Vista backup drive full

My Vista system is telling me it's out of space for backups on my D partition. I know the right answer is to install a different type of backup, and to store my data externally. But as a bandaid, right now, how can I get my Vista backup functioning again?

Looking in there with Explorer, I see two folders. If I ask it to show me what backups are available to restore files from, it only shows me the contents of the one folder, the more recent one.

Can I delete some or all of the older folder? If so, how? Can I just go in there with Explorer and hit the delete button? :confused

Thanks!
Janet

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-f5mmZ38OT3g/TjFxqtBwMCI/AAAAAAAAAc0/KmVozweIbgE/s1600/D%2Bdrive.JPG

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-F_PlrnZx90M/TjFxqweBEEI/AAAAAAAAAc8/pDlcj3dKDAE/s1600/Backup%2BSet%2B2010-09-26%2B174303%2Bsnapshot.JPG

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7XBUBa6fkik/TjFxq_84DXI/AAAAAAAAAdE/COo5mNQLluU/s1600/Backup%2BSet%2B2011-07-26%2B100309%2Bsnapshot.JPG

 

Hi,
What I would suggest that you do is use Macrium Reflect(free) to create an image of your hard drive and then test that it will recover your machine, if all goes well then I would just delete the two backups that are in the (DRecovery, you can use rightclick "Delete" to do this but you must be logged on as an admin user.

http://majorgeeks.com/Macrium_Reflect_FREE_Edition_d6034.html

From my understandings this is a very easy utility to use.

Another option is available from the hard drive manufacturers themselves. If you go into device manager and find that the hard drive you have installed is a Seagate, you can download Seagate Disk Wizard which is a slimmed down version of Acronis.

http://seagate.custkb.com/seagate/cr...218619&Hilite=

If you have a Western Digital drive, you can use their software also based on Acronis.

http://support.wdc.com/product/downl...19&wdc_lang=en

In closing, I have also done images with Windows own imaging program and never had a failure. For being just a basic imaging program it is very good at what is does.
(I would just like to add a thank you to tgell for this info!!!)

 

Before you delete anything at all I would advocate you download and install a program which can show you just how much space is being used by what, as without that info you might delete a load of backups and not gain enough space to be of much use.

There are several freebies that can do this, but I'm currently using WinDirStat, which does the job very thoroughly though the graphical display is not helpful so turn it off.

 

Thank you very much, iain.t and Earthling.

 

Your Welcome

 

I think some pertinent questions have not been asked here. How much free space do you have on drive C? Did Windows automatically start putting the backups on D because insufficient space remained on C?

You have backups going back to Sept. 2010. Why not delete older ones, perhaps up through May 2011? These backups are large files. Deleting 9 or so would free up space and probably get Windows back to using C for backups.

And, why backups on July 25, 26, and 27? Before that, you have one for each month.

 

Hi usafveteran,

I did in fact go in and delete a bunch of old backups. I hope that wasn't a fatal move, but it seems to me if I have a small handful of recent backups I should be in good shape.

C drive now has 53.9 GB used, 45.4 GB free. D drive has 6.25 GB used, 3.50 GB free. It's meant to be putting its backups on D, not C, I believe.

I think I changed something in the backup scheduling settings recently mostly out of curiosity. Probably I set it to back up every day instead of monthly. I've set it back on monthly now and it's scheduled to back up tomorrow, August 1, so I'm going to wait and see what happens.

Thanks a lot for your interest and ideas, it's very helpful.
Janet

 

In recent years, nearly every new computer has reserved drive D as a "recovery partition". In other words, it has an image of your hard drive, as it was when the computer was new, and can be used to restore your system to its original configuration, including Windows and all other software pre-installed by the manufacturer.

Take a careful look at it. If those two backups were not on D, would it still have around 6GB used space? If so, that's a clear indication it's a recovery partition.

So, the best policy is to usually leave D alone. Do not use it for storing files or system backups. Or, at least, if you do save some of your files or system backups there, be sure not to delete the recovery image stored there.

 

Uh-oh. How would I know if I had done that?

Looking in there with Explorer, yes, it does look as if it has some recovery folders. And the only thing I deleted was one of the folders called "Backup Set..." so hopefully I'm okay.

Maybe I should do regular manual backups to archive DVDs and just turn off the automatic backup?

 

Well, if you remove the backups Windows recently created and remove any other files you may have saved to D, you should be able to open Computer, right click on D, and see how much space is used and how much is free. That's your clue. Again, would it still have around 6GB used space?

 

Sorry, usafveteran, I'm cross-posting like crazy. I was editing my previous post and you were already answering me.

The Backup Set folder that's in there now is 4.03 GB, so that means the rest is only about 2.2 GB. Doesn't sound good.

I'm afraid I have to go out now. Back later!

thanks a lot,
Janet