I installed Win 10 OK, but now it says I need 1/2 terabyte for back up

So that tells me that probably windows has stored a lot of something that I don't need. It appears that I'm using Windows 7's back up system, which is fine with me, but it won't run now due to Windows 10 saying I have too much data, when as near as I can tell, I do not.

My old system backup's were ~ 60gigs in size. Windows now says it needs 206 Gig for data, and 309 for system image for a total of ~ 516 Gigs needed for back up!

BUT my SSD (Primary - O/S and programs) consumes 80 Gigs out of 223, my E drive (Secondary for Data only) consumes 88gigs out of 139 for a total of 168 Gigs. (screen shots attached)

My external back up drive has 318 Gigs used out of 931. Windows wants 516 gigs for a back up. The math isn't working... OS+programs plus Data = 168 gigs, Windows wants 348 gigs more space to back up.


I checked disk management, and nothing of consequence is hiding in there.

Where do I go from here? I did disk Clean Up, nothing of consequence there.

BTW, C/windows.old is only ~ 40 gigs, The update from 7 to 10 went fine, and I have no plans to go back to win 7. This back up issue is my only issue that I know of.

Thanks in advance...

What exactly does that do?

Also, I may be looking at back up's wrong. I did the change over, all is well. I upgraded from Win 7 rather than a clean install.

I'm doing the File History Back up as we speak. Do I do a system restore anymore? It sounds to me like you can reset locally, then restore your (library files only) from this File History feature.

Am I on the right track here, as in abandoning Windows 7 back up's in favor of File History?

Thanks in advance...

OK, I did that... plus, I'm running File History right now.

What should I do here:
Also, I may be looking at back up's wrong. I did the change over, all is well. I upgraded from Win 7 rather than a clean install.

I'm doing the File History Back up as we speak. Do I do a system restore anymore? It sounds to me like you can reset locally, then restore your (library files only) from this File History feature.

Am I on the right track here, as in abandoning Windows 7 back up's in favor of File History? The Win 7 back up being run under Win 10 is the problem, afaik.. I'm on the beginning of the learning curve of Win 10...

chuckiechan said:

What should I do here:

Use Macrium Reflect Free instead of trusting Windows .

How you do your backups and what you backup is entirely dependent on how/what you want to restore. File history backup will only backup your documents, pictures, videos, etc. It won't back up settings or apps. So, if that is all you backup then to restore you do a clean install of Windows, reinstall all your programs/apps, and redo all of your settings, and restore your data files only.

If you don't have a Windows 10 install media, and you are relying upon the built-in Windows reset to fix your OS if something goes wrong - that is still dependent upon a properly functioning hard drive. If the hard drive crashes and you need to start with a new hard drive, now you are going to have make the Windows 10 install media.

I prefer to have the file history backup running so I have almost continued coverage of my data files. I have a Windows 10 install USB flash drive made and tucked away (I have also added Macrium Reflect Free rescue disk to this flash drive). Once a month I do a full system image backup with Macrium Reflect, replacing the previous image, so if the hard drive fails, I pop in the Macrium Reflect Free Rescue disk, restore the image, and I'm up within 1/2 hour at a point in time no longer than 1 month old.

I have a customized recovery partition stored on my hard drive for convenience only - I like to tinker with things and if I want to do a clean install at any time all I have to do is boot into my customized recovery partition and do a clean install to the OS partition on my hard drive - otherwise, I would not even bother to have a recovery partition.

I "unsolved" so I could share my solution.

I went back to "computer 1A", and unplugged my back up (USB) drive, shut down the computer and restarted it. Then I shut down and plugged the USB back in, and all is well. I'm guilty of forgetting some of the basics, I guess! LOL

The drive is a WD 1 terabyte model.

And NavyLCDR, thanks again for the link. I'm looking at doing it now that I've got this sorted out.

Cheers, and thanks to all of you for your help.