64 to 120GB

HI, if i backup my windows 7 C: drive which takes up say 64GB (i'm not sure if it takes that amount or not 'cause i haven't bought my new pc yet) and my whole hard drive is 120GB, will the computer backup the complete entire thing or just the 64GB? thank you

It will back up the amount of space you have used. So only the files that are on your computer. So yes, roughly 64GB.

-Justin

soulfood said:

HI, if i backup my windows 7 C: drive which takes up say 64GB (i'm not sure if it takes that amount or not 'cause i haven't bought my new pc yet) and my whole hard drive is 120GB, will the computer backup the complete entire thing or just the 64GB? thank you

Click to expand...

The 64 GB is "the complete entire thing". The remaining 56 GB is empty and contains nothing to back up.

The 64 GB image backup file will occupy less than 64 GB---maybe closer to 30 GB is you use an application such as Macrium.

If you are looking at doing a system image backup, Windows Backup looks at total partitioned space on the original hard drive. Even if you don't image all the partitions, they must still be accounted for when restoring the image.

But even if you have 64GB used, most likely you'll not want to back everything up. The things important to copy is your data only, as all programs can be downloaded and installed again, or just the installers backed up. For instance, don't backup the whole Windows folder, as it will be recreated from the installation.
In that case, you'll have much less than 64GB to backup, and then you'll compress it to make even less.