Ignore .vhd, sys vol info, windowsimagebackup etc

[bob_5789]

Hi,

 

I wonder if there is a backup strategy for dealing with the contents of these folders:

 

System Volume Information (I asssume these are restore points) of which I have 140gig's worth.

I have Windows Backup also running that has created a folder of 41gig

 

Also wondering about .vhd files - it reports there is a 118GB file - but I cannot see it in windows

I am trying to back up a 387gig D drive to a USB 465gig HD - so there should be plenty of room - but it always fails, reporting out of space !.
 

I have Single Server V7.6.123 running on Windows 7 SP1.

 

I can go into Disk Management and attach the VHD file, which reports is 273gig in size - could this be the culprit.

 

Should I exlude these folders on the backup, and create specific scripts that recycle each time the backup is run - as it appears old images are being backed up - which are unecessary.

 

Any pointers on how to deal with this situation would be very helpful.
 

[jotrago]

Retrospect V7 does "Progressive" backup of changed files.

SysVolInfo does indeed store Restore points amongst other NTFS related data.

Windows Backup creates large image files as you indicated

.vhd files are usually Disk Image files belonging to Virtual Machines, presumably you are using HyperV to run a VM

 

A first backup with Retrospect will backup all these items, and as you say the contents of the 387G drive should fit on the 465 G drive.

However on the next backup if a file has changed it will be backed up again.

EG if your VHD has changed another 118 or 273G could be backed up

Similarly if your Windows Backup has updated a file that could cause another 41 Gig to backup

Thus your 465G drive is highly likely to run out of space on the Second backup run.

 

Strategies:-

Do you really need to use Windows backup AND then Retrospect.

.vhd, since the VHD file will contain any changes to the VM you could get a way with keeping only on e backup Copy. Make a separate job and overwrite the backup every time.

SysVolInfo 0 Use the System Restore management and the VSS management to manage the number of Restore Points and VSS Snapshots you keep to reduce the size.

 

Upgrade to the latest Retrospect with has "Block Level" backups of large files whereby it only backs up the changes WITHIN the files, not the entire file. This would go a long way to solving your issues. (V7 is now really ancient and is not properly supported on Modern (W7&8 and later) OSs)