Shrinking partitions is probablty getting a little beyond my comfort zone. Maybe down the road but I think for now I have plenty of space.
Can you help me with this. If I only plan to keep the current system image I should manually delete the old one before I make the new one? In my case I would do this in the external hard drive where it is stored, but which folder? The main one in the external HDD (del1), or the folder within it (del2) or even further (del3)?
The Del 1 is what you want to delete. It contains the others.
In other words, delete WindowsImageBackup.
However, you shouldn't need to do that if you are only making a system image backup without choosing to also backup libraries, folders.
Win 7 has the "feature" that the new will be given the name of WindowsImageBackup and the old will not be renamed, consequently the old is gone forever. If you want to keep the old, then before you run the backup, you must rename WindowsImageBackup. I simply add a digit so that I end up with WindowsImageBackup01, WindowsImageBackup02, and so on and so forth.
OK I think I've got it. That's why there is only the current image in there even though the folder has a date of May 3.
As can be seen in one of my many images (love the snipping tool!) I do have the back up files automated to once a week. Since I will follow the advice and do the system images manually what's a reasonable timeframe? Once a week too or just when there are enough changes.
BTW I used the tutorial to make a "create a system image" shortcut. Will save me a few clicks :) .
How frequently you perform an update is a great variable. For the ordinary home user, then I'd say once a month would be good enough.
Since I use gmail and the google reader, then much of my crucial info is on their servers. I also use Roboform which keeps the roboform data on their server. I back somethings up to SkyDrive. In case of a disaster, I'm in good shape, but I don't have tons of pictures and music. If you daily add a large quantiy of pics, and are not using google photo with Picassa, then you might want to update weekly.
Thanks again. Music and photos are my two main files. 63GB of music and 5GB of photos. I think I do need some other places for storage.
BTW I love the links in your signature. I've used MBAM and CCleaner for a long time. I will be looking in to your other links.
Just a small clarification. I'd never delete a one and only image even if making a new one.
I think at least 2 fallback images should be kept all the time on different media.
Renaming the image, make the new image then delete the old (renamed) image after the imaging process has been successful.
Sorry to keep beating this but I still wonder if there is something not right about the amount of space being dedicated to my image. I saw this in the sticky:
The typical size of an image is approximately 50% of the data (not the partition) that is being imaged. If you have a 100GB OS partition but only 20GBs are occupied with data and 80GBs are free, your image of that partition would be 10GBs.
So knowing I have 74GB of data why is my image taking up 120GB?
First I know nothing of a sticky, but I strongly suspect that the sticky says much more than your summary thereof.
2nd. What exactly is your question? I'm trying to figure out what partition(s) you are trying to backup to where. And then just exactly what do you see that you don't understand.
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