User`s guide

Why incremental?

In an incremental backup, only the files changed or added since the last time the backup ran are

added to the archive. When recovering from an incremental backup, the program must copy the

entire initial backup and then step through each of the previous backups to retrieve all the updated

files.

An incremental backup created after a disk is defragmented might be considerably larger than usual.

This is because the defragmentation program changes file locations on the disk and the backups

reflect these changes. Therefore, it is recommended that you re-create a full backup after disk

defragmentation.

3.3 Backup file naming conventions

Let's remember that Acronis True Image OEM Quick Backup may split a full or incremental archive

into volumes either when a user sets the splitting option or when a large backup having a size bigger

than 4GB is saved to a FAT32 disk. See "Backup archive components" in Acronis True Image OEM

Quick Backup basic concepts.

Though users may assign any name to backups, many would still prefer using automatic naming and

the below information may come in handy when viewing the contents of a backup archive storage in

Windows Explorer and trying to figure out, e.g. which are full and which are incremental.

1) When saved to a FAT32 disk, such backup may be split into volumes with the names

SystemBackup_mm_dd_yyyy1.tib, SystemBackup_mm_dd_yyyy2.tib,

SystemBackup_mm_dd_yyyy3.tib, etc., where mm_dd_yyyy is the date of backup creation in the

following format: month (one or two digits), day (one or two digits), year (four digits).

As in this case the subsequent automatically scheduled backups will replace the previous one (once

every seven days by default) only after the next backup finishes (to keep the old backup in the event

of the current backup's failure), the backup filename(s) will be alternately named

SystemBackup_mm_dd_yyyy.tib and SystemBackup_mm_dd_yyyy(1).tib.

2) In some cases when you create a new full backup task at a new destination, the backup gets the

name "MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyy.tib".

If a backup is split (either automatically, e.g. due to the 4GB file size limit on FAT32 disks or when

configuring a backup task), the constituent backup files (volumes) are named as follows:

MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyy1.tib…MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyyN.tib, where N is the number of volumes

Subsequent incremental backups to this full backup will get the names as follows –

MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyy2.tib, MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyy3.tib, etc. (if the full backup is not split) or

MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyyN+1.tib, MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyyN+2.tib, etc. For instance, if N=8,

incremental backups will get the names MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyy9.tib,

MyBackup_mm_dd_yyyy10.tib, etc.

3) When you back up, for example, partitions C and D, the backup gets the name

"System_C_D_mm_dd_yyyy.tib".

4) If you right-click on a folder in Windows Explorer and choose Back Up in the shortcut menu, the

backup file gets the name of the folder with appended date, e.g. My Documents_mm_dd_yyyy.tib.

If you right-click on a file in Windows Explorer and choose Back Up in the shortcut menu, the backup

file gets the name of the file with appended date, i.e. filename_mm_dd_yyyy.tib.