Maintenance -> Backup and Restore -> Backup -> User Choose

Using my new HP laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium, I was able to successfully do the following with my DVD Drive the following:

(1) Create Recovery Disks from the Recovery Partition (D:\ Drive) - Three Dvds with prompts to insert the next Dvd until done.

(2) Create a Bootable Repair Disk to use with an Image Restoration - One Dvd

(3) Create a Drive Image (C:\ and D:\ Drive) - Six Dvds with prompts to insert the next Dvd until done.

(4) Backup what is called my Personal Library - My Photos, My Videos, My Documents, My Music, etc. This just fit on One Dvd. Looked inside and saw that it was set up with spanning zips and a "catalog" which told which file(s) were located where.

Problem as follows:

Tried to Backup the C:\ Drive which "hung" up at 73%. I thought I had a bad Dvd, so I stopped the backup (which meant that the catalog" was either never written or was cleared out.). The zip files were still there, but since some of the zips were spanning across more than one zip file, the Backup was useless.

Tried again and had the same exact problem - "hung" at 73%. This time, I let it try for over 4 hours after it "hung" at 73% with virtually no hard disk or DVD activity. So I stopped the backup again and checked the time stamps on the zip files. As I thought, the last file was written about 4 hours before I aborted the backup. I also noted that the disk was just about full.

Each Dvd holds a total of 4.38 Gigs, and with a little calculation, I computed that my backup would have required about 6+ Gigs to complete. So this is what Microsoft forgot to do: On the Backup of anything larger that what can fit on One Dvd, they forgot to pause with a prompt to insert the next Dvd (as it properly works in (1) and (3) above). The only reason that (4) worked is because it just fit on One Dvd. However, that is because I have only used the laptop for a little over one month. The implication is when (4) is larger than what one Dvd would hold, it would hang up and never complete just like it did when I tried to backup the C:\ Drive.

I realize that if I had a large USB Hard Drive, that this would not be an issue because it would be saved in one large Backup. However, when the software "implies" that you can do this using your DVD Drive, then they should prompt for multiple Dvds.

Hello artmaker, welcome to the forums

That is strange, I thought that Windows 7 Backup would allow you to span multiple disc's. I'm pretty sure Vista could do this, but I've not tried with Windows 7.

Out of interest, were you trying to backup the entire C: - the same data as the drive image, but in a different format?

Hi Ian,
Actually no. The backup of the C:\ drive has a help file where Microsoft explains what is and is not backed up, and by peeking inside the failed backups, I found out they are in a zip format - however, some of the files were split across more than one zip. That's why the catalog (which was nulled out on the failed attemplts) was so important. The backup does not backup installed software that is in the registry.

The image was quite interesting. I believe it is in a compressed binary format that only the Restore Utility from Microsoft can use. Also, I bet that the Restore Utility will only work on the computer that originally made it (otherwise - software privacy) I was worried that since I have a 360 GB Drive my image would be huge (kinda like the old days of making an image of a floppy using Onepass). However, it seems to only have made a copy of the sectors that were actually being used (about 42 GB counting the C: and D: drive) and then it was compressed to 6 Dvds). Great for replacing a bad hard drive, but not worth a damn if you only want to replace a file that you actually deleted. I have not asked Microsoft directly (yet), but I will eventually to make them aware of the "endless loop" of a backup which does not happen with an image.