Veeam incremental backups are huge

[usjc]

Hi,

We are using Veeam Agent Free for Windows for a couple of the users. We are backing up to their home folder on a smb file server. I did the initial set up to only backup their Documents folder for testing purposes. We noticed that the incremental backups are huge (GB's).

User 1:
Initial full backup (.vbk) is 100GB, understandable, but the incremental backups (.vib) shows 47GB, 47GB, 48GB, 47GB. I verified with the user if they think they've been managing (edit, change, create, etc.) that amount of data and confirmed they have not.

User 2:
Initial full backup (.vbk) is 134GB, again understandable, but the incremental backups (.vib) are all relatively high as well 31GB, 31GB, 31GB, 15GB, 32GB

Steps I've done to configure a backup on our SMB server:
File level backup (slower) -> Selected ONLY Documents folder -> Shared folder -> Inserted our shared folder information and crendentials -> Scheduled Daily backup based on users preference (e.g. 12:30pm a backup will occur).

The above steps is EXACTLY how it sounds, no additional checkboxes or modifications were touched - all default settings.

Any idea why our users incremental backups are relatively half the full backups?

[Gostev]

This can only be caused by someone or something modifying many of the protected files every day.

[Andreas Neufert]

Does this share contain Windows User Profiles ?
Or folders that were linked from Windows User Profiles (like forward tmp into user home share)

[usjc]

This can only be caused by someone or something modifying many of the protected files every day.

Hi Gostev,

So you're saying "protected" files that are modified end up having a larger incremental backup than a regular file?

Some of our users do handle confidential files and such.

[usjc]

Does this share contain Windows User Profiles ?
Or folders that were linked from Windows User Profiles (like forward tmp into user home share)

Hi Andreas,

No, I edited the job to make sure it only checkmarks the Documents folder.
(Local Users (C:) -> Users -> the users Domain login (e.g. John Smith) -> Documents

[Gostev]

Hi Joshua, unmodified files will not be included in the incremental backup at all, only modified files are included. If no protected files were modified between backup job runs, then your incremental backup will be tiny (restore point metadata only). Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Hello Joshua,

Can you check the content of the backup file? Any chance users store outlook files in the documents folder? Thanks!

[Andreas Neufert]

Please check as well the modification date of the files. As "Documents" Folder is part of the user profile, windows might copy the userprofile arround and therefore changes the modified timestamp automatically.