How do I do a weekly backup, then incremental backups without filling my harddrive!!!
1. Can I get the complete backup to overwrite the previous? 2. My incremental backups are not any smaller.
HELP!!! I'm close to going back to XP.
Shannon

I am having similiar issues. I keep getting that my D drive doesn't have enough free space to accomodate the backup. My computer is just over a month old so I am freaking about this message. Any info would be great! Thanks, Jackie
"Shannon" wrote:

First the age is not of value - the computer may have a system restore partition which reduces available space - you do not state HD size - and most important do not use the default Vista file selection, doing so may involve several gigs of data - select data to be back up.
"Shannon"

I don't know if this will help but this is how I approached it. When I first looked at Vista's built-in backup utility I decided it wasn't flexible enough to meet my needs.
I have a spare PC running WinXP Pro. I mapped a drive from the XP Pro machine to my Vista machine's data drive. I also have an external 120 gig USB hard drive on the Vista machine just for backup files. Each night the XP Pro machine automatically runs Backup (the built-in WinXP backup utility) on the mapped drive to the Vista machine and writes the backup files to the external 120 gig USB drive (one night a week is a full backup and the other six nights are incremental). I don't bother backing up system files...I have a separate data hard drive and just backup my data so that helps keep the backup sizes lower.
If Microsoft hadn't lobotomized Backup in Vista, I wouldn't have to do this. I know I can use any number of third-party apps to run my backup (some even free) but this works fine for me and the extra PC running keeps my basement warm and my electric bill higher ;-)
Tim
"decoratingdiva"

Thanks Tim. It's a shame you have to go through so much work to get backups to work as you like. This is not new technology and is certainly something Microsoft should have spent more efforts on, especially since we are in an age where much of our lives are stored digitally. Microsoft, are you listening?
Shannon
"Tim" wrote:

I have a 3 month old laptop with a 100GB primary and a 10GB Recovery. I am only backing up documents and pictures, approx 4GB worth. The incrementals should be fairly small because the files aren't changing. Are you suggesting to select the actual folder where the pictures are located rather than the "pictures" option provided by MS?
"AJR" wrote:

I as well went to do a backup of my files and yes I used the Vista default selection. In addition I rushed through the screens (my bad) and didn't see that Vistas default location was the hard drive. First off I can't understand why the hard drive would be set as a default location. Most people create backups to an external device for safe keeping which in my humble opinion is only logical. I really miss the good 'ol days of Windows, it was so much easier to undo problems behind the scenes. All these new Windows O/S are just becoming increasingly cluttered with more gui's, data encryption and software/program information splattered everywhere. Its become a needle in a haystack but, I'm just old school that way and prefer the KISS principle.
Anyway, I have a 120 GB hard disk that is partition d:recovery which is full due to an assumption on my part while simply creating a backup. I already have my recovery disks created and I just want to retrieve my disk space. I've deleted the back files that were created but I didn't feel comfortable removing the recovery partition. I don't know what other information is contained on this partition. Can you offer any assistance? I've been searching the posts and see others who've experienced the same problem but I've only seen replies on what one should have done. I realize what I should have done but its too late for that now. Next time I'll just copy my data and paste it to my cd/dvd disk as I know what to expect from that function.
"AJR" wrote:

I have the same problem. Clearly the incremental backup does not work, which makes the whole damn thing pretty useless.
"keepitsimplesimon" wrote:

Try 'driveimage xml' as a backup program. On Fri, 11 May 2007 06:53:00 -0700, mos_72 wrote:

MICROSOFT, ARE YOU LISTENING!!!!! What are we supposed to do, suffer with the native backup utility or be forced to use a 3rd party competitive product? HELP!!!!
"keepitsimplesimon" wrote:

"Shannon"

If you want them to hear you should at least send you message to the right place...
support.microsoft.com/contactus/?ws=support

"Julian" wrote:

In vista, this is one of Microsoft's preferred support avenues and I have noticed that they do have representatives monitoring the threads and replying. With that said, I'll submit to through whatever avenue that others have proved effective. Thanks for the input.
==Shannon
"Julian" wrote:

Shannon; "this is one of Microsoft's preferred support avenues" Peer to peer, not Microsoft employees.
When Microsoft are here, they are here on their own time. Since these are peer to peer newsgroups, there is no expectation or requirement that Microsoft visit them. Even if someone from Microsoft sees your post, the possibility that they are part of the Product Group that needs to get the message is remote.
Jupiter Jones [MVP] www3.telus.net/dandemar dts-l.org
"Shannon"

On Wed, 16 May 2007 18:59:01 -0700, Shannon wrote:

why they are toughting it!! It will never be as good as 3rd party ones, MS has there fingers in too many pies to make a really good anything. In XP I use: 'driveimage xml' as a backup program. It works in Vista too. But then I told you this the other day, didn't I?

I am having similiar issues. I keep getting that my D drive doesn't have enough free space to accomodate the backup.So What are we to do? How do we free up that drive? Bee-Hops
"decoratingdiva" wrote:

I was not intending to post a reply - however (should be indiviual posts) the posts are about incomplete as you can be
.. To get help you need to provide information - size of HDs, is there a recovery partition, how much used space, free space, what backup program are you using, have you check Help and Support, file or complete computer backup and so forth
There is no "incremental" backups involve in COmplete PC backup - changes are monitored only for file backups.
"Bee-Hops"