Suggestions for an Incremental backup program that doesn't duplicate?

AndarielHalo · 20 Nov 2013

I've been using Windows Backup normally for incremental backups, but it's reached a point where it takes more than 24 hours straight to backup my entire drive, and the constant duplicates being made by the backup means I have to backup the entire drive once every 3-4 months on average.

Are there any backup programs that do incremental backups, only backing up new and changed files? Problem I had with Windows Backup was it would duplicate certain video or music files that I had actually opened and viewed, even if it was just for a brief second.

I tried Macrinum, and immediately dumped it upon being faced with over 9000 options and realizing it had no incremental on the free version

whs · 20 Nov 2013

How big is the partition you image - 24 hours seems to be very much out of the ordinary.

I use free Macrium and my images are usually done in minutes. Either your partition is huge or your disks are slow.

I would highly warn about incrementals. If you lose 1 increment in the chain, you lose it all. Differentials are a bit better but I still prefer full images by far. Those are the easiest t manage.

Free Paragon can do differentials. But that is not as easy to use as Macrium.

Here is an example of my typical backup time ( three and a half minutes) for the OS partition. But my OS is on a SSD and I image to an internal HDD.

AndarielHalo · 20 Nov 2013

It's definitely huge; my harddrive is 930+ GB large.

whs · 20 Nov 2013

And how much data is on that drive. Maybe you should consider to split the user data into a different partition. Then you could image the OS fast and use a sync program for backing up the data. That is fast.

AndarielHalo · 20 Nov 2013

930+ GB is how much data I have, I mean. The drive itself is 1.36 TB large.

whs · 20 Nov 2013

I would make a new partition and move the OS there. Then delete the OS from your current partition and use that as data-only partition. That operation is a bit finagle, but it can be done.

AndarielHalo · 21 Nov 2013

I don't understand... what's that supposed to accomplish? I don't care about separating system components from personal files in my backup

Lady Fitzgerald · 21 Nov 2013

AndarielHalo said:

I don't understand... what's that supposed to accomplish? I don't care about separating system components from personal files in my backup

You should care. System files are the ones that get fouled up the most often. Separating the system files from the data files allows one to image and restore the system files far more quickly. The main advantage with this is one can quickly make an image of the system files before making some kind of change, such as installing a new program or installing updates. Then, if things go pear shaped, you can quickly restore the image you made before the change. If you had to make an image of the entire drive, it would take forever to image and restore.

AddRAM · 21 Nov 2013

Your personal files should be stored on another partition or hard drive, at least I hope that`s where you have them.

If you kept it that way it wouldn`t take forever to do a backup, of windows anyway.

whs · 21 Nov 2013

AndarielHalo said:

I don't understand... what's that supposed to accomplish? I don't care about separating system components from personal files in my backup

I don't think there is any Guru on this forum that has the data stored in the system partition. Far too dangerous to lose the data. But if you want to take that risk, that's fine with me. You will become part of the long line of people who only learn the hard way.