# Backup Windows 10 - HELP ME



## Packerjohn (Feb 8, 2017)

I have a 1T external hard drive.  I used to back up all my files on a windows vista computer.  Now I have a Windows 10 with a 2T hard drive.  The external harddrive (Click Free) is telling me that I don't have enough room to back up my computer.  My question is how big does the external hard drive have to be to back up my new windows 10.  Please help.  Just paid for the new computer and not very excited to go out and spend more cash on another harddrive.


----------



## Deucemoi (Feb 8, 2017)

according to the net the external drive (click free) is 1t in size. so the question is how many files do you have on it already? if there are files on it do you want to keep them, if yes then you need another drive, if no then delete them and backup using a compression program.


----------



## Mike (Feb 8, 2017)

Hi Packerjohn, your backup disc should be at least the
same size as your original.
Since you have a 2TB HDD, I doubt that you will ever fill
it up, unless you are really busy with lots of files.

Your old External drive is full of vista stuff, you won't need
the operating system files, but may want other things, find
out how to do a "SELECTIVE" recovery and choose only files
that you want/need, I would open a file to recover them into,
afterwards, you can clear out the backup disc and start again.

Good Luck.

Mike.


----------



## Don M. (Feb 8, 2017)

I've got a 1 TB hard drive, and an 250 G external that I use for backup.  I only have about 80 G used on the HD, so the external has plenty of capacity for backup.  When I switched over to W10, about 14 months ago, I deleted all the files on the external, then did a backup to the external, and I do a manual backup about every 4 or 5 days.  After 14 months, and dozens of backups, I still have over 150G of free space on the external.  It sounds like your external may be cluttered up with gobs of old Vista files, such that you haven't sufficient capacity left to do a W10 backup.  You might even consider doing a re-format on the external to completely get rid of the junk before you do a W10 backup.  Plug in your External, then go to Properties, and see how much you really have on it.


----------



## Packerjohn (Feb 9, 2017)

Thanks for all the good advice.  It's a strange thing about those hard drive.  I had the vista system on my Toshiba computer for almost 7 years.  It had something like 330 GB of memory.  Even after 7 years I used only 120 GB and therefore had lots of space left.  I really don't need the bloody 2T and will never fill it us even 50 %.  However, thanks again.  Will clean that Clickfree and try again.  I'm still a bit confused.  I know that I need to backup my photos, music and word files.  Really I could do all those on a little memory stick.  But a complete backup is what I am not sure of.  Do I have to back up the entire Window 10 system?  Being at this for years and still learning.


----------



## Don M. (Feb 9, 2017)

Unless you are using your system for some sort of business, it is doubtful that you would ever need more than a fraction of your HD space.  If you have a bunch of photo's, or video's on your system, that may be why you are using so much HD space.  I take a fair amount of family pictures, and videos, but once I view them on the computer, I move them to a CD or DVD, and erase them from the HD.  Pictures and videos gobble up a lot of space on the HD.  Clean all the old unused stuff off your HD, then erase the External, and then, do a backup...you will probably find plenty of room left over.

Once you have everything cleaned up, the first backup will copy everything on your HD.  After that, the backup will just update/modify files you have added or changed.  As I recall, the first backup I did with W10 took about 15 minutes, but now when I do a backup, it is usually done in less than a minute, and barely adds anything to the external drive capacity.  If/when I start to approach the External HD capacity, I will just open the Restore option, and delete backups dating back weeks or months.


----------



## Mike (Feb 9, 2017)

Instead of doing a conventional backup to an external drive
if you have discs for your operating system, or if it came
installed with the machine, you only need to backup your
personal stuff, like "My Documents".

I did that with my last machine, I had all the discs for the
software, so I only saved to the external to update anything
that was new, anything that you save can be saved on your
computer as normal or on an external drive using the "Save As"
function in programmes.

Mike.


----------



## Ken N Tx (Feb 10, 2017)

Mike said:


> Instead of doing a conventional backup to an external drive
> if you have discs for your operating system, or if it came
> installed with the machine, you only need to backup your
> personal stuff, like "My Documents".
> ...




...I use USB Flash Drives...


----------

