Backup Software Question

the_manchine

I bought a 250Gb Western Digital USB drive recently to use for storing backups of photos and the like (also archived to DVD).

I gave the software that came with it a go - it's a bit clunky but seemed to work handy enough. When it was done it had taken up about 30Gb of the USB drive (as to be expected) but also had taken up 25Gb of my laptops hard drive.

Wasn't expecting this. It's like it's created a compressed archive of all the files/folders on the backup list and created a local copy that is uses to update the remote one on the USB drive.

Is this normal?? Wouldn't have thought so.

If I was do dump this WD software and reformat the drive what's a good program to use?

TommyGun

if you backup you hdd. the backup file will be close to the size of the hdd. unless compression is used. I use norton.

Standard Toaster

NTBackup?
Built into XP (Assuming your using XP Pro.....Home has it on the OS cd)

Vista has Windows Backup (Assuming your using Vista)

aidan_walsh

TommyGun wrote: »

if you backup you hdd. the backup file will be close to the size of the hdd. unless compression is used. I use norton.

You can get software that would only create one ful size image, and then create incremetal smaller images of only the changes that have occured since then.

the_manchine

TommyGun wrote: »

if you backup you hdd. the backup file will be close to the size of the hdd. unless compression is used. I use norton.

This would be the size of the backup file on the external USB drive? - That's fine, no problem there.
But it's also taking up an equivalent sized block of my laptops hard drive.

Mac daddy

Solution one use ntbackup
solution two use arcronis setup as a incremental backup run it once a week as a sheduled job.