[SOLVED] Back up

[fearjp]

Hi, I just wanted to ask a question that I'm not sure if you guys can help or understand my situation. So I had problems with my laptop, I get what I think it is, blue screen of death and I had this problem on my other laptop where it eventually broke and lost my data and files. So when I got this laptop (it is now a windows 11 I think), I got the first blue screen of death sign again (yea again, I don't know what site it is that causes it) and decided to back up a hard drive that I bought but it didn't read it. So I went to settings on the laptop and saw a back up option where I click and thought the c drive was the hard drive option but it turned out to be the laptop storage (When I did this back up thing it was the windows 10). When I backed everything up, the storage on my laptop suddenly got full. Did I put like an extra files of one of each files that I have in my c drive as they are the backed up file. If you guys can have any idea of what I did, how can I delete the back up files (without "deleting the original files," since, again not sure what I did)? I tried to go the c drive files to see if there are like any extra files that are considered the back up files but I see files stored that I download after the back up. If its not understandable of what I did, I appreciate to take time to read this.

Thanks

 

[Lafong]

Not quite understanding, but.........

What back up application did you use? The thing built into Windows? If so, bad idea.

What are you trying to back up? Windows and applications? Pictures of grandma? "Everything", whatever that might be?

We know nothing about your installation or partition layout or where you keep stuff. A picture of Windows Disk Management might help.

 

[fearjp]

Not quite understanding, but.........

What back up application did you use? The thing built into Windows? If so, bad idea.

What are you trying to back up? Windows and applications? Pictures of grandma? "Everything", whatever that might be?

We know nothing about your installation or partition layout or where you keep stuff. A picture of Windows Disk Management might help.

Yea the Windows built in.

Yea pictures of grand....I mean personal stuff and videos. I had these before the back up with the built in back up on windows. Trying to "unback up" everything again to have more space again.

I just downloaded everything on my hard drive on my laptop. So pretty much I'd have to delete files from my computer and recycle bin if I want more space? Did the "bad idea" mean that I'd pretty much lose the files if I delete them from my recycle bin?

Thanks

 

[Lafong]

I assume you want to back up personal files only.

Not Windows. Not installed applications.

It doesn't make much sense to save your backup copy on the same drive as your "original". If that drive dies, you lose both the original and the backup copy.

Do you have a second drive on which to keep your backups? If not, get one. Maybe external, maybe internal.

You need to find out where those "personal files" live....in what folder on what partition on what drive. Right now, you may have 1, 2, 3, or more copies of each, when you presumably would want to keep only the original and 1 copy (total of 2).

You are the authority on how your folders are organized and where stuff is originally saved. That may be on a D partition. It may be somewhere under C:\users\your user name whatever it is. It may be on C:\cool stuff. I have no idea. You are likely the only person on the planet who knows where that is.

If you aren't organized in some fashion, that might be difficult. But most people have a method they try to repeat.

I'd leave the recyle bin alone for the time being.

Short story:

AVOID the built in Windows backup.

1; Get a backup destination drive, probably external. Maybe internal.

2; Make a new backup of all personal files onto the drive in step 1, by ordinary copy using the mouse or whatever you are comfortable with.

3; Delete any backups still on your original drive. This leaves you with originals on the original drive and all backups on the backup destination drive.

4; empty the recycle bin after you are satisfied that you have a backup of all personal files.

5; Develop a plan to keep your backups up to date using an application made for that purpose, NOT Windows built in. There's a bunch that work fine for that purpose.

 

[fearjp]

Ok great so chances are I duplicated files since I used back up on the same storage. Yea, I'm gonna take time to find it. Thanks for the help.

Thanks