Windows 10: I backed up my computer on a harddrive and the backup was smaller than my C drive

Is this normal? The backup was 258 gb when the C drive is 602gb full. It took a long time to do, and it looks like my files are there. At least from what I could tell. Is it the difference between having the applications downloaded or something?

:)

 

Questions on C:\ Drive Backup

*Original Title: Backup C drive

I have a Lenovo K330 PC which I bought in 2011 with Windows 7 Home. Since then I’ve upgraded to Windows 7 Professional and now to Windows 10 Professional. My C: drive no longer has the Lenovo rescue partition. I have a portable WD Passport with
1 GB used to coordinate data between computers. I backup my data weekly on a removable 298 GB hard drive. I currently have no system backups. I see several backup alternatives:

• Windows 7 Backup & Restore
• Norton 360 Backup
• Cobian 11 Backup

My concern is my C: drive is 5 years old. When it fails I’m up a creek. I refuse to go to the "cloud." I tried Windows 7 Backup and Recovery on my Passport. When finished I got a warning that some files were not copied. Not
what I wanted to see. Will it work?

 

Can File History backup the contents of drives other than the C:\ drive?

Thanks Greg.

My Data drive, "M:\" is an internal drive, not a USB drive. I'm backing-up to an external 2TB USB drive.

As I said, I've used Windows Backup for many years and never had a problem.

File History seems attractive because it keeps a records of all file versions.

My questions still stand:

1. Can File History backup files on other than the C:\ drive? For example if I add M:\ to the "Backup these folders" list.
   
2. Does File History create an initial, full backup of folders listed in "Back up these folders"?

Regards, Dave.

 

Using network hard drive for backup

It depends what sort of backup you want to do. If you're happy just backing up regular files, then there are a bazillion (really, that many!) different bits of freeware to do that. There is a good list here:

Download Back Up Tools for Windows - MajorGeeks

and pretty much all of them can do network backups. Some even have fancy options like encryption. Really, the most useful thing is just being able to schedule them and know they ran OK.

You may also want to make a system image backup too, and you'll find that software in the very same list.

I don't have Windows 8 as yet, so I'm afraid I can't suggest any for that platform. Personally, I use Clonezilla for image backups.