Back-up with Vista

[Platyply]

Vista used to back-up my computer once a week, and then my external HD ran out of space because of the back-ups. This doesn't make sense because the external HD is bigger than what I have installed on my PC's HD. How do I properly set-up Vista's back-up? I think Vista is keeping files that were deleted and older versions of files.

Thanks!

 

[ViRGE]

I can't answer all of your questions, but what happened does make sense. Each backup is a separate and complete copy of your data, so it's (size of your hard drive) x (number of backups) for space consumed, along with some fudging with the numbers to account for compression. Unfortunately I haven't used the Vista backup client in-depth, so I don't know how to delete old backups.

 

[Smilin]

It does incremental backups so it will grow over time.
You need to perform a new full backup and it resets the size back to the true data size.

If it's gone on so long that the drive can no longer hold a new full backup then you have to manually delete the current ones (pain in the butt due to permissions), or just format the drive and kick off the new backup.

The whole thing frankly perturbs me (and others) as it isn't very graceful. Change requests have been submitted but no idea if it will happen. The backup program is otherwise pretty simple and pain free.

 

[Gooberlx2]

Yeah, it would be awesome if you could manipulate the backup program to override full backups every week and do incrementals nightly.

 

[Smilin]

you could try the command line version of it, wbadmin

 

[Smilin]

some more info from the guys who support Vista Backup at microsoft:

http://blogs.technet.com/filec...-in-windows-vista.aspx

All articles:
http://blogs.technet.com/filec...gs/Backup/default.aspx