Just bought a 1 TB Seagate Backup Plus to backup my Windows 7 laptop which has 515 GB used, mostly travel photos! It seemed so simple to hook it up and start the Windows backup. It ran for hours and I went to sleep with it running. Then this a.m. I check and read "The disk that your backups are being saved on doesn't have enough space." I have spent the afternoon researching the internet trying to figure out a solution, but I don't know what to do. Any help would be very much appreciated! Thank you.
Posted by
New England
12153 posts
Can you contact Seagate or take it back to the store that sold it to you? I have a Seagate 2T and it works well. Perhaps someone from Seagate can figure it out for you.
Posted by
Portland, Oregon
5687 posts
OK - can you clarify how you established that 515GB was used on the laptop? You went into Computer and saw this amount used on the C: ? Is that just the amount of space used by the pictures? How much total storage does your laptop C: have?
Did you follow a guide something like this?
https://www.digitalcitizen.life/windows-backup-how-it-works-and-how-create-system-image
I am not crazy about Windows's built-in backup software. I tend to use other software like Acronis True Image. The Windows backup software is different in Windows 10, and you will have to move to that in January anyway (Windows 7 support finally ends in January 2020). Acronis True Image, if you buy it, will still work in Windows 10 the same way it works in Windows 7.
If your goal is to backup your travel photos, FYI the most simple way to do it is to open two folder windows on your laptop - one your Pictures folder, one the E: (drive letter of the Seagate - could be a different letter in your case), then just drag the Pictures from the laptop folder to the Seagate drive folder. And then wait...a few hours while it copies everything. This is a simple way to do it, but if you add more pictures later, you won't be able to copy them again and just copy the new ones. Backup software is smart enough to do that. But if you drag-and-drop a copy of your pictures to the Seagate, at least you'll have one good copy of all of the pictures you have so far!!!
But it is a wise idea to backup your whole laptop, not just the pictures.
Posted by
OP
Opal, USA
119 posts
Thank you to all for your suggestions! My laptop had 680GB available when new. Now I have 424GB of photos. Looking online I see that many other folks got the same message that I got about not having enough space on the destination drive. It seems weird!
Posted by
Virginia, USA
6684 posts
Make sure you are only backing up the data and not the whole operating systems and all your applications.
Somewhere, there should be an option where you select the folders that you want to back up.
Posted by
OP
Opal, USA
119 posts
Great news! My laptop is a Gateway, so I decided to try the Gateway backup and it worked! I am a happy camper! Thanks to all of you.