backup harddrive

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moonbounce

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I bought a new computer a month ago, it is an Acer Veriton running Windows 7 Pro, I was told that it had a 320 gb hard drive. When I got the computer home, I was prompted to perform a backup from C drive to D drive, okay I did that but I noticed that each hard drive had a total of 134 gb of space. I thought that seemed odd because I was told that the computer had a 320 gb hard drive, now it seems that I have two hard drives at 134 gb, what happened to my 320 gb HD?. I went back to the shop that I purchased the computer from and was told that actually there is two hard drives both with 160 gb of space and that the OS and other files takes up a portion of that. Today I found out that the 320 gb HD was partitioned so that I could backup the HD on the same HD, how stupid is that.

Now I want to unpartition my HD and buy a second HD to use for a backup, so my question is how do I unpartition my HD and what is a good HD to buy for a second backup HD, and could anyone recommend a good HD to buy. Any help would be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Moonbounce
 

KD0LDK

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As a computer technician myself, I personally have always believed backing up to a partition is completely pointless. The point of a backup is to keep your data in case of harddrive failure.

Anyway, if you have windows 7 you have a great built in partition tool. Let's start with this.. clear all your data off of your 'D' drive to your 'C', since it'll be erased.

Now for the 'unpartitioning'. In Windows 7 do the following. Control panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > under 'Storage' click once on Disk Management.

That's where I'll end for now, if you can take a screen shot by pressing 'print screen', copy that into paint and save as a jpeg; upload that to here so I can help further.

- Kyle
 

moonbounce

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As a computer technician myself, I personally have always believed backing up to a partition is completely pointless. The point of a backup is to keep your data in case of harddrive failure.

Anyway, if you have windows 7 you have a great built in partition tool. Let's start with this.. clear all your data off of your 'D' drive to your 'C', since it'll be erased.

Now for the 'unpartitioning'. In Windows 7 do the following. Control panel > Administrative Tools > Computer Management > under 'Storage' click once on Disk Management.

That's where I'll end for now, if you can take a screen shot by pressing 'print screen', copy that into paint and save as a jpeg; upload that to here so I can help further.

- Kyle

Kyle

Thanks for jumping in, but you lost me right off the bat. How do I clear all of my data off my 'D' drive to 'C' and isn't all the info from 'D' all ready on 'C'? There is nothing on 'D' that I need to save eg. music photos etc.
For some reason when I go into Administrative tools I don't have "Computer Management" I click on Control panel > Systems Security > Administrative Tools, form there I have > Free up disk space > Defragment your hard drive > Create and format hard disk partition > View event log > Schedule tasks, So there is no Computer Management to move ahead with, or am I doing it wrong. Also when I press 'print screen' nothing happens? I would think that I would get a screen asking me what I want to do next.

Moonbounce
 

moonbounce

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LOL....It's like storing your spare house key inside your house.
Yeah, like hellooo, but that was what the sales/techy guy told me, I think maybe he didn't realize that it was the same HD as he told me I had two HD's.
 

KD0LDK

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Kyle

Thanks for jumping in, but you lost me right off the bat. How do I clear all of my data off my 'D' drive to 'C' and isn't all the info from 'D' all ready on 'C'? There is nothing on 'D' that I need to save eg. music photos etc.
For some reason when I go into Administrative tools I don't have "Computer Management" I click on Control panel > Systems Security > Administrative Tools, form there I have > Free up disk space > Defragment your hard drive > Create and format hard disk partition > View event log > Schedule tasks, So there is no Computer Management to move ahead with, or am I doing it wrong. Also when I press 'print screen' nothing happens? I would think that I would get a screen asking me what I want to do next.

Moonbounce

No problem, sorry about that sometimes I type too quick before I review it all haha.

I just meant make sure all your data is off of 'D', if you don't have any on there, great. But if you do, it'll be erased once we partition the harddrive.

What you see may be different since the menus are configurable. So, in your case click on 'Create and Format Hard Disk Partition'. That should take you to the same window as my route does. (Your drives and partitions will look different, that's ok. I have 3 operating systems on one laptop, so I'll have quite a bit more show up).

Once you're at that window right click on 'D' partition and click on 'Delete Volume'. Again be sure all data you want is off 'D' because it'll be gone after. Follow through the prompts and let it do it's thing, sometimes it can take a bit to get done.

Once 'D' is deleted you should see space show up that's called 'Unallocated Space', that's a good sign. Once you have that unallocated space it's yours to do whatever you want with.

Now right click on 'C' and then click 'Extend Volume'. Follow through this prompt and enter how much you want to extend the size by.

That's a pretty quick run through so let me know if you have any questions!

LOL....It's like storing your spare house key inside your house.

Lol exactly, it's pointless except for organizing your files better. Doesn't do anything for backing up...

Yeah, like hellooo, but that was what the sales/techy guy told me, I think maybe he didn't realize that it was the same HD as he told me I had two HD's.

Typical 'sales' guy and not a tech! I've heard that from Best Buy so many times.
 

moonbounce

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No problem, sorry about that sometimes I type too quick before I review it all haha.

I just meant make sure all your data is off of 'D', if you don't have any on there, great. But if you do, it'll be erased once we partition the harddrive.

What you see may be different since the menus are configurable. So, in your case click on 'Create and Format Hard Disk Partition'. That should take you to the same window as my route does. (Your drives and partitions will look different, that's ok. I have 3 operating systems on one laptop, so I'll have quite a bit more show up).

Once you're at that window right click on 'D' partition and click on 'Delete Volume'. Again be sure all data you want is off 'D' because it'll be gone after. Follow through the prompts and let it do it's thing, sometimes it can take a bit to get done.

Once 'D' is deleted you should see space show up that's called 'Unallocated Space', that's a good sign. Once you have that unallocated space it's yours to do whatever you want with.

Now right click on 'C' and then click 'Extend Volume'. Follow through this prompt and enter how much you want to extend the size by.

That's a pretty quick run through so let me know if you have any questions!



Lol exactly, it's pointless except for organizing your files better. Doesn't do anything for backing up...



Typical 'sales' guy and not a tech! I've heard that from Best Buy so many times.

Chris

Thanks, that worked like a charm, I now have a 297 gb of 320 gb hard drive back. So can I ask you if it would be better to get an external hard drive or an internal hard drive as a backup HD, and do you have any suggestions as to which brand. BTW, I owe you a couple of cold ones.
 

KD0LDK

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Awesome, 297 is probably all you'll get. Unfortunately you can never get the full amount a harddrive is advertised, something about how they store partition data and other data just doesn't allow the whole drive to be used.

I'd recommend Western Digital Black, they're pretty good drives. If you just intend to backup your stuff I'd go with an internal harddrive as that'll be MUCH faster than an external USB harddrive, you could always get a USB flash drive if you want to transfer files.

I'd gladly say yes to a couple cold one's if I were of age ;)
 

slicerwizard

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Awesome, 297 is probably all you'll get. Unfortunately you can never get the full amount a harddrive is advertised, something about how they store partition data and other data just doesn't allow the whole drive to be used.
Ah, no. File systems do not have a 7% overhead!

320 billion bytes = 298 GB.
 

OCO

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Uh..
kilo = thousand
mega=million
giga=billion

The differences between the OS calculation and the hard drive mfrs capacity statement is the OS is calculated in base 2 and the hard drive manufacturer is counting in actual base 10.. for some reason, the OS decides that 1024 bytes of data is "1K" ... extend that out and you'll see the difference in size..
 

KD0LDK

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Uh..
kilo = thousand
mega=million
giga=billion

The differences between the OS calculation and the hard drive mfrs capacity statement is the OS is calculated in base 2 and the hard drive manufacturer is counting in actual base 10.. for some reason, the OS decides that 1024 bytes of data is "1K" ... extend that out and you'll see the difference in size..

Right, I understand that. I don't understand this post. Basically repeats what I said about only having 297GB usable.


Ah, no. File systems do not have a 7% overhead!

320 billion bytes = 298 GB.
 

OCO

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Take a look at this WIKI entry on hard drives, slide down to the part titled "Consumer Confusion"...Keep in mind that whatever the available size is of the bare drive, you'll see subtracted from that what ever is already loaded (OS files, data files...) but you'll start on a 320 GB (decimal) drive with about 297.5 GB (base 2 calculation by the OS...)
 
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KD0LDK

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Take a look at this WIKI entry on hard drives, slide down to the part titled "Consumer Confusion"...Keep in mind that whatever the available size is of the bare drive, you'll see subtracted from that what ever is already loaded (OS files, data files...) but you'll start on a 320 GB (decimal) drive with about 297.5 GB (base 2 calculation by the OS...)

Right, I understand that. Is that not what I said? It's a dumbed down version without technical definitions, but it's the same thing.

Awesome, 297 is probably all you'll get. Unfortunately you can never get the full amount a harddrive is advertised
 

OCO

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My error - I was responding to this, in part..

I guess I don't understand your post.. ? We're talking about a 320GB HD not a 320 billion byte HD.

As far as the rest of the post, there still seemed to be a misunderstanding about the "missing" 23 GB, but it wasn't your misunderstanding...skip it. I've been in and out of the house all day feeding the generator (power outage) and misread part of the thread..
 

KD0LDK

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Oh believe me.. I have haha. I'm young, but my first job at 16 for 2 years was a computer technician/computer sales at a local shop. So unlike best buy we actually knew our stuff, that was ALWAYS a question :p
 
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