Once upon a time, Christoph Litauer <litauer AT uni-koblenz DOT de> said:
> This works but has two ceveats: ntbackup runs several minutes even on an 
> unused system and the resulting backup is severeal gb every day.

It sounds like you are not excluding things you should exclude.  An
incremental backup of an unused system should not be several GB/day.

Something like this should help (but remember that changing the
include/exclude will cause the next backup to be promoted to a full
backup):

  Options {
    # Windows is case-preserving, NOT case-sensitive
    Ignore Case = yes
    Exclude = yes

    # general Windows stuff
    wilddir = "c:/Windows/$NtServicePackUninstall$"
    wilddir = "c:/Windows/$NtUninstall*"
    wilddir = "c:/Windows/Installer/$PatchCache$"
    wilddir = "c:/Windows/ServicePackFiles"
    wilddir = "c:/Windows/SoftwareDistribution/Download"
    wilddir = "c:/Windows/Temp"

    # per drive
    wilddir = "[a-z]:/$Recycle.Bin"
    wilddir = "[a-z]:/RECYCLER"
    wilddir = "[a-z]:/System Volume Information"
    wilddir = "[a-z]:/pagefile.sys"
  }

The biggest things that will hit incremental backups of unused systems
are the last two in the list.  The "System Volume Information" directory
is where VSS information is stored, so it can be large during the
backup.  Also, any activity (such as running ntbackup) can cause changes
in pagefile.sys, which will cause the whole file to be included in the
backup (and it can also be big).

Now, I have a question of my own related to this: ntbackup is gone in
newer versions of Windows.  What are people using to do the equivalent
of "ntbackup backup systemstate" there?
-- 
Chris Adams <cmadams AT hiwaay DOT net>
Systems and Network Administrator - HiWAAY Internet Services
I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble.

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