of that, I was rushing out to work and just wanted to explain the basic procedure for manually invoking an incremental backup, which is why I said I'd be back on tonight to check further.

Jothejet, to my knowledge the archive bit is immaterial and should be when it comes to imaging backups. The archive bit should matter only for file based backups (which Ghost can also do but is separate).

When was your last full backup created? Has your computer restarted in between the last full and the incremental? Can you try a test for me? Via the same method as you manually invoked an incremental backup before, do the same thing but select Create new recovery point set (instead of incremental). Make sure and do NOT select Independant recovery point. This will do a full backup so be prepared for it to take a while.

After this completes, please go back in and do the incremental backup again. This will start an incremental which will now be based on the Full backup you just performed.

My goal with this test is to see if a full and incremental performed back to back has the same issue. There are so many things that can happen in between a full and incremental which can cause larger images so this is a way of verifying if there is a really fundamental problem.

Allen