Windows backup: file size problems

[Guest]

I'm trying to backup the "My Documents" folder using Windows backup, through
a 250gb external disk drive on our home network. The drive is in FAT file
system, so there is a 2gb limitation. When I run the backup, it stops and
crashes at 2gb (of course), so I can't complete the operation. The total
amount of data I need to backup is 35gb.

Why does the backup utility not split files and just keeps building a giant
file that can't fit any format? I tried to go through the options of the
utility but could find anything that would do this.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Nick

 

[Rock]

I'm trying to backup the "My Documents" folder using Windows backup,
through
a 250gb external disk drive on our home network. The drive is in FAT file
system, so there is a 2gb limitation. When I run the backup, it stops and
crashes at 2gb (of course), so I can't complete the operation. The total
amount of data I need to backup is 35gb.

Why does the backup utility not split files and just keeps building a
giant
file that can't fit any format? I tried to go through the options of the
utility but could find anything that would do this.

Because it doesn't have that capability. You'll need a different backup
solution.

 

[Patrick Keenan]

I'm trying to backup the "My Documents" folder using Windows backup,
through
a 250gb external disk drive on our home network. The drive is in FAT file
system, so there is a 2gb limitation. When I run the backup, it stops and
crashes at 2gb (of course), so I can't complete the operation. The total
amount of data I need to backup is 35gb.

Why does the backup utility not split files and just keeps building a
giant
file that can't fit any format? I tried to go through the options of the
utility but could find anything that would do this.

Any help will be much appreciated.

Nick

Sorry, but I don't see the sense of using FAT, with its file size
limitations, on a drive that you know has to receive files exceeding that
limit. I'd suggest converting the drive to NTFS to get around this
problem. If the drive has to be accessed by systems that can't read NTFS,
consider adding another drive or partition that those systems can access.

You might consider splitting the backup tasks so you aren't building one
file, but instead several. This may help reduce the file sizes.

I'd also suggest considering other backup applications, as Windows backup
can be a little touchy. and isnt' exactly feature-rich. Since the features
aren't there, it requires planning and testing by the user to work with the
limitations. The commercial version may have these features.

Incidentally, other backup programs may have similar problems as file sizes
exceed 4 gig or so. I believe I've run into that with Backup Plus.

Be *sure* you have verified the integrity of the backups and can restore
from it. Check this regularly.
HTH
-pk