How do I decrease Backup Size?

[ScottALot]

Hey Y'all,

So I've got a 1TB disk that's not really doing anything. I thought I'd use it as a backup drive so if anything borks my operating system, I can recover, and if I overwrite/delete an important file (happened like 3 times recently smh), I can grab a previous version/recover the file.

However, Windows Backup is telling me if I use this drive, it's going to use something like 950GB of disk space, so it won't work. Now that's got me thinking maybe it's backing up games and programs in there because that's taking up a lot of disk space. Also, that makes me think it's doing more than one backup at a time, as in it's trying to make backups for 3+ weeks or so instead of just the last week.

What I want is a backup that only does one or two backups, backs up everything other than easily recoverable ~large files (movies, games, programs), and doesn't use such a huge chunk of my disk space. I'd like to use closer to 400GB so I can have a partition on that drive for trying out other OS's.

Much Appreciated :good:

 

[ScottALot]

Anyone?
Echooo...

 

[voyagerfan99]

Ew Windows Backup. Buy a copy of Acronis TrueImage instead.

 

[artrubio]

In order to use the least amount of space on your backup hard drive you'd probably want to just back up your files and nothing else. After all, you can always reinstall the OS and programs if your PC crashed.

If all your files total less than 400 GB, great. If not, then you'd have to decide which files to back up and which ones you wouldn't mind losing in case of a hard drive crash.

I'd recommend you get 2BrightSparks SyncBack. There's a free version, and it works really well. You can specify which folders and files you want to back up and it'll ignore everything else. And what I really like about SyncBack is that it'll store files and folders individually, not in compressed files (such as in Windows Backup and other programs). Having to run software in order to extract a file from a compressed backup can be a hassle sometimes. With SyncBack you just navigate to the backup folder where the file resides, copy it over to where you need it, and that's it.

If you want to keep two sets of backups in the same hard drive (provided they don't go over the 400 GB limit you mentioned), you can just create two separate folders (Backup1 and Backup2, for example) on the hard drive. Then you could create separate backup jobs in Syncback to run automatically twice a month, as an example. Job#1 could run on the first and third week of the month backing up to the Backup1 folder, while Job#2 could run on the second and fourth week of the month backing up to the Backup2 folder. That way you could have two staggered copies of all your files.

Good luck.

 

[pane-free]

Clonezilla uses a compression algorithm (don't know which offhand) and significantly reduces backup size. Here's a tutorial.
And a newer one, possibly better for you.
Best wishes!

 

[StrangleHold]

Hey Y'all,

So I've got a 1TB disk that's not really doing anything. I thought I'd use it as a backup drive so if anything borks my operating system, I can recover, and if I overwrite/delete an important file (happened like 3 times recently smh), I can grab a previous version/recover the file.

However, Windows Backup is telling me if I use this drive, it's going to use something like 950GB of disk space, so it won't work. Now that's got me thinking maybe it's backing up games and programs in there because that's taking up a lot of disk space. Also, that makes me think it's doing more than one backup at a time, as in it's trying to make backups for 3+ weeks or so instead of just the last week.

What I want is a backup that only does one or two backups, backs up everything other than easily recoverable ~large files (movies, games, programs), and doesn't use such a huge chunk of my disk space. I'd like to use closer to 400GB so I can have a partition on that drive for trying out other OS's.

Much Appreciated :good:

You should have a exclude folders options and under advanced options you should have the option to set the time and how much space is used.

 

[Agent Smith]

I just use AOMEI backuper and clone the partition, but whole disk is ideal if you want to restore the drive intact. Clonezilla would be more what your after if you want to omit certain folders, etc.

 

[ScottALot]

Ew Windows Backup. Buy a copy of Acronis TrueImage instead.

Ew.
Considering it, though.

In order to use the least amount of space on your backup hard drive you'd probably want to just back up your files and nothing else. After all, you can always reinstall the OS and programs if your PC crashed.

Yeah that's what I'm trying to have done, but Windows makes it yucky.

Clonezilla uses a compression algorithm (don't know which offhand) and significantly reduces backup size. Here's a tutorial.
And a newer one, possibly better for you.
Best wishes!

I just use AOMEI backuper and clone the partition, but whole disk is ideal if you want to restore the drive intact. Clonezilla would be more what your after if you want to omit certain folders, etc.

I'll check out Clonezilla as well! Thanks for the recommendation.

You should have a exclude folders options and under advanced options you should have the option to set the time and how much space is used.

For some reason, I didn't find those options the first time I tried... I think I might have found them now. Alas, I ran it with the settings that only included system images and it tells me it can't protect system images for drives over 2 or 3TB... they used MB as a unit, . It doesn't even give you the option to choose which drives to image.

 

[spirit]

I just use AOMEI backuper and clone the partition, but whole disk is ideal if you want to restore the drive intact.

I second the AOMEI recommendation. :good:

 

[Geoff]

Just use a file sync program like FreeFileSync, and have it sync just your data to your external drive. There's really no need to back up hundreds of gigs of OS and application files.