Win7 back-up takes hours and then fails

[pjagur]

Someday I'd like to be able to run backup on this notebook. I always give up after serveral failed attemps, Three fails today.

I'm a professional photographer and I manually back-up all my images to a pair external drives (originals + two backups on separet drive vis different interfaces)

However if I let Win7 try on just the basic C drive it always fails. The error log says Windows does not have enough dick space to create the zip file. The C drive is fairly full 52.7 gigs out of 465 gigs.

The H drive (where the back-up is being created) has 1.1 TB free of 1.8 TB. It stops and reports the failure after 385 MB of data trnsfers.

Thoughts?

Phil

 

[Shintaro]

Are you trying to create a back on the same physical disk?

 

[TrainableMan]

My thought would be that I had issues with W7 backup sometimes running 11 hours (sometimes not completing) and others it only 30 minutes and I knew there was hardly any change from week to week so I felt an alternative was needed.

Consider using an imaging product instead, to create an entire image of your OS drive. Depending on the brand of hard drive you have you may be entitled to a free copy of Acronis for WD or Seagate DiskWizard for Maxtor/Seagate drives. If you don't qualify for either of those then try Macrium Reflect Free. Links to all three are available in our Freeware DB.

 

[pjagur]

Are you trying to create a back on the same physical disk?

No... I'm going form C: to H:

 

[TrainableMan]

Since a hard drive can have multiple partitions, saying one is C: & one is H: does not prove they are not physically located on the same hard drive. But hopefully you know your own computer and know if it has two separate hard drives or not so, we'll just take your word that you are backing up to a completely different drive.

I do know that W7 backup will give you a warning message if they are on the same physical drive and you would have had to OK the warning if it was the same drive.

 

[Shintaro]

The reason I am asking about if the partitions of C & H are on the same physical disk, is because you are wasting your time if they are.
Backups need to be on a separate physical disk.

 

[Digerati]

The C drive is fairly full 52.7 gigs out of 465 gigs.

If you mean you only have ~53Gb free, then that may be your problem - especially if you have not defragged that free space in awhile. Are you sure the backup is configured to be created on H drive?

The reason I am asking about if the partitions of C & H are on the same physical disk, is because you are wasting your time if they are.
Backups need to be on a separate physical disk.

Well, not technically! Backup programs will allow you to create a backup of one partition on to another partition on the same physical drive. The problem is, that is a lousy backup strategy. If the hard drive fails, it does not matter how many backups you have saved on the drive, the drive has failed!

The better strategy is to save the backup files onto a NAS or networked computer, or burned disk - stored, ideally, off site - in case your house burns, is flooded, or your house robbed.