Windows Vista Windows backup utility question

I'm using Windows Vista Home Premium, and their backup utility with backups to an external 500GB hard drive.

The drive just kept filling up, and now is too full to accept backups. I thought that the program automatically deleted old back ups to make room for the new ones.

How do I go about freeing up space on the drive so I can backup again?

My backup schedule was set for automatically and daily. Thanks

 

I couldn't find any info in the program itself, but I could be missing something. I did find some older backup sets in a Home-PC file in the drive itself, but didn't know if I should delete them. Thanks for any help.

 

Read the Frequently Asked Questions about backup in Help and Support. This is what it says when you run out of space

 

Thanks for your reply. I did read that, but didn't really absorb the info. After re-reading it, I got it. I deleted all of the old file sets, and left the newest one. I have the drive back. Many thanks. F

 

That's OK, thanks for letting us know.

 

Yes! Thank You

 

I had an afterthought since marking this as resolved.

Please tell me I understand how this program works. I've been backing up with it daily, but have been having issues with it not running on schedule (previous thread). So I have been manually running a backup, but have been running a new full backup. Which caused the drive to fill.

What I should be doing is adding to the existing backup, and not creating a new, full, backup. Then maybe every 30 days or so, run a new, full backup, then delete the previous one? That way, I'd be keeping only the latest backup set on the drive? There should be no need to keep more than one backup set, is there? Also, I have a recovery partion labeled D:\ included in the backup, but am not sure if that is necessary. Thanks again.

 

That is under Methods for backing up your files in Help and Support

Yes, you would only need one backup of the D: drive, but just check whether it may change over time. If the HDD failed you would need to restore that drive on a new HDD.

 

more questions........

If some of the options you mentioned are not available in Vista Home Premium, and I don't want to purchase a 2nd party backup program, but want to use what I have in my version of Windows, please tell me if I have this right.

Between System Restore, and the Backup Utility, I should be able to restore my cpu in the case of an event where I lose data, but still have access to the cpu. I.E., I can still get it to boot it up.

In the event of a hard drive failure, and I can't access anything in the cpu, then I can restore the operating system from my recovery discs, then use the Backup Utility to restore the data files, etc, that are backed up an my external hard drive?

I realize that the included backup options are limited, but I should still be able to restore my system, shouldn't I? Thanks

 

I would use a combination if I wanted to return the system to the same way it was.

The Windows Complete PC Backup will have a snapshot of the whole system. It will have all your third party programs installed, Windows Updates or Service Packs, but you need to make the back up when it is running perfectly. If you take it when there are bugs or glitches in the system they will be back when you restore it.

Use the Back Up Files wizard to take regular backups of your personal data. So run it daily or every few days.

The D: drive or recovery disks will take the system back to the original factory setup. Keep them for any unforeseen reason you might need to go back to factory settings, say if the HDD breaks down completely and you cannot simply restore from backups (you might need to build partitions, etc, before restoring the backups).

Matt