Had a question. I routinely back up my Windows Vista PC on my Seagate Harddrive.
Thing is, more and more space is consumed so I have very little left.
The folder hosues every single back-up I have done.
Wanted to know if I have to keep all the back-ups, or if I can delete them and just keep the most recent.
I am starting to get very low on memory.
1) Go to windows vista...control panel...click back-up computer
2) It finds the Seagate drive (G) and backs up.
Now...when I open my Seagate drive:
1) It has a folder called "Johnny's PC" (The name I have for my PC)
2) I double click the icon and see one folder labeled "Backup Set 2012-02-04 000750"
3) I double click this folder's icon and it shows me four separate folders inside:
2) Backup Files 2012-02-04-000750
-When I first click it says "Folder is empty" so then I double click the folder icon and it states "You currently do not have permission to access the folder, click continue to access" which I do, and I now see 179 zip files which have between 150,000-200,000 KB of data per folder.
-When I now exit the folder, and go back outside, when I highlight the 02-04 folder it states I have 32 GB instead of being empty.
3) Backup Files 2012-02-23 233853 ....same thing....says empty...gain permission..find 5 zip files...exit and now it says folders has 547 MB and is not empty
4) Backup Files 2012-03-17 145108.....same thing...says empty...gain permission...find 29 zip files...exit...and now it says the folder has 4.73 GB and is not empty
So my, since each time I back-up I lose more and more space (and now have only 6 GB of 80 free)....umm what is going on. Do I really need all of these old folders or just the first one (02-04) and the last one (03-17) before I back-up for this week (03-31).
Do you do full or incremental back ups? If you do full backups, take the most recent one. If you do incremental, idk, incremental backup only saves the things that have changed since the previous back up.
Maybe do a full backup now and delete everything else?
OK...well I just tried to back up again and got this message after nearly completing a full 2 hour backup:
What do I do?
Try again. You can run check disc on the backup drive. You can run a check disk on your main drive too just to make sure it's healthy. It just means a file that was backed up didn't match up right when it was checked with the original I believe.
When you check the backup are the files there and can they be restored?
__________________
History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.
2) Just did "chkdsk/r" too for several hours, it fixed some "music file" which I downloaded from bitlord and it is all fine.
So in wrapping up, was my C drive or Seaggate the problem; and why is this the 2nd time I've had this BOTH with a music file? (This same problem happened in the fall)?
2) Just did "chkdsk/r" too for several hours, it fixed some "music file" which I downloaded from bitlord and it is all fine.
So in wrapping up, was my C drive or Seaggate the problem; and why is this the 2nd time I've had this BOTH with a music file? (This same problem happened in the fall)?
Could be there is some copy protection in the file that tries to prevent it's copying. I don't know for sure. Could just be a coincidence. Try moving the file to a USB disk and remove it from your main disk during the back up and see how it goes.
I am curious; this is a serious question, what is the point of a whole backup of a computer?
Myself, I backup documents/photos/save game folders... (things like that), but is there a real benefit of backing up entire computer? I would think, and this is why I am asking, as long as documents/photos/music/non-replaceables etc... are safe, reinstalling windows in the case of a full crash/failure is not very difficult (a pain in the butt and time consuming sure, but not really a big deal). My Steam folder is well over 500GBs, losing it would suck but no big deal I just need to re-download what I want.
I am honestly curious as to the benefits of full backups.
I always do full system backups, so I don't have to install all my programs and redo all my settings and customizations again. If you have large directories you don't need to back up you can exclude those directories, but there is no reason no to fully back up your System State and the files you mentioned with as cheap as hard drives are.
Then you can boot from the recovery CD (I use Acronis Backup), Choose your backup and let it do it's thing. When done, you're pretty close to where you were. I simply copy important files to USB between backups when necessary.
I am curious; this is a serious question, what is the point of a whole backup of a computer?
Myself, I backup documents/photos/save game folders... (things like that), but is there a real benefit of backing up entire computer? I would think, and this is why I am asking, as long as documents/photos/music/non-replaceables etc... are safe, reinstalling windows in the case of a full crash/failure is not very difficult (a pain in the butt and time consuming sure, but not really a big deal). My Steam folder is well over 500GBs, losing it would suck but no big deal I just need to re-download what I want.
I am honestly curious as to the benefits of full backups.
I think it's easier for folks who aren't comfortable administrating their own PC to just back it all up. It's easy for me to know what I have to grab from the system quickly and just get those things, but if someone for example,was converting video or something, those codecs get installed in the depths of the system files, and honestly are probably something the casual user doesn't even think about.
I am curious; this is a serious question, what is the point of a whole backup of a computer?
Myself, I backup documents/photos/save game folders... (things like that), but is there a real benefit of backing up entire computer? I would think, and this is why I am asking, as long as documents/photos/music/non-replaceables etc... are safe, reinstalling windows in the case of a full crash/failure is not very difficult (a pain in the butt and time consuming sure, but not really a big deal). My Steam folder is well over 500GBs, losing it would suck but no big deal I just need to re-download what I want.
I am honestly curious as to the benefits of full backups.
In two minutes I can have everything on my computer back the way it was, regardless of what happens to it.
Why people would waste time and energy to back up individual files and folders is what I don't get.
Ok, thanks. I was just curious if there was something I was missing by not doing it other than time. I suppose "half dozen of one 6 of the other" type of situation, no inherent benefit of one over the other, except time.
Three backups ought to be enough - your current backup, the one before that (the "parent"), and the one before that (the "grandparent").
I don't care for Win7's backup tool very much, though. It backs a lot of **** up in a format that's not very easy to work with. I use rsnapshot to back up my Linux files and it's a breeze. I can just plug in the hard drive and browse all my backups to my heart's content, and since rsnapshot is an incremental tool, making extra backups consumes less space.
