Inordinate Size of Vista Backup onto External Hard Drive

[A Baffled User]

I am running Vista Home Premium 32 SP3 and use an HP 500 GB Personal Media
Drive (PMD) for backing up the machine. I only have 88 GB of used space on
my 325 GB drive C, yet the backup of the files and folders on drive C
appears to be *much* larger than 88 GB.

For example, when I click on the drive letter, L, of the PMD and click
Properties, I find that there is 294 GB of used space and only 171 GB of
free space. I.e., over half the space on the PMD has been used up.

Yet when I use Windows Explorer to ascertain the Properties of each folder
on the PMD drive, with Show Hidden System Files turned on, the content of
all eight folders only adds up to approximately 4 GB of data.

What is going on here? Why has so much of the PMD been taken up by what
appear to be ghost files or folders? When I use Windows Explorer to check
the Properties of the individual backup folders on the PMD, of which there
are at least one for every day since I started using the PMD to back up my
desktop, every single folder shows 0 bytes for its content. I just don't get
it!

Thanks!

Joan

 

[Michael]

I am running Vista Home Premium 32 SP3 and use an HP 500 GB Personal Media
Drive (PMD) for backing up the machine. I only have 88 GB of used space on
my 325 GB drive C, yet the backup of the files and folders on drive C
appears to be *much* larger than 88 GB.

For example, when I click on the drive letter, L, of the PMD and click
Properties, I find that there is 294 GB of used space and only 171 GB of
free space. I.e., over half the space on the PMD has been used up.

Yet when I use Windows Explorer to ascertain the Properties of each folder
on the PMD drive, with Show Hidden System Files turned on, the content of
all eight folders only adds up to approximately 4 GB of data.

What is going on here? Why has so much of the PMD been taken up by what
appear to be ghost files or folders? When I use Windows Explorer to check
the Properties of the individual backup folders on the PMD, of which there
are at least one for every day since I started using the PMD to back up my
desktop, every single folder shows 0 bytes for its content. I just don't
get it!

Thanks!

I think your problem is the SP3 thing. There isn't an SP3 for Vista.

 

[A Baffled User]

Well then, whatever SP there is--i.e., I am current on updates.

 

[Jon]

It'll be a permissions issue on those 'ghost folders' ie you likely don't
have the appropriate rights to access them.

If you left-click on a folder and get an 'Access denied' popup, then it'll
show up as 0 bytes, when you want to see how much it contains.

You can give yourself access to a folder via Right-click folder > Properties

Security ...

eg giving yourself 'Full control' (plus 'Ownership' if necessary)

 

[A Baffled User]

Thanks, Jon, but I've never run into any permissions issues. I'm using
Vista's Backup and Restore Center, on the Control Panel, to do automatic
backups of my documents, pictures, audio files, etc. Every day a new backup
gets done, and it goes into its own dated folder. The folder holding all the
dated daily backups is called Backup Set 2009-01-28, because the first time
I ever used the Backup service was on January 28 last year.

Now, when I open Windows Explorer and double-click on folder Backup Set
2009-01-28, I see a long list of identical folders all entitled Backup Files
2009-01-28, 2009-01-29, . . . 2010-04-10. But when I right-click on any one
of those folders and then click Properties, they all contain 0 bytes and say
0 Files, 0 Folders.

I'm guessing that this is simply the way Windows Vista Backup and Restore
Center saves backups. But how do I know for sure that the files I'm anxious
to back up--i.e., my documents, pictures, and scans in particular--are in
fact being backed up?

Joan

 

[Jon]

Thanks, Jon, but I've never run into any permissions issues. I'm using
Vista's Backup and Restore Center, on the Control Panel, to do automatic
backups of my documents, pictures, audio files, etc. Every day a new
backup gets done, and it goes into its own dated folder. The folder
holding all the dated daily backups is called Backup Set 2009-01-28,
because the first time I ever used the Backup service was on January 28
last year.

Now, when I open Windows Explorer and double-click on folder Backup Set
2009-01-28, I see a long list of identical folders all entitled Backup
Files 2009-01-28, 2009-01-29, . . . 2010-04-10. But when I right-click on
any one of those folders and then click Properties, they all contain 0
bytes and say 0 Files, 0 Folders.

I'm guessing that this is simply the way Windows Vista Backup and Restore
Center saves backups. But how do I know for sure that the files I'm
anxious to back up--i.e., my documents, pictures, and scans in
particular--are in fact being backed up?

To know for sure you'd need to access those subfolders to see what they
contain. Try left-clicking on them. If you hit 'access denied' messages,
then there's your reason for the 0 bytes (resolvable via the aforementioned
procedure)..

 

[A Baffled User]

Thanks, Jon. I've just gathered all my courage and gone through the
preliminary steps toward a Restore operation. What I learned was that the
Backup utility saves versions of your files and folders as they were on
whatever date they were backed up. So if you made a mistake and deleted a
specific version of a file on June 10, you can go into Advanced Restore and
the version you'd saved on June 9 will still be there. That's the reason for
all those folders from different days.

Even though the folder hierarchy of the backups is not available through
Windows Explorer, it is available, in all its dated versions, through Backup
and Restore Center>Advanced Restore. I guess the reason why the folder
hierarchy can't be given through Windows Explorer is because of all the
different dates. So it makes sense to me finally now that there should be so
much "gigabytage" taken up by my backups even though only about 82 GB of
space show up as "used" on the hard drive that's being backed up daily.

Thanks for helping me feel bold enough to venture into the process and
understand it better!

Joan

 

[Jon]

Thanks, Jon. I've just gathered all my courage and gone through the
preliminary steps toward a Restore operation. What I learned was that the
Backup utility saves versions of your files and folders as they were on
whatever date they were backed up. So if you made a mistake and deleted a
specific version of a file on June 10, you can go into Advanced Restore
and the version you'd saved on June 9 will still be there. That's the
reason for all those folders from different days.

Even though the folder hierarchy of the backups is not available through
Windows Explorer, it is available, in all its dated versions, through
Backup and Restore Center>Advanced Restore. I guess the reason why the
folder hierarchy can't be given through Windows Explorer is because of all
the different dates. So it makes sense to me finally now that there should
be so much "gigabytage" taken up by my backups even though only about 82
GB of space show up as "used" on the hard drive that's being backed up
daily.

Thanks for helping me feel bold enough to venture into the process and
understand it better!

Joan

You're welcome. Glad I helped to a little bit of boldness to proceedings.

 

[Jon]

You're welcome. Glad I helped to a little bit of boldness to proceedings.

.... or 'add' even.

 

[Kevin John Panzke]

Jon wrote: > > > > You're welcome. Glad I helped to a little bit of
boldness to proceedings. > > > > > ... or 'add' even. > > -- > Jon