Incremental backup

M

MitchM

Junior Member
Hello,

While running my nightly backup, using "Backup" from Mac, the first full backup was 40 gb, and now the nightly incrementals are 10 - 12 gb.
Before installing Parallels with Vista Ultimate, my incremental backup size was typically 100 mb.
I'm using Vista very little, other than for PCAnywhere right now.
Any suggestions what I can "deselect" from the backup process?
..or is this to be expected now?
I'm backing up to a Lacie 150gb hard drive firewire.

My system is a 20" iMac Intel Core Duo 2GHz with 2GB RAM and 250 Gb hard drive w/10.4.9

Thanks,
Mitch
 
MitchM said:
Hello,

While running my nightly backup, using "Backup" from Mac, the first full backup was 40 gb, and now the nightly incrementals are 10 - 12 gb.
Before installing Parallels with Vista Ultimate, my incremental backup size was typically 100 mb.
I'm using Vista very little, other than for PCAnywhere right now.
Any suggestions what I can "deselect" from the backup process?
..or is this to be expected now?
I'm backing up to a Lacie 150gb hard drive firewire.

My system is a 20" iMac Intel Core Duo 2GHz with 2GB RAM and 250 Gb hard drive w/10.4.9

Thanks,
Mitch
Click to expand...
While what you're seeing is certainly a byproduct of using Parallels, it's expected behavior and would occur with any virtualization package. Here's why:

Virtualized OSs are stored as very large single files on the host's hard drive. Your Mac backup software backs up files which have changed each night (which, as you know, is the definition of an incremental backup). If you've run Vista, even for a split second, its VM image file will have changed - even if all you did was start it up and then shut it right down. OSs are constantly writing to disk, behind the scenes.

I'd suggest excluding Vista's .hdd file from your nightly incremental backups. Since you mention that you don't use Vista for much, you might be OK with just picking it up during your weekly full backups.
 
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