Windows 7: windows 7 restore question

BigMack,



First: NEVER backup to a drive you want to backup.
2nd: Backup to a separate drive. I recommend external since then any computer disaster does not influence your ability to access the backup.
3rd: 100 GB is more than you can ever use for a system partition, even in your wildest imagination, including all program files from all of your programs.

Show us the output of disk management at this time and we will have a better idea of solutions for you.

1. For the size of the imaging partition figure that an image is about 50% of the data that you are imaging. Now it depends how many images you want to keep as backups. 4 or 5 is probably a reasonable number.

2. You can create a data partition and move your data without reinstalling. Here is how: Data Partition In the tutorial it starts with shrinking the C partition, but you can, of course, use space from any other partition or physical volume.

Here it is. Something tells me this is not what you ask for though.

I was thinking of putting the data on a separate HD. Can this be done also?

Sure, if you have a seperate HD, no problem. But in your Disk Management picture there is none yet. You could shrink your C partition as explained in my linked tutorial and put the data there. If Disk Management cannot shrink it enough, use this program: BEST FREE Partition Manager Software for Windows supports all 32-bit & 64 bit Windows No-server OS.

You can even put your data on an external HDD. I did that with some of my bulk data. But that is a little special. Also. in Windows7 you can include any folder on an internal and external HDD (not USB stick) into the library. That is the easiest for the non-standard folders because it does not require to move anything.

Here are some actual facts from my toshiba laptop:

Win 7 Backup and Restore
WindowsSystemImage...........................24 GB
Data (libraries,folders backup).................16.1 GB

SyncToyBackup (used to backup my Data parttion-E)
all folders on my E drive.........................33.3 GB
My system image only includes the C volume, since E is backed up twice--once using Win 7 Backup's data backup and once using SyncToy.

From DiskManagement
C total size........................................50 GB
C in use.............................................33.17 GB (50-16.83)

E total size........................................54.95 GB
E in use.............................................33.39 GB (54.95 - 21.56)

What conclusions can we draw?
A system image takes up less space than than the "in use" size since no recycle bin, no temp files, no hibernate file, no page file, etc.
In my case about 9 GB less!

A data backup, and mine contains the original set plus six incremental backups, still is about half of the size used on the E. This is due to files being zipped.

The SyncToy backup, which does not use compression, and simply is a current copy of the files and folders on my E is the same size as the "in use" size ( or close enough for government work). This is to be expected since there is no compression.

Following is a snip of the output of DiskManagement


I definitely recommend putting your libraries and other data folders onto a separate partition, as I have done.
To do this, boot from a partition wizard CD and shrink your C down to 50 GB and create a new partition in the free space.

The way that I put my libraries on to the other partition is:
1: create a folder on the data partition for each library, eg. I have Docs, Pics, Videos,...
2. Move all the stuff from the present locations over to the new locations.
3. Edit the library properties to include the new folders.
4. In the library properties, move the new folders ahead of the old ones.