Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

I have a multi-file image consisting of these three files:

Entire_Primary_SSD.rdr (a full backup)
Entire_Primary_SSD2.rdr (an incremental backup)
Entire_Primary_SSD3.rdr (a differential backup)

When all three files are in the same folder, I can mount the latest image, i.e. Entire_Primary_SSD3.rdr. However, when I delete the preceding incremental image (Entire_Primary_SSD2.rdr) from the folder and then I try to mount the same Entire_Primary_SSD3.rdr file, an error message is displayed: Cannot connect an image. Maximum number of virtual disks exceeded.

Is it an expected behaviour? Do you need to keep ALL sequential files of a multi-file image for it to work? I would have thought that if I have both a full image and a differential image then it is all I need because a differential image does not need any preceding incremental images as it always references the last full image only.

Thank you for reporting this problem. We're investigation into it.
BTW, may it be possible that Entire_Primary_SSD2.rdr is a differential backup, whereas Entire_Primary_SSD3.rdr an incremental one?

BTW, may it be possible that Entire_Primary_SSD2.rdr is a differential backup, whereas Entire_Primary_SSD3.rdr an incremental one?

No, the second one is incremental and the third one is differential. And as I've said, an incremental backup should not be needed to mount a valid image if you have a full backup and a differential backup. The point with mixing different types of backups is that over time you may delete some intermediate incremental backups to save storage space and still rely on just full and differential backups. For example, let's say you have the following backups:

(1) Image - full backup
(2) Image2 - incremental backup
(3) Image3 - incremental backup
(4) Image4 - differential backup
(5) Image5 - incremental backup
(6) Image6 - incremental backup
(7) Image7 - differential backup

Over time, you should be able to delete images from 2 to 6 and still be able to restore/mount the image from backups 1 and 7. Otherwise, what's the point of differential backups, anyway? From my limited testing, it seems that R-Drive Image can restore an image in such a scenario, an error is generated when trying to mount such an image, though.

I have tested the latest build (7109) with the same scenario: a full backup (1) followed by an incremental backup (2) followed by a differential backup (3). Then I deleted the incremental backup (2) and tried to restore and mount the resulting image consisting now of the full backup (1) + differential backup (3). The restore operation worked fine, the disk was restored without any problems. However, the mount operation failed. I tried to mount the image from the differential version first and then even from the first full backup version. Both attempts failed with the error message about exceeding the limit of virtual disks (even though none were mounted).

This bug will be fixed in the next release. Soon.

Alt wrote: ↑

Fri Sep 15, 2023 12:09 pm

This bug will be fixed in the next release. Soon.

I can confirm that this issue has been fixed in the latest build (7110). Thanks!