Was ein Festplattenabbild, Eigenschaften zeigt, genutztes Speichervermögen von 411 GB, aber Ordner leer... WOTH?
Was ein Festplattenabbild, Eigenschaften zeigt, genutztes Speichervermögen von 411 GB, aber Ordner leer... WOTH?
I wanted to generate a picture of my boot drive ©. I set up a partition on my D: drive for it and adjusted its size to 439 GB. This was done on my Win10Pro desktop. I used the “Backup and Restore Windows 7” tool from Settings | Update and Security | Backup. Later, I plan to move that image to an offsite location.
Once the image was ready, I opened File Explorer, clicked the W: drive where the disk image was saved, and went into Properties. It displayed 411 GB used, 28.1 GB unused, and a total capacity of 439 GB. When I opened the drive in File Explorer to check its contents, it showed three folders and one file: System Volume Information, WindowsImageBackup, and $RECYCLE.BIN. The file named dropbox.device had a size of 56 bytes and a disk size of 0 bytes (probably a mistake). I also noticed that when I viewed the drive in Disk Management, it showed 439.45 GB capacity with 439.35 GB free, but when I interacted with the partition properties, the numbers matched exactly.
I’m not a tech expert, but this situation is confusing. I’m the only user of this machine (administrator). Why do I see such different information in Properties versus Disk Management for this drive? And where exactly is my disk image stored?
Did you see the message about including a system image at the bottom? Without it, only certain non-system files will be copied, which may differ from what you expect after a clean installation.
My display doesn't match yours. When I select "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)," two options appear on the left. They are: Create a System Image or Create a System Repair Disk. I selected the first one, which leads to a screen asking where to save the backup. I chose "On a hard disk," but there are only three options listed, including my W: drive. There isn't an option to indicate "Include a System Image of the Drives." Perhaps this was the reason for choosing "Create a system image" as the next step after clicking earlier?
Once you select a drive, pressing next will prompt "What do you want to back up?" after choosing "let me choose," and then display the next screen with the option.
I followed your advice when the screen appeared with the image option. It was already checked, but the C: drive wasn't. I added it and it's currently backing up. I'm eager to compare the Properties vs Disk Management details. This process has been a bit annoying, but I appreciate your assistance. Not counting my chickens yet, though. I'll be back.
Understand that the internal backup process isn't very reliable. Microsoft actually dislikes it. There are superior options available, such as Macrium Reflect.
Macrium Reflect . . . ok. I'll take a look at it.
After doing some more research and watching a few more YT videos, I think I know what I did to create my current problem. When I now look at Disk 1 in Disk Management, I see my EFI System partition and my OS (C
partition, in that order. I have a partition called System Reserved (1GB) after that which is currently empty but I didn't have that partition when I originally bought this Dell XPS 8930 desktop. Following the System Reserved partition, I have some Unallocated space. I remember watching a YT video that led me to believe that a couple of partitions that came with this Dell PC that were at the end of Disk 1 "weren't really important" and "could be deleted without consequence." Stupidly, I deleted them and I think that was the advice that doomed me because, if what I recently read (somewhere), in one of those two deleted partitions was my winre.wim file. If I understand correctly, the winre.wim file is required to create a Windows recovery disk. The last time I tried the Backup and Restore (Windows 7), I was able to get a backup and Disk Management showed that I only had 26.10GB of space available on my 439GB backup partition that I had created so I know that Windows and my apps were backed up (even though when I open that backup and go in to Properties, none of the files there have any data in them - still can't figure that out). However, after the backup, it would NOT let me do a System Repair Disk. It continued to state "The System Repair Disc could not be created, A system repair disc cannot be created without a Windows installation disc." I don't have a Windows installation disk because it was preloaded on my Dell machine and I could not find the Win10pro license number under my Dell account online and there was no license number on any email that Dell sent to me when I bought the machine. Is the missing winre.wim file the reason why I can't make a repair disk? I looked in the Windows |Recovery and the Windows |System32 |Recovery folders for it and it isn't there (I did go into View and Unhide the hidden OS files before I searched). Could the missing winre.wim file be the reason why Disk Management shows that a backup clearly occurred but why it shows no data in the folders/files that are listed in that backup? I think I'm just screwed. I bought Microsoft Office, Adobe Acrobat DC and Cyberlink Power Media Player (also preloaded) so I don't want to do fresh reinstall of Windows, and lose those apps, just so I can do a backup disk. Windows is running ok except for not being able to do the backup disk.