Windows Vista Complete Back up

[Guest]

The back up utility estimated that I would use between 21 and 37 DVD-R discs
to back up my 160gb hard drive. I am currently on disc 39! I am concerned
that if I continue, I will be just wasting more and more DVD-R discs!

 

[John Barnett MVP]

I can answer your specific question but I am beginning to believe that Vista
has a counting error. It seems strange that, on occasions, I have seen
errors where, when dealing in percentages, Vista has indicated that 120% has
been recorded. How to you get 120% when to complete the procedure it should
read 120%. In Windows Mail I have also had a total of 52 emails recorded
when only 40 were actually available. It simply registered 52 of 40. I think
Vista needs to go back to school!

Windows complete backup is one application I will 'not' use. There is no
form of compression with this utility so, as you have found out, if you have
a 160gb drive you must either have enough DVDs to span it or a partition
that too is 160gb in size. in my opinion Complete backup is a useless waste
of space.

I would much prefer to use third party imaging software such as Acronis True
Image. As an example: My Vista partition is 60GB, if I use Windows Complete
Backup I need 60gb of space. If I use acronis on 'normal' compression I need
around 10gb of space. The comparisons speak for themselves. Acronis is only
copying the data on the drive, Windows Complete backup is copy the data plus
every megabyte of empty space. The space empty space is not being used, so
why copy it? It is total lunacy. If your system went down and you had to
re-install using the complete backup DVDs it would take hours. I dare say
you could completely re-install your system from the Vista DVD along with
all your programs in less time than it would take to re-install from
Complete Backup.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..

 

[AJR]

Some confusion here! Complete PC Backup is an image backup as is Acronis
and Ghost and does compress the image - it's lowest compression ratio is 3
to 1 - actual depends of type of data.

I think DanRoyal is indicating a 160 GB HD and not the actual space "in
use".

You can "rougly" estimate the compression ratio by noting the size of the
backup indicated by Complete PC Backup and divide by number of required
disks.

Keep in mind that by default the entire PC is included (All drives) unless
there are manual exclusions. I personally have not seen documentation that
the bakup includes "free space". As an example backup states the backup size
for a 250 GB will be 35 gb (actual in use) - if "free space" were included
backup size would be 250 GB

 

[AJR]

From the Vista Resource Kit: "....Complete PC - Backs up an entire volume to
a vhd disk-image file (compacted to remove empty space),...."

 

[Ken Blake, MVP]

The back up utility estimated that I would use between 21 and 37 DVD-R discs
to back up my 160gb hard drive. I am currently on disc 39! I am concerned
that if I continue, I will be just wasting more and more DVD-R discs!

As far as I'm concerned, CDs, or even DVDs, are completely unsuitable
for complete backups of large hard drives. Dealing with so many disks
is not only a pain, but an error-prone process. Moreover, after only a
few iterations of backup, you will have spent as much on the DVDs as
you would have if you had bought an external hard drive instead.

My view is that external hard drives are far and away the best backup
media these days.

 

[AJR]

Amen to that!!

As far as I'm concerned, CDs, or even DVDs, are completely unsuitable
for complete backups of large hard drives. Dealing with so many disks
is not only a pain, but an error-prone process. Moreover, after only a
few iterations of backup, you will have spent as much on the DVDs as
you would have if you had bought an external hard drive instead.

My view is that external hard drives are far and away the best backup
media these days.

 

[Rock]

I would much prefer to use third party imaging software such as Acronis
True Image. As an example: My Vista partition is 60GB, if I use Windows
Complete Backup I need 60gb of space.

John, I use Complete PC Backup to backup to an external drive. It only uses
the amount of space corresponding to the data used, not the full amount
allocated to the partition. In one system the Vista partition, for example,
is 150GB, with used space at 16GB. The Complete PC Backup size for that
partition is 12GB.

If I use acronis on 'normal' compression I need around 10gb of space. The
comparisons speak for themselves. Acronis is only copying the data on the
drive, Windows Complete backup is copy the data plus every megabyte of
empty space. The space empty space is not being used, so why copy it? It
is total lunacy. If your system went down and you had to re-install using
the complete backup DVDs it would take hours. I dare say you could
completely re-install your system from the Vista DVD along with all your
programs in less time than it would take to re-install from Complete
Backup.

<snip>

 

[Rock]

The back up utility estimated that I would use between 21 and 37 DVD-R
discs
to back up my 160gb hard drive. I am currently on disc 39! I am concerned
that if I continue, I will be just wasting more and more DVD-R discs!

Wow, you get the award for patience and willingness to spend the money to
backup to that many write once DVDs. Why aren't you using an external hard
drive connected by USB, Firewire or eSata?

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Hi Rock,

The copy of complete PC backup on my system can't be working correctly then
because I tried to backup my 60GB hard drive with Vista on and it requested
14 DVDs to do the job. My whole Vista installation with applications is only
16GB so why ask for 14 DVDs? The same happened when I tried to copy to my
second partition it wiped everything and copied the full 60GB was drive 1 to
drive 2.

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..

 

[Rock]

Hi Rock,

The copy of complete PC backup on my system can't be working correctly
then because I tried to backup my 60GB hard drive with Vista on and it
requested 14 DVDs to do the job. My whole Vista installation with
applications is only 16GB so why ask for 14 DVDs? The same happened when I
tried to copy to my second partition it wiped everything and copied the
full 60GB was drive 1 to drive 2.

"Rock" wrote

That is strange, John. I haven't tried backing up to DVD or another
internal drive. I do image this system on a weekly basis with Complete PC
Backup to an external drive. As I said, the size of the backup for each
partition is based on the amount of used space.

 

[John Barnett MVP]

Hi Rock,

My PC decided to do very strange things on me today and, because of this,
plus the fact that I'd been playing around with God know how many beta 's of
VMware virtual machine and a host of other software, all of which gets
imaged with my weekly acronis image, I decided, against my better nature, to
security wipe my both hard drives and re-install Vista on drive 0 and Server
2008 beta on drive 1. After re-installing Vista, along with all the programs
I usually use and, of course, updating the said Vista and programs, I
created a separate partition on my second hard drive (vista & co takes up
15GB) of 20GB and decided to try Complete PC Backup once again. PC Backup
has finally convinced me that it can actually work. Yes I did copy it to the
second hard drive partition without any issues and, yes it did compress the
image, well slightly 15GB down to 13.75, not as good as acronis but it looks
as if the re-install kick started something
I can finally do a guide to using Complete PC Backup on my website now. I
wouldn't do one before because of all the problems I'd had with it. I
suppose I better make some notes and screenshots quickly, just in case it
has a fit on it again and decides not to work correctly

Thanks for your input.


--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows - Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

The information in this mail/post is supplied "as is". No warranty of any
kind, either expressed or implied, is made in relation to the accuracy,
reliability or content of this mail/post. The Author shall not be liable for
any direct, indirect, incidental or consequential damages arising out of the
use of, or inability to use, information or opinions expressed in this
mail/post..

 

[Rock]

Hi Rock,

My PC decided to do very strange things on me today and, because of this,
plus the fact that I'd been playing around with God know how many beta 's
of VMware virtual machine and a host of other software, all of which gets
imaged with my weekly acronis image, I decided, against my better nature,
to security wipe my both hard drives and re-install Vista on drive 0 and
Server 2008 beta on drive 1. After re-installing Vista, along with all the
programs I usually use and, of course, updating the said Vista and
programs, I created a separate partition on my second hard drive (vista &
co takes up 15GB) of 20GB and decided to try Complete PC Backup once
again. PC Backup has finally convinced me that it can actually work. Yes I
did copy it to the second hard drive partition without any issues and, yes
it did compress the image, well slightly 15GB down to 13.75, not as good
as acronis but it looks as if the re-install kick started something
I can finally do a guide to using Complete PC Backup on my website now. I
wouldn't do one before because of all the problems I'd had with it. I
suppose I better make some notes and screenshots quickly, just in case it
has a fit on it again and decides not to work correctly

You're welcome John. I don't think PC Backup Compressed anything, just that
in imaging the system partition it left out certain items like hibernation
file and page file. I noticed the same small decrease, but on data only
volumes the size of the backup and the used space on the volume are about
the same.