Windows XP Backup and Compression - what's am I doing wrong?

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Karl - 27 Nov 2005 22:01 GMT

Hello,

I'm trying to backup My Documents using Windows XP Backup, but I need to
compress the backup otherwise it will take up about 70GB of space, which I
don't have.

I've looked at the comrpession setting under Backup > Advanced Mode > Backup
(tab) > Start Backup > Advanced. But the option "If possible compress the
backup data to save space" is greyed out.

I had a look on the Web and from what I've read it looks as if you can only
compress backups if you're backing up to tape!

Is this correct? If, as I hope, it isn't, how can I compress the backup
files I make with Windows XP backup?

Any help much appreciated.

Thanks

Karl

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Thorsten Matzner - 29 Nov 2005 10:43 GMT

>I'm trying to backup My Documents using Windows XP Backup, but I need to
>compress the backup otherwise it will take up about 70GB of space, which I
>don't have.

Honestly: backing up data to the _same_ disk is useless. I would get
an external USB disk and backup to this media. Norton Ghost is a good
software to do this since the NTBACKUP which comes with Windows is
very limited.

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novice_geek - 29 Nov 2005 15:50 GMT

Is Norton Ghost a good backup utility to make incremental backups to my
system? I bought a Western Digital external USB drive, and I'm not pleased
with the backup software that comes with it (Retrospect). The documentation
is terrible, and I don't understand the functions.

> >I'm trying to backup My Documents using Windows XP Backup, but I need to
> >compress the backup otherwise it will take up about 70GB of space, which I
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> software to do this since the NTBACKUP which comes with Windows is
> very limited.

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Karl - 30 Nov 2005 12:51 GMT

> Is Norton Ghost a good backup utility to make incremental backups to my
> system? I bought a Western Digital external USB drive, and I'm not pleased
[quoted text clipped - 9 lines]
> > software to do this since the NTBACKUP which comes with Windows is
> > very limited.

Yes, Ghost does incremental backups and is very easy to use. The other good
disk imaging software on the market is Acronis TrueImage, I'm fairly sure it
does incremental backups too.

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