Computer won't back up. Can anyone help?

OneADay

No leave the recovery drive.

How big is your pc hard drive C and D (how much is free and used on each).

When you go to My Computer -> System Protection (or it might be System Restore tab), check which drives are set to "save restore point". You only need restore point for C drive if your main D drive is just a Vista Recovery partition.

When creating the restore, unplug the external drive.

PS - When you try to do the back, do not select D drive to be backed up. The external drive needs to be plugged in when you do a back up (E drive I assume) and that should be the target for the backup.

This guide might be worth reading

http://www.vista4beginners.com/How-to-backup-your-data

linni

OK will leave the recovery drive as it is. C: drive is 367.5gb with 292 gb free. (recovery) drive is 5.07gb with 18.9mb free. To do the restore point I unticked the drive and it did create a restore point. Thank you.

The external drive is not usually plugged in, I only attach it when i'm actually going to use it. I've tried again to back up (without external drive) and now I get the error message 'not enough space (0x81000005)'. I can't see where it asks you what drives to back up, it only gives boxes to tick - pictures, music, email, documents, tv shows, compressed files, additional files.

I'll plug in the external drive (J) again and try again now that the system restore has worked. I have also tried connecting it with some of the other drives but I got the same result. I'm just going to read the website link too.

linni

I see from the link that it says 'Windows Complete PC backup and restore is not included in Vista Home Premium' so that's why I don't get the option of backing up the drives - but it should still back up the files. This is probably a daft question but do I re-tick the drive after I did the restore point or just leave it unticked?

OneADay

linni wrote: »

I see from the link that it says 'Windows Complete PC backup and restore is not included in Vista Home Premium' so that's why I don't get the option of backing up the drives - but it should still back up the files. This is probably a daft question but do I re-tick the drive after I did the restore point or just leave it unticked?

I would not be doing a restore point for the D drive so leave it unticked. Thats on the assumption that the D drive is just a recovery partition for your original vista installation.

I would have thought the backup was included in premium version - but not sure. I used vista basic which did not have it I am sure. Then I used vista ultimate which did. Another reason for hating Microsoft.

There is commercial software available that can do backups and are easier to work with than Microsoft's offering. I won't recommend any now - just confuse the issue more.

To be honest given you have the recovery partition on D drive, you could backup your personal data onto the external drive from the C drive. Then wipe C drive to install Windows 7 or upgrade the vista install when you get it - then copy back your personal data.

If windows 7 installation or upgrade to vista fails, you could do a recovery job from D drive (vista license should still be in force as you are not doing anything more than restore to original pc).

Other approach is a new hard disk - that is even more complex so recommend you do not try that but just suggesting.

Remember that Vista Premium can do automatic backups and scheduled backups so you could choose a time for it to do that.
But remember that when it comes to making any use of the backup, you would need to have vista installed to do a restore. So the backup is kind of futile (its your own essential personal data you need to backup manually before installing or upgrading to win7). In fact you should backup personal data as a norm.

linni

Well, good news, it has backed up on the external hard drive this time. I am embarrassed to say that I'd never even thought about having to put 'Vista' back on the system. I do always back up my other (XP) computer regularly and I've copied all the important stuff, on both computers, I just couldn't back up or restore on Vista.

Thank you to everyone for your help.

rhythmsoup

Hi, a lot of PCs these days ship with a recovery partition. This replaced the old product restore CDs that they used include. Can I ask did you create / burn a recovery disc? You see its all very well and good having a "recovery partition" but what if your hard drive completely fails? A lot of people forget to do this and then they need to purchase the recovery CD from the manufacturer and they can charge for that.

I would most definitely:
1. Create a recovery disc (there should be some utility included to do this in windows somewhere, sorry I cant be more specific here)
2. Backup your data folders like pictures manually to the external drive as others have said.

The backup you created might be some compressed / encrypted format, or can you see the files and folders on the external drive?

linni

I've created recovery disks and backed up the hard drive on my old XP computer using Nero but on my 'Vista' computer doesn't seem to have any way of doing it, but I will have another look. I put photo's on discs and also on the external hard drive just in case! The Recovery drive does seem to be a waste of time if i've got to put everything on the external drive. The backup I did this morning is loads or compressed files and I wouldn't have a clue what they are but used 16gb of space.

rhythmsoup

I thought as much, those compressed files are no good unless you have a vista to install back to, as the others have pointed out above.

I would simply attach your external drive, and drag / drop your important data onto a simple folder on there. I did use a very good free backup tool in windows XP a couple of years back. But I cant remember for the life of me what its called.

Head on over to sourceforge, a great site for free software where you should be able to select backup tools for windows software which you could use if you want to do regular backups. The advantage of backup software is that it compares all the files you want to backup and only backsup new / changed files as a general rule. Otherwise doing it manually will take you forever!

JasX

linni wrote: »

The Recovery drive does seem to be a waste of time if i've got to put everything on the external drive.

And as its also part of the same physical disk as the C drive and you'll lose both if ever it has a problem not the mose sensible place to back up to

linni wrote: »

The backup I did this morning is loads or compressed files and I wouldn't have a clue what they are but used 16gb of space.

Well that seems very pointless then you've backed 16GB of 'god knows what' you be unable to restore if your computer broke.

I'd again suggest starting with a blank external drive, copy off any documents/photos/emails etc you want to keep. Wipe your PC and get up to windows 7 as you were suggesting earlier.

Then if you do want an automated backup program find one that works then (and test you know how to restore from it)

linni

Thanks for all of the above. Have dragged and dropped everything onto the external hard drive and I'll look at sourceforge for some software. It does seem pointless, but I just wanted to know why it wouldn't to do it, and sort it out before I started doing anything like putting Windws 7 on it.