I have a problem with the Back up and restore facility. I have never understood it to be honest. A little balloon keeps popping up saying that my OS recovery disk is full. I dont know how it can be. But its annoying - I click on the balloon and it offers to clean up the files and then tells me O files can be clearedCan I clear all of this OS disk and just start again as Im sure Ive done stuff in the past where I have just duplicated the files.
Can you see what is on your Recovery drive?
Is it just the operating system or do you have back ups of data files?
It seems to be adding files Elaine. Its all a bit mad as I noticed one day when I went to find an old document that 4 versions of it came up! I go through deleting extra copies sometimes but Im nervous wiping the whole thing as I believe it has the operating system on there doesnt it? Im just not bright enough or knowledgeable enough to even work out what is wrong with it. Clearly it shouldnt be full when Ive only about 3 gb of docs and stuff on here anyway (It says 10 gb full).
Last edited by Heather Positive Thinker; 03-09-10 at 12:56.
Ive faffed about and found 5 sets of back up files on it from July last yearIve deleted all but one (rightly or wrongly) and Ive also gone into disk management and faffed on there and found a thing to shrink the size. Which Ive now done and its a third less in there. But of course, I am wandering blindly amongst all this
I presume you can see the Recovery partition on your hard drive - how big is it.
I believe it is normal for this to ONLY hold the recovery files that are needed should you need to restore to factory settings.
It should not be used for backing up files.
Go to All Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Back up status
Have you got your machine configured to back up automatically - can you see where you are saving these files to?
It has 10 GB Elaine and as I said, Ive only got about 3 GB in total in docs and pics.
Thing is I have faffed about with it so much Elaine, its probably not the same as when I first started this morning
It is currently saying that automatic back up is turned off (I remember doing that amongst the faffing) and that back up location is DVD RW drive F and that last successful back up was 12.7.2009!
Last edited by Heather Positive Thinker; 03-09-10 at 15:43.
I would suggest that the 10GB partition is designated solely as your Recovery partition.
My laptop has an 11.4Gb partition, currently 2.05 Gb of which is free space.
This has never changed since I've had my computer and nothing new has been written to it at any time.
If you have just turned the automatic back up off, then I wonder if it was originally set to back up to this recovery partition.
Can you go to My computer - select the Recovery partition and tell us exactly what folders are there. Is there anything other than your "recovery" folder .. or are there too many to list?
Elaine, it appears in "sets" which seems to include all my docs, as I say above
Its so confusing
It gives these listed first: I think I got this puter in 08 but if I click on each one there are more and more entries.
dell 1.4.08 (this appears to be a file folder called image)
Heather-PC 3.9.10
Program files 2.11.06
Sources 17.11.06
Tools 1.4.08
Users 2.11.06
Windows 18.2.09
MedialD.bin 19.6.09
Program files seems to have tons of stuff like photos and programs like spybot and picassa 2.
Is there anything there I can delete and any way I can keep just the original stuff on there and make sure thats all there is please?
Last edited by Heather Positive Thinker; 04-09-10 at 15:14.
What is the make and model number of your computer?
Dell Inspiron 531
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