Backups - What to Do If the Space Differs?

You have done your first backup; it probably ran for four hours or so, or you ran it over night.

Open up Windows Explorer and check the space on your hard drive C:.

Right-click on the drive letter C: and choose properties from the pop-up menu.

In this example (from my hard drive C:) the Capacity is 15 Gigabytes and 9 Gigabytes are in use.

Backed up to a 300 GB external drive X:, I would expect (on exploring Properties of drive X:) to find that 9 gigabytes of it were in use after the first backup.

After all, the first backup is supposed to copy pretty well everything from drive C: to drive X:, right?

If the figures do not add up, it is quite possible that some of the space "used" on drive C: is a result of corruption of the hard drive or, perhaps, too many unwanted files that are not accessible to RoboCopy or other regular programs.

We will check the status of our hard drive before proceeding further.

Another 4-hour job.

Do this just before going to bed tonight.

First run your backup; this backup should be mercifully swift, perhaps only three minutes.

That done, in Windows Explorer, right click on drive C: and choose Properties.

In the Properties box, choose the Tools tab, and use the Check Now button.

Check ON the two options and then choose Start.

You will receive a message that suggests the check be performed at the next reboot.

This is why we waited until last thing at night.

Choose "YES", and then confirm out of there.

And reboot your computer.

You will see Windows start up a laborious check of your hard drives.

Go to bed!

Next: What you should do Nightly

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