Is a backup image one file, or many?

[Halo Diehards]

Hello, I'm having an issue where my 2TB Canvio external drive is full, when my files and folders only add up to 291 GB. When I take a peek in the Images folder, I see upwards of 50 .NBF files. I'm trying to figure out if each of these is a backup image (I don't see settings anywhere to delete old versions of the backup) or if all of these are needed to restore, but they're taking up 2.42 TB of space on my external drive.

It seems really strange, but I can't find answers for this anywhere! So any enlightenment is appreciated. Thanks!

 

[ESPclipse]

If Windows backup is not set to store system images, then it will not, else it usually only keeps a couple. You can manage which images it keeps by playing with some of the backup settings. Windows also backs up changes to the folders that you told Windows to back up when you configured Windows backup. Every time Windows backup service runs, it creates a compressed file containing new files that did not exist the previous backup. These backup files build up over time and you should probably clear out the drive occasionally to preserve storage space.

 

[McHenryB]

You don't say what backup software you are using but, from the extension, I deduce that it is NTI Backup Now. As the amount of space used by the backups is 7 times the size of the files backed up I think it is safe to assume that you have a series of backups here rather than a single one. But it very much depends upon how your backups are configured - it may be that you still need all of those files to be sure of retrieving everything from the disk (it's possible that these are incremental backups that are only added to when a file changes - so the changes could be spread over all the files, with some files having several versions stored).

The only way to be sure is to read the manual for your backup software and make sure that you really understand how it works. You can then configure it for your particular requirements, balancing number of backups retained over size of the backup. It also means that if you ever need to restore a file you will understand what you are doing. In NTI Backup Now you can configure it so that (i) backups overwrite previous versions, or (ii) backups are appended to previous versions. It sounds as if you may be doing the latter.

 

[Halo Diehards]

Yes, McHenryB, I am using NTI Backup Now EZ. I tried to use Windows backup to backup to the external drive, and it wouldn't work. I've searched online and in the user manual for the Toshiba Canvio and cannot find any settings that would allow me to configure it so backups overwrite previous versions. The settings are extremely limited. I tried finding a program that would do that for all my files and folders, and today I've downloaded SyncToy to try that, but I need to make space on the Canvio first.

It sounds like both of you have nailed it, as far as all the files being appended files and folders. I change stuff around a lot, which is why I need a backup program that copies those changes for my files and folders. Maybe I can just delete all the images and have NTI Backup Now EZ save a new, fresh one, then set up the SyncToy to take care of the files and folders.

 

[McHenryB]

That program doesn't seem to be very configurable. No 3 in the FAQs ( http://www.nticorp.com/en/us/cms/faqdetail.aspx?id=204 ) seems to cover your situation.

I'm not a big fan of the backup software that comes free with hard drives or computers; it does always seem to be very limited. The best home computer backup software that I know is Time Machine for OS X (not quite as good as the enterprise system from IBM that I used to manage on our work networks, but that involved an investment of several tens of thousands of pounds), which is easy to use and doesn't suffer from this sort of problem (it automatically deletes old versions of files as the disk gets full but always retains a full consistent set of files).

The nearest that I know for a Windows machine (which I use on my Windows PCs) is Genie Timeline Home ( http://www.genie9.com/home/home_solutions.aspx ). It's a commercial program (they used to do a free version, but I can't see that now), but isn't too expensive and they do a free trial. I'm sure there must be similar products available.