While rebuilding my Windows 10 install, I decided to switch from CS6/Legacy plug-ins to the Topaz suite of software. As part of the rebuild process, each time I do a major install or change, I perform an incremental backup (using Macrium Reflect 8) and then tag the incremental with what was changed.
Once I had the incremental for all the Topaz software installs, I then started each tool, activated it, and then exited. I then performed another incremental backup to catpure the activations, and the incremental file size was 19GB! I was stunned.
Thinking I had done the incremental incorrectly, I simply started Topaz Studio 2 again, exited, and then ran another incremental. 18.5GB!
What is Topaz Studio 2 changing on the disk that is causing such a massive differential in my backup software? That’s almost a full third of the full backup of the entire system. Is there any way to avoid this?
I’ve been trying various scenarios since my previous post, and I cannot get it to reproduce. This might be a behavior/bug/glitch of the backup software and nothing to do with Topaz.
Until/unless I can reliably reproduce it, I’m going to declare this a false alarm. Apologies for the noise.
Firstly it is pointless doing backups of software, use reinstall if you need to.
Secondly I would check with Macrium as I don’t believe that software does incremental backups because it is an imaging and cloning software that backs up and restores partitions and drives.
Firstly it is pointless doing backups of software, use reinstall if you need to.
I perform the back up on the entire disk as an incremental between each change.
Secondly I would check with Macrium as I don’t believe that software does incremental backups because it is an imaging and cloning software that backs up and restores partitions and drives.
Yes, Macruim does indeed do incremental backups. I’ve been doing them for the past month since I switched to it from Acronis.
In any case, I know what I’m doing with regard to backups. I’ve been doing them for the past 10 years.
As it turns out, I think the reason I saw this occur was because I was doing a new Windows 10 install. I think the Windows 10 update system had downloaded more updates in the background while I was installing and running Topaz, and I associated the disk-usage increase with Topaz.
My next boot of the new operating system presented me with an update to install. I think that update was being placed on the disk at the same time as Topaz. I think this also explains why I had trouble reproducing it afterward.
