Hi Charlie,

Thanks for your comments. As it happens I use TruImage for my XP laptop and
it's generally quite good although struggles a lot with using my Maxtor NAS
as a backup destination.

My query about the Vista premium backup functions were because both my wife
and a friend of mine have had random problems with Vista backup saying 'not
enough space' when there is evdiently plenty. Bit strange went their daily
backup seems to run fine for a few days and then suddenly appears to runout
of space. That's what made me think it was doing some kind of incremental
(or even consecutive) backups as opposed to the overwrite behaviour that
Andre mentioned in response to my first posting.

"Charlie Tame" wrote:

> JamieMac,
>
> "If" you have important stuff you cannot afford to lose the best option
> is to buy a system like Acronis True Image. There are others, a company
> call 7-tools make one I think and you can search on Google but many here
> know and trust Acronis.
>
> That allows you to make a master backup and then do incremental backups
> that simply record changes - you do not have to keep saving the whole
> thing. You can also make a clone of your drive so for example you
> install Windows fresh and save the clone copy - any time you have
> trouble you can get back to that starting point.
>
> You can also use a removable drive, or send to a networked computer etc.
>
> For things like pictures and documents simply copy them to a DVD or CDs
> once a week / month / whatever, it never hurts to have more than one
> copy - hard drives DO fail from time to time and if you only have one
> than keeping a full backup or clone on that same drive is good but
> certainly not perfect, two drives is a better answer - and just because
> you have two partitions (say C and D) may not help if they are on the
> same drive.
>
> I would NEVER rely on the built in backup functions on any Windows
> system, you can hit permissions trouble and all kinds of things, and
> this may not matter if you only have passive files like docs and
> pictures or music etc and are prepared to reinstall the OS but if you
> get OS trouble you can't expect the OS to rescue itself.
>
>
> JamieMac wrote:
> > Thanks Andre for your reply.
> >
> > To confirm i understand this correctly. There should on ever be one copy of
> > my Laptop back up. If I am seeing other copies then I should delete them.
> > The vista backup (on premium) does not save older copies?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > "Andre Da Costa[ActiveWin]" wrote:
> >
> >> Delete the existing backups and Backup again. The purpose of backups is to
> >> have a current up to date copy of your data.
> >> --
> >> Andre
> >> Blog: http://adacosta.spaces.live.com
> >> My Vista Quickstart Guide:
> >> http://adacosta.spaces.live.com/blog...3DB!9709.entry
> >> "JamieMac" <JamieMac@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
> >> news:811595EC-AF32-4A31-8D59-3194AA5078B8@microsoft.com...
> >>> Hi,
> >>>
> >>> Probably a simple problem but man is it frustrating me!
> >>> I have a Vista Premium on a laptop and I have set a nightly back up of
> >>> most
> >>> of my file types to my D: drive. Problem is that after about 5 days it
> >>> says
> >>> its full.
> >>>
> >>> Now I woul dhave thought there should be a way to do a sort of rolling
> >>> back
> >>> up so that it keeps say a few days worth and then overwrites older backups
> >>> thus not filling up the drive and then refusing to do any more backups?
> >>>
> >>> Any help MUCH appreciated. It seemed so simple?
> >>>
> >>> Cheers,
> >>>
> >>> Jamie
> >>
> >>
>