Computer Won't Back Up

Fiver

Fiver

New member
Jan 30, 2009
2,011
12
0
I'm trying to backup to an external drive using Windows backup and halfway through the process, it exits out of the program.

The only message I get is, "Windows backup failed while trying to read from the shadow copy on one of the volumes being backed up."

I had deleted all the files on the external drive because it was full but now the software keeps looking for it and won't backup without it. Any idea on how to fix this problem?
 


Hey I have no idea and I hope you figure it out but the thread title reminded me of a joke.

Why does a farmer fuck his sheep at the edge of a cliff?
So the sheep will push back.

Actually now that I think about it, does your external hard drive maker have a website where you can download some kind of software made especially for the drive? My Maxtor did a while back and it worked out well. This might not be useful for you but it's worth a shot.

Good luck.
 
You need to get one of these,

6a00d8341c767353ef01538fe52136970b-800wi


Its almost black friday. Go pitch tent outside a store near you.
 
Ran into the exact same issue backing up from Win 7 to an external drive. Spent a fair amount of time research shadow copies and error messages.

Decided to skip the Windows backup and go with the Paragon Backup (free software). It's quick back up, and lots of functionality.
 
Are you trying to back up some selected folders on your drive or make an image of the entire disk/partition?

You can't reliably back up the partition the OS is on when you're booted into the OS. Even if you are doing a file for file copy (versus image of partition), there are usually going to be some files the backup program cannot access.

But most backup software will have a utility that creates a boot disk you can use, so you can backup the OS partition without booting into it.
 
jryan21 said:
Are you trying to back up some selected folders on your drive or make an image of the entire disk/partition?

You can't reliably back up the partition the OS is on when you're booted into the OS. Even if you are doing a file for file copy (versus image of partition), there are usually going to be some files the backup program cannot access.

But most backup software will have a utility that creates a boot disk you can use, so you can backup the OS partition without booting into it.
Click to expand...

I actually don't know what route to take. In the past I've always made file backups but with all the software I have on my machine, it's probably best to make an image copy. The external is 500GB so it should be able to fit everything on my hard drive.

Do you recommend making an image copy or is there a reason to maybe do both image and file since image copies take longer to make? And is there a good free software out there that will do both?
 
If you go through recovery manager, you should be able to back it up successfully and then just re-load.
 
Fiver said:
I actually don't know what route to take. In the past I've always made file backups but with all the software I have on my machine, it's probably best to make an image copy. The external is 500GB so it should be able to fit everything on my hard drive.

Do you recommend making an image copy or is there a reason to maybe do both image and file since image copies take longer to make? And is there a good free software out there that will do both?
Click to expand...


It depends on how bad is it gonna hurt if your HDD physically fails and you have to reinstall the OS, plus all the programs. I know a lot of people who keep their files on Dropbox and run most of their apps from a cloud, so reinstalling the OS isn't that big of a deal. Or some even use a live cd and don't have a local disk.

Most backup software like Acronis can make incremental backups, so it takes a while to make the first image, then subsequent jobs only add changes made since the last backup.

The fastest thing I've used to make an image is Clonezilla, but it doesn't have as many features as some of the others.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom