Guest TonyB Posted April 2, 2009 Posted April 2, 2009 I'm running Vista Ultimate SP1 and using Windows Backup to an external HD every night. Initially it did a Complete PC Backup and is now doing daily backups of any files changed during the day. The problem is very simple: the external HD is getting full, so which backup (zip) files can I delete to make space? Are the backup files differential, ie increasing in size as they backup all files changed since that Complete Backup, so that I can delete all the files except the last one? Or are they incremential, ie each backup only contains the files changed since the last daily backup, so they all have to be kept? Many TIA, Tony. Quote
Guest Mark H Posted April 3, 2009 Posted April 3, 2009 http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/4...f5db2/42_49.pdf "TonyB" <TonyB@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message news:8BECD179-4CC9-4A21-9D43-B63F8357B91A@microsoft.com...<span style="color:blue"> > I'm running Vista Ultimate SP1 and using Windows Backup to an external HD > every night. Initially it did a Complete PC Backup and is now doing daily > backups of any files changed during the day. The problem is very simple: > the external HD is getting full, so which backup (zip) files can I delete</span> to<span style="color:blue"> > make space? Are the backup files differential, ie increasing in size as</span> they<span style="color:blue"> > backup all files changed since that Complete Backup, so that I can delete</span> all<span style="color:blue"> > the files except the last one? Or are they incremential, ie each backup</span> only<span style="color:blue"> > contains the files changed since the last daily backup, so they all have</span> to<span style="color:blue"> > be kept? > Many TIA, > Tony.</span> Quote
Guest TonyB Posted April 6, 2009 Posted April 6, 2009 Many thanks, Mark. That article is quite helpful, and from p47 it seems I can safely let the nightly backups run without worrying about lack of space - ".....old restore points for System Restore are deleted when the shadow storage limit on the live volume is reached, and old Complete PC Backups are deleted when the limit is reached on the backup disk." Otherwise I was thinking that I would have to delete all Windows Backups to make space, and hope that it didn't crash while the new complete one was done. Fingers crossed! Tony. "Mark H" wrote: <span style="color:blue"> > http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/4...f5db2/42_49.pdf > > > "TonyB" <TonyB@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message > news:8BECD179-4CC9-4A21-9D43-B63F8357B91A@microsoft.com...<span style="color:green"> > > I'm running Vista Ultimate SP1 and using Windows Backup to an external HD > > every night. Initially it did a Complete PC Backup and is now doing daily > > backups of any files changed during the day. The problem is very simple: > > the external HD is getting full, so which backup (zip) files can I delete</span> > to make space? Are the backup files differential, ie increasing in size as > they backup all files changed since that Complete Backup, so that I can delete > all the files except the last one? Or are they incremential, ie each backup > only contains the files changed since the last daily backup, so they all have > to be kept?<span style="color:green"> > > Many TIA, > > Tony.</span> > > > </span> Quote
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