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Windows 7 Backup

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Hi, I've just started using this but am not sure exactly how it works. I want to delete some of the photos from my laptop hard drive because it is getting really full. I've therefore bought two external hard drives and done a backup using the Windows 7 backup prog onto each one.

My question is, if I now delete the photos from my laptop and then run backup again, will it then delete these photos from the backup files on my external hard drives?

Probably a stupid question, but I'm just making sure!

Comments

  • closed
    closed Posts: 10,886 Forumite
    edited 18 June 2012 at 9:51PM
    If you overwrite the backup file on both external hard disks, after deleting the photo's, then you'll lose the photo's. If you create a new backup file, then in theory, they are in the first backup.

    Far better to leave them on the internal hard disk as well, if you can find space somewhere - windirstat may help find space, also check if there are other unused partitions.

    If you really have no space on the internal drive, on any partition, copy one set of photo's to both external drives, using explorer, burn another copy to dvd for safety.

    And either use window7 system image backup or macrium reflect to make a disk image of your internal HD, along with a boot disc in case you ever need to restore a working system from backup.
    !!
    > . !!!! ----> .
  • VictorMeldew
    VictorMeldew Posts: 173 Forumite
    edited 18 June 2012 at 10:05PM
    So if I delete the photos and then do a new backup, they'd be deleted from the backup file too?

    Edit - That's great thanks. It's a good job I asked. I've previously used a sync programme which would only copy new files but not delete any from the 'back-up' drive, I was getting confused.

    Thanks for the advice.
  • closed
    closed Posts: 10,886 Forumite
    I wouldn't advise deleting them at all, until (as a bare minimum) you have copied them somewhere twice (not using windows backup).

    an external drive, if it's big enough, can hold many backups, if you do a windows7 backup after deleting photo's, then that backup is obviously not going to have any photo's in, but if you kept the original backup, that will have - but they are not as easy to access as just using explorer.
    !!
    > . !!!! ----> .
  • VictorMeldew
    VictorMeldew Posts: 173 Forumite
    edited 18 June 2012 at 10:09PM
    Unfortunately, I've got thousands of photos - about 200 GB's. My backup file half filled my external (640GB) hard drive. I think I'd be better using some sort of sync programme to keep mirrors of the files I want to back up. I've used always sync and sync back before. Do you know of any better ones? Ideally one that supports syncing to mulltiple locations at once would be good.

    Edit - it looks like syncback supports simultaneous copying onto multiple drives - I might give that a go again. Cheers for clarifying that for me.
  • closed
    closed Posts: 10,886 Forumite
    edited 18 June 2012 at 10:21PM
    Not a syncer, (having seen them go wrong with disastrous results). prefer the keep a master somewhere (c), and backup the new ones method (xcopy)

    Your collection is rather big, how many days does it take to look through them all :D

    You could always buy a new internal drive - is it really full?
    !!
    > . !!!! ----> .
  • Lol! My 'collection' is mainly of my kids and wildlife stuff (each photo is about 25MB). I could probably delete most of them but it's easier just to back it all up!

    I know what you mean about syncers, I made a mess of my hard drive once with one.

    Thanks for the advice again.
  • closed
    closed Posts: 10,886 Forumite
    edited 18 June 2012 at 10:45PM
    are they raw, or bmp/tiff - 25MB is large for a jpg.

    if they aren't a compressed format, you could zip them to shrink the size
    !!
    > . !!!! ----> .
  • They are all RAW format. I'd not thought of compressing them actually - thanks again.
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