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Laptop back up

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joho
joho Posts: 4,762 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
Hi,

I need to make a back up of my laptop for restore purposes. I have a 2TB external hard drive that I bought for backing up all my photos, phone etc. but when I start the PC back up process it tells me I need a seperate device as it will overwrite everything on the drive. Is this correct or can I somehow partition things on the hard drive?

Thanks
Jo
If you have nothing constructive to say just move along.

Comments

  • DoaM
    DoaM Posts: 11,863 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic
    Erm ... you should be setting the target for the backup to the external drive? (Create a sub-folder on the external drive; e.g. .. BACKUP_20180706 ... and set that as the target for today's backup).

    Or are you trying to clone your current disk? (i.e. full backup including OS and programmes etc.)
  • joho
    joho Posts: 4,762 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Yes I'm trying to do a full back including OS and programmes, in case I need to restore the whole PC. I tried a USB and it said that there was something on there and if I carried on it would overwrite it.

    So I thought maybe there wasn't enough space hence trying to save it to a 2TB external drive.

    But obviously I don't want it going over what I have saved on there even though there is probably still 1.9999998TB of space left.
    If you have nothing constructive to say just move along.
  • DoaM
    DoaM Posts: 11,863 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Fifth Anniversary Name Dropper Photogenic
    You might be better using something like Macrium Reflect to make the backup.
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