New
#1
Restoring a backup results in duplicated files and directories!
I found something a little unexpected when using Windows 7 backup. I had thought that after doing a full backup followed by several incremental backups over time I could get a crash and a restore would result in the same file structure that was present at the time of the latest incremental backup. Indeed I thought that the point of the backup utility was to recreate your data in the same form as the last backup. It seems this isn’t so. What I found was the following. I have files and directories say all under a parent directory and I do a full backup of the parent directory. Then I reorganize things by moving some of the files and directories under the parent into another directory under the parent. Then I do an incremental backup. When I restore to this latest backup, any file or directory that had been moved now appears in two places!! It appears in its original location under the parent before it was moved and it also appears in its final correct location under the directory into which it was moved. Ergo, the restored parent directory now contains duplicate files and directories which were not present at the time of the latest incremental backup. I was surprised to learn this since I thought the point of the backup was to be able to restore to the same file structure present at the time of the last incremental backup. It seems if you want to do that, then you need to do only full backups which take a long time of course.
Any information on this will be appreciated.
- Is this the correct operation for Windows 7 backup?
- Is there a way to work around this or setting to solve the problem?
- If not, do all backup programs also behave like this?