Big backups all the time (>2.5GB), is that normal?

[JChris]

I have the following config on "Files" tab:



I have VEB set to backup no more often than 6 hours when target is connected. My usual backup size is ~2.5GB or bigger, even when I didn't install anything new on the computer. How is that possible?

[Mike Resseler]

Juan,

It could be but every 6 hours that amount of changes seems a lot. I even see an incremental of 30 gig in the list also.
Before we dive deeper on finding the root cause: You don't install that much on your computer, that is one thing. But are you certain there are specific files that are not changing / downloading / ... all the time? Maybe some large save files from a game or so? Or music / video's that you are editing / compiling / something?

Could you look at your D: drive (to start with) and see what is changed the last couple of hours (modified)

Thanks
Mike

[Damman]

Have pretty much the same problem here...

But on reflection, I think it's due to my .pst files. No ?

[Mike Resseler]

I would assume no... Unless your PST files actually have that amount of churn so frequently... When it is volume backup (not file level backup, other story) we do the based on block changes so it won't backup the entire PST again when there are only small changes... Only the block changes are protected.

[JChris]

Those 8, 15, 30GB files are indeed results of new software/game installation, those are OK, but the vast majority is just regular PC use, no new install, and as you can see they are always at least 1.5GB. I use Spotify so the music are always streamed and I don't work with videos so that's out, but I do work with programming (Java and Python, where the first one deals with compile-run process), but the files aren't anything near gigabytes. The software I have installed as of now are:

C: drive = SSD
D: drive = HDD

- Chrome
- Steam (installed on D: so the games are automatically installed on the HDD)
- Discord
- Internet Download Manager (temp files on C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\IDM\ and completed download on D:/Downloads)
- MPC-HC
- Spotify
- CCleaner
- Office 2016 Pro Plus
- Intellij IDEA Ultimate
- PyCharm Professional
- VMware Workstation (I don't have any VM on the computer)
- Sublime Text 3
- Kaspersky Internet Security
- Dropbox

The only game I'm currently playing is GTA V and they save some data on "D:\Documents\Rockstar Games", but the entire folder is just 80MB.

How can I do a "diff" on VIBs files to spot what changed?

----

Just so as you see the issue, I ran 2 backups with 2min window and the last one ended up with a 610MB restore size, how is that possible?

First backup (12:06PM)


Second backup (12:08PM)

[Dima P.]

Juan,

I guess the best place to investigate why you increments are growing is task manager with disk I/O output. It should show what applications are writing to disk and affecting your incremental job runs.

[JChris]

Let task manager open for some time and I/O was always below 3%, and for the most part of the time it was 0% on both disks. What would really help me is do a "diff" between the VIBs so I know what was written, and by the files that were modified I would easily know which software, config or whatever is the culprit.

[Mike Resseler]

I don't believe we have such a tool available. At this point in time, I feel that it is best to log a support call through the UI (free, but without SLA, on a best effort basis) to figure out what is causing these big changes...

Please post your case ID here and what support has advised. It would be helpful for other users also.

Thanks
Mike

[Damman]

Hi,

If it's not my .PST (pst that I don't touch), I have same issue.

Like JChris, I run 2 backups one after the other and the 2 backups have pretty much the same size (2GB).

[Dima P.]

Damman,

Can you please clarify where you actually keep your backup files? Thanks.

[Damman]

On a file server why ?

http://imgur.com/a/bwC2W

Yesterday, 3GB each time. I use File Level Backup.
Just save Documents, Download, Favorites and Desktop. All of this data take +- 6Gb.

The only big file is the pst (4,5 gb).



Again, sorry for my bad English...

[Dima P.]

The backup destination is configured as a Shared folder, is that correct?

I use File Level Backup.

Have you tried volume level backup instead? File level backup is slower and may create a bigger increment than expected.

[Damman]

Didn't try because we don't want volume backup.

It's a share backup yes.

We will wait the version 2.0

[hoFFy]

If doing file-level backup you could disable every folder and enable it one by one to check from where the mass of the "new" data comes.
"Operating System" could be a good candidate. You also spoke about Spotify... A few days ago Spotify was on the news tickers because of their constant high writing rate on disk, which made some SDD users become a headache

[JChris]

Contacted support:

Thank you for contacting Veeam Support. My name is Adam and I will be the support engineer for this case. First and formost, and this may already be known, but incremental backups are based on changes from the previous backup run. For file level backups, these are based on the date the files were last modified.

It is hard to say as to what files were modifed from the last time the backup ran and the next time it ran. But Windows OS, tend to perform lots of changes to files in the background without the user knowing. Sometimes these changes include updates either on the file itself or even the main Windows updates.

If you are looking to find out what files are getting changed, you could try opening up the backup file using the file level restore and see which files were last updated. But when using the File Level Restore tool, the entire directory will still open up and not just the files that were included in the incremental backup. So we have no way to determine what files were included in the incremental backup without going through them one by one in the Veeam Explorer.

So at this point I would like to gather some more information. First what type of machine is this and what purpose does this machine serve in this enviornment? Are the Endpoint incremental files about the same size for each backup file? How much total data is being backed up on this machine? And any other additional information that can be included is appricated.

Thank you for sharing the results of that test. To answer your question, there isn't anything more that we can do to decrease backup sizes for a backup of the OS volume. And again this is because of the constant changes to the system files done by Windows in the background. In fact this is expected behavior for backups of the OS volume.

If you are concerned about backup sizes eating up the storage, then simple answer would be to decrease the amount of backup runs to just once a day instead of a few times a day. You might even compare the daily incrementals to the incrementals created twice a day and see if the backup file sizes are comparable. Typically the sizes should be comparable or at least close to each other, albeit likely the daily incremental will likely be larger then the other incrementals.. But otherwise, perhaps decreasing retention may help this out.

Any questions on this, please do not hesitate to ask. Otherwise, I hope this information helps out.

In short, there's nothing Veeam can do. Windows do a lot of file changes constantly and even doing Volume Level Backup doesn't help. So, if you're doing OS backup you must deal with it, sadly.

[chaycock]

I think this issue is exactly why people (including myself) have been asking (for a long time) for a feature that lets you get a list of files included in each incremental backup so we can figure out what is going on when this type of issue arises.

[Gostev]

Dima, let's do this! Just dump the list of changed files to debug log?