NY said:
I have attempted to back up my 62 GB "My Documents" folder using the
Windows Backup Utility, but the resulting Backup.bkf file created is
less than 19 GB in size, and includes the System State directory. Is
this the logical outcome, or did I miss some data? What's a good
resource to study regarding how the back-up utility works and why the
file it creates would be smaller than the data it represents (if
true)?
Well, it shouldn't be smaller than the original data. It might get
smaller if you put it on a compressed drive, but it doesn't sound like
you did that.
OTOH, do you know there is actually 62 Gig of data in your My Documents
folder? Right click My Documents and choose Properties, and it'll tell
you how much space the data occupies on disk. THAT is the approximate
size the backup should be.
If you actually have 62 Gig of data, then that's what you should see as
the size for the .bkf file. ntbackup will not compress, so it's not
backup doing anything like compressing. Either you missed some folders
or something interrupted the backup.
Check the log file it created. It'll be in the root directory IIRC.
To find out, start to back up just one file and see where the log file
for it goes; that's where you log file will be located. I usually do a
Save As and put the log in the same folder as my backup with the same
name, just a .log instead of .bkf. If there were problems with the
backup, that log file will list them. If there were no problems with
the backup, then I'd look to cockpit error and do a new backup.
The System State, on my machine, is around 500 Meg, so not a huge
part of the overall backup total.
Ah! If you selected System State, you may have deselected some of the
other folders! Do System State backups separately, or just backup using
the Wizard, and everything will go to backup for you.
HTH,
Twayne
