Thinkpads Forum

I have had this problem ever since I purchased my x220 only a few months ago. I had set the location for backups to the local hardrive (not external) with 16gb of space. Now I cannot back up my data unless I increase it to a ridiculous amount of space which I don't even have on the drive. I have it scheduled weekly and each week, it only asks for more and more space. I don't have any other recovery media, but R & R said that the default was to back it up to the local drive, even if external is safer. I don't want to have to plug in a external drive and backup every week either. My question is why are the backups so large and what is taking up that space, and if I am backing up to the right place (local drive). I need help grasping the idea of how you back up a hard drive to itself? And if this is even done. Most people say they backup to an external drive, but I do not and can't have access to one.

R&R works well. Whatever data is on your hard disk drive will be copied. Further backups add incremental changes.

If you don't like it then ditch it ... but don't complain when you are miles from home and everything goes pear-shaped and you cannot restore.

Like all tools, it needs to be used with skill. The first lesson is RTFM. The software came free with your ThinkPad. You don't have to use it.

So I should just increase the space limit until it works each week? I just want to know what the average size of the backup just to make sure it is working properly...

Before I say anything else, let me say, "Welcome to the forum." (I forgot that earlier. )

Ask yourself how big is your HDD? If it is, say, 320GB then allow 100 GB for R&R.
16GB is tiny in today's world. I'd also suggest you buy an external HDD. They are as cheap as chips compared with loss of data. Portable ones are perfect for the job.

Thanks for the welcome...100gb out of 320 doesn't sound too bad, but I only have around 60 gb of free space since I have a few large games and programs, alot of video files and photos/music, I'll look into an external hdd, Im just trying to find the best deal.

Since I've already made this thread...I was wondering what the basic steps to backing up to an external drive ( and how big this drive should be for my 320gb hdd). Do you just clone everything (all folders, programs, etc? completely) Or just backup the "backup recovery" from R & R?

BrandonKong wrote:Since I've already made this thread...I was wondering what the basic steps to backing up to an external drive ( and how big this drive should be for my 320gb hdd). Do you just clone everything (all folders, programs, etc? completely) Or just backup the "backup recovery" from R & R?

Leave it all to R&R. If you go into advanced options you will find a facilty to copy backups to external HDD.

Regarding external HDDs, I bought another recently. It is a Buffalo MiniStation 1TB and was only 60 quid (100 USD) from Amazon. I partitioned the drive with the prime partition for R&R backups. The rest is used for photos, documents, etc. I already have a 500GB external HDD for music, emails, and parish council matters.

If anything goes wrong then I have it all covered ... I hope!