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gratuspater
12-08-2012, 02:11 PM
I have a toshiba external hard drive (500 gb), and it its telling me that it is full, every time I try to back up my computer. But when I look at the hard drive on my computer it only shows about 110 gb of space used? I am not the tech saviest, can anyone help? Thanks

Capt_redshirt
12-08-2012, 03:18 PM
how big is the backup file going to be? my guess is its too big to fit on the external so you might need to pick and choose .. also do you have an offsite backup?

1DisneyNut
12-08-2012, 03:22 PM
If you have been using the external hard drive for a while, it may need to be defragmented. The remaining space on the drive may be so fragmented, there isn't a contiguous free space large enough available for the back up.

Capt_redshirt
12-08-2012, 03:27 PM
If you have been using the external hard drive for a while, it may need to be defragmented. The remaining space on the drive may be so fragmented, there isn't a contiguous free space large enough available for the back up.

Thats a great point i forgot all about that kind of stuff since windows 7 does it all for you when ever you set the schedule up for it

gratuspater
12-09-2012, 09:51 PM
For a complete system backup and all of my files and folders, it should take less than 250 gb. It is a relatively new external drive. And I don't see any option to defrag it. I am running windows 7 pro. Thanks again for any ideas.

1DisneyNut
12-09-2012, 11:00 PM
Connect the drive to your computer and turn it on. Open Disk Defragmenter by clicking the Start button, click All Programs, click Accessories, click System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter. Now select the drive and click Defragment.

It is going to take a loooong time to copy 250GB over. Is all of it necessary or is there a bunch of useless junk you could deselect and not copy over? I would eliminate all that I could. I usually just drag and drop important folders and as far as my OS itself, I usually have a clean copy of it on discs in case I ever need to reinstall. I don't ever do a complete system back up.

PopPhan
12-10-2012, 11:49 AM
Have you actually checked to see how much space is available on the external drive?

Are you overwriting the old backup or creating a new one? If you are creating new, then you may have old ones already on the external drive taking up space.

Some backup programs force you to have at least 1.5 times the necessary room to complete the backup.

gratuspater
12-10-2012, 05:09 PM
It says there is 3.51 gb available of 465 gb, but I have no where near that much data. Like I said, for all my files and a complete system backup, it should take less than 250gb. I am sure I have the external drive set up to only keep 1 copy of the complete system back up. it says i have 301 gb of other files. but I don't know how to look at the "other files" to see what they are. System image is 124 gb used, data files are only 34 gb. Are your pics and music not considered data? And can the picture files be compressed? Thanks.

1DisneyNut
12-11-2012, 08:45 AM
Just go to the drive and see what is there. Click on Start, click on Computer, Look in the list of hard disk drives and double click on the drive (your external drive) and it will open and you can see what files and folders are on it. Delete whatever you don't need. Then it would be a good idea to defrag the drive to clean it up.

If you have already saved a backup copy of your system image why are you doing it again? I know some people seem to want to do that so all of the programs they have installed will be there but if you ever actually have a crash and need to reinstall, it is best to do a complete reformat and install a clean copy of the OS. After installing the OS, then you can install programs as you need them. This way you don't have dead links and garbage all in your registry so your system will be like new again. Basically by constantly saving a newer copy of your system image, you are saving all of the garbage that has accumulated in your system which is what you really don't want.

What you should do is keep a clean copy of your OS. Most people keep a copy on discs so it can be easily reinstalled later if needed. Then regularly back up your data files only by copying them to an external hard drive or install an extra internal hard drive for backup (I install an extra internal drive for my data backups). You can get software that can be configured to save a backup copy of all of your data on a regular schedule.