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What Am I Seeing When I Explore Incremantal Backup

edited February 2018 in AOMEI Products Support

I took a look at what was in my latest Incremantal Backup, and was supprised to see ALL of my files that are on the C: drive. I thought I would see only the ones that changed since the previous backup. I did notice that the file size of the Incremantal  was way less than the Full Backup, so it seems like all of the files must not be included in the Incremantal. So how is it that I see all of them?

Comments

  • edited February 2018

    It's a (automatic) chain from the first full backup to the last incremental. If you remove one file the rest is unusable. So when restoring you only need to point to the latest incremental backup.

  • Really! Based on all of  the documentation (and AOMEI provides lots of it!), I understand you have to restore 1st the full backup, then each incrimental, first to last in sequence - that's the down side of incremantal backup. What am I missing?

  • Really? Where does it say so?

  • edited February 2018

    This is from tips in a Disk restore:

    *If you backup disk in incremental backup, please prepare the full backup and all related incremental images; If you backup disk in differential, please prepare the full backup and the latest differential image; If you just backup the disk for once, only full backup is enough.

    This is poorly written and may be the source of the confusion?????? The term "please prepare" makes no sense as to what you need to do.

  • Here is what I read:

    All the image files of incremental backup series share a sequential relationship.

    All
    data can be recovered to the state when any Incremental Backup was
    done, by recovering the parent Full Backup, followed in turn by each
    Incremental Backup in between.

    If any one of the incremental image files in the sequence is damaged or missing, subsequent image files will be invalid.

    "Full Backup + regular Incremental Backup" is the most commonly-used backup scenario.


    See entire article here:

    https://www.backup-utility.com/help/incremental-and-differential.html

  • @Al_n, but it does not say you need to restore every backup yourself. It is done automatically. In Help on restore you can read "2. Select a point-in-time and click the Next button. "

    https://www.backup-utility.com/help/disk-restore.html

  • JohnnyboyGo: Oh, that makes a lot more sense than what I understood. So I guess the "disadvantage" of incremental vs. differential is that the automated processs takes longer with incremental. Is that correct?


    Also, would you please explain how you replied to me by starting with my name (@Al_n)?


    Thanks for your help!

  • edited February 2018

    Ok, now I need a learning session. @JohnnyboyGo, I see what you're saying and would expect the restore to work exactly like you say. Until I read this thread, I figured that was the way it would work.

    However, if you read the following from the link that @AI_N posted above you'll find the following 2 sentences:

    All data can be recovered to the state when any Incremental Backup was done, by recovering the parent Full Backup, followed in turn by each Incremental Backup in between.

    and

    All data can be returned to the state when the Differential Backup was done, by recovering the parent Full Backup, followed by the required Differential Backup.

    This sort of leads to confusion as to exactly what needs to be done. When you say "followed in turn" or "followed by" this seems to indicate you need to perform multiple functions to restore a set. And they seem to be putting the cart before the horse by saying you would recover the parent Full.... followed by another operation.???????

  • edited February 2018

    Why would restore work so complicated if an Explore, you can easily test that, works as I described.

  • edited February 2018

    I'm not questioning you @JohnnyboyGo but if you read what Aomei says, they are flat out misleading and their directions are wrong. They do specifically say to restore the parent Full backup first, then the incremental or differential. I've contacted Support before about this and they said to do exactly what you said. The problem here is the manual and not how the product works.

  • Hey Flyer. Here is an article I just came across that clears it all up:

    http://ask-leo.com/what_do_i_do_with_incremental_backups_when_restoring.html

  • edited March 2018

    Good article and does what @JohnnyboyGo said. I assumed that was what happens and also with differential backups, but then it only relies on the last differential and the full. As I last stated, the problem isn't how the program functions, it's how the "help" section is written. It needs to be edited. It is most likely something that's stated incorrectly when being translated.

    I've restored multiple times using a Full backup to copy system drives for friends who were upgrading to SSD's and for myself to a spare SSD to test the function. I've never tried to restore from a diffential or incremental backup.

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