Could win7 prevent backup software to do fast incremental backup ?

Hello everyone,

This is my first post here. I’m daring to ask for help only because I’m wondering if the issue I have could be due to a specificity of the windows I use.

If you have documentations or pages you think I might find useful, please redirect me towards them.


Abstract : Could the slowlyness of incremental backups done under win7 be caused not by the backup softwares but by a setting in my «tweaked for music production» Win7 ?

Derived question that might help me : What are the tricks of backup softwares to produce an incremental backup without scanning the whole source volume ?


My situation :

I boot my old computer either with Win XP SP2 or Win7 (no SP), according the tasks I have to accomplish.

I have a 2 data partitions that I backup regularily.

On WinXP, I use Acronis True Image 2010 to do incremental image backups of my datas on external USB 3 HDDs, plugged via USB 2

It works perfectly. An incremental BUP for a 1To volume in wich only a few files have changed will take a few minutes. Great.

Now: I started using external HDD that are > 2To.

Win XP cannot easily deal with them.

So I decided I should , from now on, do my backups from the win 7 partition.

But Acronis True Image 2010 is known not to be compatible with Win7, so I was unable to install it (I tried. Acronis claims it is a windows issue)

So I started experimenting with other backup solutions that are compatible with Win7.

But with each software I tested (R-Drive Image and AOMEI ), I get the same problem :
Whenever I do an incremental backup, the whole volume get scanned ; and for a 1To volume, even if only a few files have been modified or added, the incremental backup lasts 2hours (or the time it takes to read the whole source volume).

The resulting incremental archive is small, as expected, but it took 2 hours to lay it on the external drive.

I had tryied Hasleo as well. It seemed to work worrectly for a few weeks, but then it started refusing to open, alleging that «this old version is not taken in charge anymore » (something like that).

Since I get the same result with AOMEI and R-Drive Image, I wondered if the problem could come from my Win7 configuration ? I had made a few tweaks , back in the days I had installed this OS, so that my digital music production system works flawlessly. So there might be something I have turned off that prevents the incremental backups to happen as fast as they happened under XP with Acronis.

But since I don’t know how the trick of « producing an incremental backup in a few minutes» is done, I’m unable to go further in my research for a solution. (VSS seems to be running fine, and anyway, VSS was not a part of XP, if I’m not mistaken.)

My questions :

Am I right to say that an incremental back up of a volume where only few files have been modified should always be very fast (a few minutes) ? (NB: I’m aware that a defragmentation can cause the backup to be very long and heavy, but there is no defrag involved in the tests I did, of course. And only the time it takes to do the BUP is a problem. The time and the fact that I’m afraid this kind of behavior wears off my HDDs.)

What in WIN 7 could force backup softwares to scan the whole source volume ?

And why the softwares are not complaining about this behavior ?

NB : the external HDD I use with Win7 initiated Backups are GPT formated, since they are >2To.


Thanks for any help, any clue, any documentation you could provide to feed my quest



Louie.

 

Thanks for your detailed answer, Alexandros.

I’m the kind of person who enforces the « if it’s not broken, don’t fix it» law : this is why my Win7 has never had an update (it is not connected to the internet and is dedicated to run the softwares I work with).
But I admit that a Win7 without a SP is very uncommon, and it feels more and more like you are right pointing out that it could be the cause of my problem.

I’m taking a good note of the steps you are suggesting, and I must say that the tools you are bringing to my attention are all very exciting (Simplix, Snappy Driver Install and the integrated edition of XP most of all).

But before I explore all of them, I want to try something : I have 150Go of free space on my system HDD and I ‘ve been wanting to install a fresh win10 on it for a long time (it eventually become a Slimdown 10). I just have to deal with the triple boot issue, but this is the subject of another thread altogether.

Since my original post, I read a lot about CBT (changed bit tracking), that seemed to be exactly what acronis True Image 10 was doing to avoid the entire scan of a volume, and what I was expecting from AOMEI or R-Drive (in an volume image backup scenario, of course, not a file image backup).
And I found that Veeam (free edition) might use CBT for physical drive backup. But it clearly says the oldest OS Veeam is able to run from is Win7... SP1 ! So, you see how your edit 1 might be in the truth.

Again, thank you for having taken the time to respond so clearly.

I will post my results here, as soon as I have some.

Louie

 

I woudn‘t be able to show you the sources I had found at the time, right now.

I had had a error during the installation, wich I had found other people had too. I had read the discussions around that error, and some of them pointed to Acronis responding to this specific issue. Acronis, in substance, concluded that they couldn‘t do anything because it was a Windows Issue.

I should have copied my sources. But you are right : I shouldn’t have implied that anybody with win7 had problems.

I believe you, of course. And the fact that I tried and install ATI 10 on a Win7 with no ServicePack whatsoever might be the origin of my problem with ATI 10 also. Veeam need SP1 , and maybe the windows issue Acronis was pointing out was adressed in the service pack1 of win7.
(again : the reason I never updated win7 is work very steadily with the version I have and I don’t like to fiddle with a working system if it’s not vital)

Anyhow, I read with much interest your feeling about old school backup vs vhds. I never ever tried to use VHDs, tbh, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to or if it will meet my needs.
I’ll try and find a « vhd for dummies» manual somewhere, and I will study this possibility. If it allows ponctuel ( not continuous) incremental backups in no time as acronis was able to do, it might be wise for me to go this way, of course.