I can't find much technical information on using full backup under Vista. I
am using an external hard drive for backups. Am I right in thinking that:

a) if you do a 'full' backup repeatedly to the same external drive, the
first time it will be a real full backup whereas later ones, though still
called 'full', will in fact be incremental?
b) if you delete the 'WindowsImageBackup' directory from the external drive,
will force the next full backup to be truly 'full' again (not incremental)?

Yes, the first one you do is a full backup.
You will also do a full backup if you delete the Windowsimagebackup dir.
If you leave this dir intact & performa backup, only the changes since the
last backup will backed up.

I always leave the dir intact, at restore it will restore your latest
backup.
I've seen nothing to suggest that deleting the dir each time is worthwhile.

"Rwhit78" <Rwhit78@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote in message
news:75A1276F-4AD8-4736-B31A-FC44830056EE@microsoft.com...[color=blue]
>I can't find much technical information on using full backup under Vista. I
> am using an external hard drive for backups. Am I right in thinking that:
>
> a) if you do a 'full' backup repeatedly to the same external drive, the
> first time it will be a real full backup whereas later ones, though still
> called 'full', will in fact be incremental?
> b) if you delete the 'WindowsImageBackup' directory from the external
> drive,
> will force the next full backup to be truly 'full' again (not
> incremental)?[/color]