Backup to External drive

Honestly its your choice.

You have plenty of free space on that drive. The backup just creates 2 folders like below and your backup is all kept in zip folders inside these.

So you could either just save it to that one large partition or shrink it down and create another purpose made backup partition.
The shrink will only shrink the size of the partition not the data but is dependant on where the files are located on the disk as to how far it will shrink.
So its whatever you feel more comfortable with.

Danny

qim said:

The shrink will only shrink the size of the partition

Fine. That's what I had not understood. Will go ahead with the partition as per your suggestion.

Many thanks for your help and patience.

qim

Post back with any questions/results

Ok first post a screenshot of your new disk management screen again. How long into the backup did the error occur. Did you assign the new partition a drive letter and also choose that letter when setting the backup.

Danny

Ok the partition you created is all fine with plenty of space, the error is to do with the backup only not anything to do with the new partitions.
I've done some searching and if I'm not wrong the blame seems to lie with shadow copies and system restore. Turn off system restore on all partitions and apply to delete all restore points. Then turn it back on for your windows partition only and manually create a restore point so you have one available - System Restore Configuration - Enable or Disable
After a reboot try again this time configure your backup only to do your user files (ie uncheck the box for system image during the configuration) as this can be done on its own later.


See if that works, post back and I will get some more help with the error if it doesn't fix it.

Regards Danny

It would only be the one you do the restore on. Usually you would only use system restore on your windows drive personally I would turn it off on your external as its a backup/data drive.
Please run this - SFC /SCANNOW Command - System File Checker and report any results.Try the backup again after.

Other Reading - http://support.microsoft.com/kb/9734...karoundissue12

Windows backup can be temperamental at time you may consider using this instead - http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx