TeraByte Unlimited

Upgraded to Image For Windows v3.18 recently. Noticed the use of two new image destination files: .#_# & .#0.

What are these files for? Are they necessary for a restore, or are they only "helpful". This is important to know as image files are often moved to remote locations due to destination drive space constraints. Do these files also need to be moved with the image files?

AResister wrote:
> Upgraded to Image For Windows v3.18 recently. Noticed the use of two new
> image destination files: .#_# & .#0.
>
> What are these files for?

> Are they necessary for a restore,

No.

>or are they
> only "helpful". This is important to know as image files are
> often moved to remote locations due to destination drive space constraints.
> Do these files also need to be moved with the image files?

No.

See viewtopic.php?f=4&t=2783

Thanks, Bob.
What are these files for?

They speed up creating Changes Only backups. They are the hash files created when the "Create Sector Hash Files" option is used.

AResister wrote:
> Thanks, Bob.
> What are these files for?

Answered above by Paul.

The ability to create these files has existed for some time, but creating them became the default action in version 3.18 as indicated in the thread I referenced above. You can specify options to suppress creating the files if you desire and you might want to if you only create complete backups.

As a result of creating the files becoming the default action, I've discovered that having the files does result in a dramatic reduction in the time required to create changes only backups.

Thanks, Bob & Paul. This is helpful.

In my case, I never do incremental/differential (changes only) backups. I always do full backups. Since I launch my backups using a PowerShell script triggered by a scheduled task, I need to figure out how to suppress these hash files. I presume there is a command line switch for this that I need to find.

You would add the /hash:0 parameter to the command line.

Or you could change the default backup options so the setting is disabled.

For clarification, on command line you'd need to use /hash:0 as [backup_options] is not pulled in to have a consistent command line. global options are now pulled in, that was added quite a while ago.