Attempted back-up gone wrong.

sunnyjim · 26-10-2008 4:38pm #1

Major problem...

I went about installing the lastest windows update. It told me I should close all programs and back up the disc if possible. So I attempted to do a back-up with the inbuilt program. It rebooted the computer, opened itself is DOS and went about its business. Around the halfway mark it came up with a No space left error, so it cancelled itself.

Now when I started windows back-up, I get a low space warning and I've literally got 15MB left, which was about 17GB before all this.

Some history:

I'm using a 3/4 year old iQon computer, the recovery 'suite' () is System Angel and I have an 80GB disc. I'm running XP.

What can I do? From what I gather, it was partitioning my disc to make the back-up, but as it failed due to lack of space its in limbo. What can I do?

Regards, C

deceit · 26-10-2008 5:42pm

Look for where it was backing up to and delete it and dont try again until you have more space to do so.

sunnyjim · 26-10-2008 6:34pm

That's the problem - the backup it was creating was a partition, so it copied about 17GB of material to the C:, failed and then never created the partition. All I'm seeing is a C:, no new partition anywhere!

MunsterCycling · 26-10-2008 6:37pm

Quick solution is just wipe and re-install, ten times faster and a clean install to boot...

MC

Malice · 26-10-2008 6:40pm

I'm not sure if I'm understanding your question. Are you asking where the failed backup files are located? If so, try downloading and running SpaceMonger. It will display files and folders as sized boxes according to how big they are. If there's a temp folder buried within Windows or Program Files or something, this will find it. Then you can delete them and try again.

sunnyjim · 26-10-2008 7:18pm

Sorry, I not really explaining myself here.

Basically, its an 80GB disc. I had about 17GB free, with 53GB used. I assume the rest was used up by OS etc, as a bit was used up before I had gotten the computer.

So, after what happened, this 17GB disappeared. Just like that.

I ran spacemonger, found that 13.7GB is used up as system restore files. How do I go about deleting them?

sunnyjim · 26-10-2008 7:31pm

Tried deleting the SR points by turning off system restore and turning it back on. No joy, not much more free space and spacemonger is still seeing the 14 gigs of System Restore!

Malice · 26-10-2008 7:39pm

Good to hear that you found the files anyway

. I'm not sure what a system restore file is but assuming simply deleting them isn't working, try installing MoveOnBoot and see if that helps.

Also, have a read here, here and here to see if they have any more information that might help.

sunnyjim · 26-10-2008 7:54pm

Cheers, I had found those threads earlier.

I'm a bit apprehensive about deleting the system recovery folder that spacemonger found. I'm not sure what the repercussions could be, I mean surely there's a reason why it's not easy to just go and delete it!

MunsterCycling · 26-10-2008 7:55pm

Did you reboot in between turning on and off SR? Reduce the SR space to very little say 500MB and that should also release the occupied space. Be sure to reboot too.

MC

Attempted back-up gone wrong.

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