Hi everyone, under the "Solve PC Issues" flag icon on my task bar I have a notification to set up backup. Thinking that is a good idea I clicked on it and attempted to follow the instructions. It said that the files would be sent to my drive "D" which is my DVD RW which of course is not a hard drive. Does this mean that I will need to buy either an internal or external hard drive to use this function or is there a way I could possibly create a partition on my "C" drive for this purpose?.
bluesjunior - this is one of the many examples of how the Windows 7 Backup utility is an inferior application. It's too buggy and the majority of the time it will not work properly regardless if you had an external drive or a second internal hard drive.
I highly recommend that you use Macrium Reflect Free. It's fast, accurate and does a very thorough job of backing up your C drive.
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Just be sure to back up if possible to a second hard drive, that's the quickest most reliable method.
You CAN create another partition on your existing hard drive and backup to there, but if the hard drive crashes then you're out of luck. You can create another partition in the Disk Management section of Administrative Tools > Computer Management in the Control Panel.
Creating a second partition and storing the files there is possible but it is not really recommended. The reason for this is simple; if the harddrive crashes then you just lost your original and your backup.
If you want a good backup then buy an external drive or add a second physical drive inside the computer. If you cannot afford this option right now then yes indeed a backup to a second partition is better than none; because barring drive failure you would have a backup in case of accidental erasure or overwrite.
I personally use the windows backup, simply because it was easy to set up, but it has been running longer and longer lately and I have been considering another program such as Nibs suggests.
If you choose to not back up or if you use another program then you probably want to disable the warning from PC Issues. To do that go into Action Center and select Change Action Center Settings along the left side; then simply unselect Windows Backup and save.
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