Help with Vista Restore ??

I have Vista Home Premium and my backup & restore set to run every couple weeks. My D drive is where these back ups are saved. Now my D drive shows nearly full as B&R has nearly taken all the space of it (I guess that is what is the problem). Anyway, 10 GB of space for D is set and it is already nearly full and this computer is like 6 months old. The older back ups mostly show empty files.

I cannot find any way to tweak the B&R settings for Vista and have just shut it off for now as I keep getting an error message that the drive is too full.

What should I do? Increase the size of D somehow to make that partition larger? Any ideas how to do this?

I would rather just make an image of my system and save it to a dvd or cd then if I have any problems later I can just insert the image cd and I guess everything will be fine? I am just afraid that if I keep an image (or snapshot or whatever it is) in a separate partition on my hard drive that the image will be compromised by any malware infection. Is this true or something I should not worry about?

Essentially is there an easy way to fix my Vista problem by tweaking B&R or can I just not use that and make an image? If I make an image can I save it on a cd or would it be better if it were on my hard drive? My dell image from the original settings is already on my hard drive.

Finally, what is the simplist way to make and restore an image? If I have to resort to my image to restore it I just want to either be able to find it on my hard drive or insert the cd and have it upload from there. Is there a program that allows an image to be set where I do not have to use any 3rd party software? I just want something as easy as possible. Payware is fine. Just a few clicks- have an image- if need be just a few clicks and the image is restored and that's it. Anything like this?

 

Re: Help wirth Vista Restore ??

A quick 2 cents worth...
10GB is ok for file backups (which is what Vista HP does) but if you really want to restore your PC in one fell swoop, what you're doing won't work. You need an imaging program for that. (BTW, 2 versions of Vista can image, Ultimate and Business... but not HP.) IMO, what you should probably look for is something like Image for Windows, ShadowProtect and so forth. If you decide to go the imaging route, look for a good sale price on an external USB hard drive that can store 200GB or so. Then, you can archive a number of complete system images and restore everything in a few minutes.

 

Re: Help wirth Vista Restore ??

if you dont mind opening your computer up i reccomend a esata drive. backing up to an external usb drive can be very slow. with most esata drives you get a card that you install in to your computer. esata drives are as fast as internal sata 2 drives.

 

Re: Help wirth Vista Restore ??

If you want something for free just for imaging, and works great with all flavors of VISTA and supports external USB, CD, DVD you may want to check out PING.
http://www.windowsdream.com/ping/download.html

 

Re: Help wirth Vista Restore ??

I am having a look at that as well as AcronisTI. Thanks

 

Re: Help wirth Vista Restore ??

What can I do about the current state of Vista B&R? The D drive is too full to make future backups and I see no way to tweak any settings in the current B&R. Can I delete the current B&R and just start over somehow? Also, if I need more room than the current D partition size will I need to make that a larger partition? I suppose I could just burn to a dvd in the future. But if I do that I would just as well clean out everything to do with B&R in D drive. Is there some way to do that? Currently B&R is turned off.

 

You could burn your old backups to dvd then delete them off D drive. Or else if you don't need the old backups just delete them and make a new one.

 

Well I looked and looked and it appears all my back up files are empty. But there is one called Catalogs which contain 6.23 MB. Inside the file is GlobalCatalog.wbcat. If I right click that file I see I can do a "secure erase" of it. But I am afraid that will wipe GlobalCatalog.wbcat as opposed to its contents. I have been reading on some sites that many people are having similar problems, especially if they defrag between back ups.

 

Re: Help wirth Vista Restore ??

Not sure I need to open things up as I may end up killing the patient. If I save an image to dvd or save to usb drive is one appreciably better than the other?

 

In the Backup & Restore Center, just choose "Change Settings".
There is a botton on the bottom of the next screen that toggles automatic backups Off or ON.
You can just delete backup sets that are old enough to be obsolete.

 

Well I changed the setting on B&R to save to a dvd. That worked fine as I am only saving pictures and email. The D partition is still nearly full. But I have checked around and found what appears to be a decent deal on a 500 MB external hard drive here- http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3595494&CatId=2421

I am thinking about just saving backups to something like this. And also thinking about saving an image to that as well. Would that work?

I am also thinking I need something like Norton Ghost as I have heard it has its own boot cd. I have had trouble booting ubuntu from a cd (the one you get in the mail) as I get some error message when I try to run it. Does anyone know if Ghost's reboot cd will work if my computer has some issue with booting from a linux cd? Or do they all have linux reboot cd's?

 

As far as I know all imaging software have a boot CD, some use linux drivers (e.g. Acronis) or Windows environment (e.g. ShadowProtect). Normally within the download of your trial software you have the possibility to create a boot CD. The only way to know if it works with your system is to try it, there is no other way. Ghost, Acronis, and ShadowProtect are all good names. ShadowProtect is the most expensive but also faster than the others.