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I have no defragmenters scheduled to run. The only time that they run is when I manually run them. I had a large incremental backup created yesterday and I can assure you that I didn't run a defrag then.
Is there anything else that might trigger this? I run McAfee Secirity Center and I've checked the logs as to when it's run a defrag, and that was a long time ago.
Also, why would a defragment cause a file to be backed up? Defragging might change the placement of the physical sectors that some of the files reside on, but the contents of the file don't change, nor does the logical sector within the file.
Does Ghost care about the physical sector that a file resides on? How would that work with RAID?
-- Geoff
I'm not 100% expert with Ghost. I'm just a user helping a user, but NGhost has two backup options. File backup and Disk Imaging. If you're simply doing a file backup, when defragging should not be seen as a change. However, if you're doing disk imaging, I'm guessing Ghost is doing a sector-by-sector backup. A big advantage would be able to recover from a bad defragger job. Defargmenters can be buggy too. :)
I'm just throwing food for thoughts here. I can also imagine using Partition Magic to change something can also trigger a bigger backup than usual.
MarcP,
Thanks for the suggestion. I've assumed that these are file level backups. They create ".v2i" base Recovery Point backups and then ".iv2i" incremental backups. The restore operation is based upon files.
-- Geoff
Norton Ghost 14 creates sector-based images. Changes to sectors are recorded in the Recovery Point Sets (incrementals), which is why defragmenting would make the incremental image as large as a full base image.
What are the exact options you chose for this image creation, and the space provided for the destination?
Options are as follows:
Limit # of recoverty sets: 2
No command files
Schedule: 6 PM every day
Start new recovery point: monthly
Event triggers: none
Pre-append computer name to backup filename: true
Ignore bad sectors during copy: true
-- Geoff
geoffschultz wrote:
Options are as follows:
Limit # of recoverty sets: 2
No command files
Schedule: 6 PM every day
Start new recovery point: monthly
Event triggers: none
Pre-append computer name to backup filename: true
Ignore bad sectors during copy: true
-- Geoff
Hi Geoff,
Looking over your directory, there seems to be a 10-day gap in May. Was your system turned off during that time? Since the larger images seem to happen at different intervals (not just 5 days apart), it doesn't seem to be a result of your settings. Can you remember what actions you took on your system before those larger images were created? Maybe you moved several files back and forth?
Tony,
The 10 day gap was when I was gone. The issue is that this occurs on other volumes on the same date. Of interest is the 6/8/2008 date, which was the day before my original post. I know that I didn't initiate anything on that date and none of the logs (such as McAfee) show any activity.
-- Geoff
I’m also concerned with the 5/6, 5/11, and 6/8 dates. They seem to be the anomalies on your list, in terms of “recovery point size”. Do you run several backups each day, one for each drive? And does each drive have the same large incremental on the same days? Can you think of anything that happened on these days that might have altered the sectors on your disks, enough that a large incremental needed to be created?
On a regular basis Ghost 14 creates an intermediate backup which is virtually the same size as my base backups. This occurs on multiple disks that I back up. I have Ghost set to create base backups on a monthly basis, which it does, and I have it set to retain 2 bakup sets. However, when it creates a full sized intermediate backup, this screws up my space calculations. Here's an example diectory output showing this problem:
Volume in drive E is Backup_CG
Volume Serial Number is DADE-8D0A
Directory of E:\Backups\C
06/09/2008 08:54 AM <DIR> .
06/09/2008 08:54 AM <DIR> ..
06/08/2008 09:58 PM 9,161 DELL4600.sv2i
05/01/2008 09:27 PM 38,619,316,224 DELL4600_C_Drive011.v2i
05/02/2008 06:04 PM 116,916,224 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i001.iv2i
05/03/2008 06:09 PM 1,097,859,072 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i002.iv2i
05/04/2008 06:07 PM 298,844,160 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i003.iv2i
05/05/2008 06:07 PM 131,596,288 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i004.iv2i
05/06/2008 06:32 PM 38,793,117,696 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i005.iv2i
05/07/2008 06:05 PM 1,013,710,848 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i006.iv2i
05/08/2008 06:13 PM 314,310,656 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i007.iv2i
05/09/2008 06:14 PM 197,656,576 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i008.iv2i
05/10/2008 06:04 PM 241,172,480 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i009.iv2i
05/11/2008 08:08 PM 27,795,128,320 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i010.iv2i
05/12/2008 06:06 PM 109,576,192 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i011.iv2i
05/22/2008 06:07 PM 1,053,032,448 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i012.iv2i
05/23/2008 06:06 PM 297,009,152 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i013.iv2i
05/26/2008 06:07 PM 1,040,711,680 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i014.iv2i
05/28/2008 06:05 PM 674,758,656 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i015.iv2i
05/29/2008 06:10 PM 191,889,408 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i016.iv2i
05/30/2008 06:18 PM 229,900,288 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i017.iv2i
05/31/2008 06:08 PM 605,290,496 DELL4600_C_Drive011_i018.iv2i
06/01/2008 08:13 PM 36,148,871,168 DELL4600_C_Drive012.v2i
06/02/2008 06:06 PM 195,035,136 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i001.iv2i
06/03/2008 06:11 PM 773,849,088 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i002.iv2i
06/04/2008 06:05 PM 487,587,840 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i003.iv2i
06/05/2008 06:10 PM 852,754,432 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i004.iv2i
06/06/2008 06:11 PM 1,779,171,328 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i005.iv2i
06/07/2008 06:06 PM 692,060,160 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i006.iv2i
06/08/2008 09:49 PM 30,321,410,048 DELL4600_C_Drive012_i007.iv2i
06/09/2008 08:54 AM 0 dir.txt
29 File(s) 184,072,545,225 bytes
2 Dir(s) 294,427,209,728 bytes free
Do you have a disk defragmenter triggering on a schedule? That can change the sector-by-sector content and NGhost may see that as a change that needs to be backed up on the incremental.