Help making first backup on system

Though I've had my laptop for 2 years, I have never made a backup. I tried this morning and my recovery drive ran out of space. I used disc cleanup, still won't complete. Altered what files backup.. nothing. If you right click my recovery drive, it says it has ~5gb, however when I opened cmd and checked via vssadmin command, it said there was 42gb allocated? I upped that to 50gb, still says there's not any space.

I have a feeling I need to delete what I've done and startover, but want to do it correctly, because the recovery drive warns me not to make any changes without knowing... which is why I'm here. Any help is appreciated! TY in advance!

Welcome
If you are going to do it, do it right. Your hard drive may die and then you have nothing if you have it on your internal HD.
GEt an external hard drive. Back up the entire c drive with this. and put it away.
Once a month make a new back up and up date it once a month. You will be all set

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download
Leave the recovery drive alone, that is there for emergency and brings you back to factory settings.
In any event, always back up your personal stuff. Use the aforementioned external drive.

Same procedure as I was previously doing, just choose an external source? (I have an external HD I back up all my photos on I can use). It let me choose what files I wanted(emails, documents, photos, videos etc) but didn't give me an option for the entire drive.

Use the software as suggested

Ah, thanks. Saw the link but just continued reading.

Well, attempted to make a backup but it's telling me it 'failed to create volume snapshot' and won't continue.

How much free space on the external HD, that you are using. Are you sure that the HD is not defective?

460 free GB on the HD.. it's accessing my files just fine. Perhaps I should browse cnet for another program?

Thanks for checking in on me, btw.

I read your posts again. It seems that you are backing up on the hard drive. Try on the external hard drive, that should work.

Oh, sorry to confuse. My internal HD is 300GB, my external is 500GB, I was using my external to attempt to make the backup.

Lets make sure that there is no problem with either drive

Test Hard Drive

Hard drive scan usings SeaTools - SeaToolsfor Windows | Seagate - Both long and shorttests

The long tests can take hours, I can start them in just a bit, but all the short tests on both hard drives pass just fine. I've had no troubles operating either of them.

Just to be sure that we are on the same page. The back up should be made on the external hard drive (use the drive letter to set it up). It has nothing to do with your recovery partition or vssadim or space allocated in that drive. If you are doing it correctly and the Hard Drives are not defective it will work. Be sure that you are making the copy on the correct drive (the external hard drive)

Long tests have been started. Will let you know.

If they pass refer to my above post. If the hard drives are ok and you are using macrium and have enough available space it should work.

Yes. This morning, I thought I would let Vista do all the work, and I must have been wrong to think that my recovery partition and my backup were the same thing. (I thought that because all the sudden that partition of my HD is now full.. it wasn't prior to me starting the backup.) I thought giving it more space would help and it wouldnt.

Since you have been helping me I downloaded that program and within seconds of attempting to make a backup (I think their term is 'image') it tells me it can't write the snapshot, not sure what that means. I am attempting to back up my internal HD on to my external HD.

Would it be easier for me to try another backup program?

Stay with Macrium, thats the one that I have. I can just tell you are making a little mistake. How about we work together. Before each step tell me what you are going to do.

I am a bit confused then, when I open "My Computer" and see my drives available to click on, there's my C: drive and then my E: recovery drive. The bar underneath my C drive is blue, it's about 25% full. The bar underneath the E: drive is red, and there's only 14.6MB available. When I click on it to open it, there's a RECOVERY folder with a lock symbol, a SARAH-PC folder, and a .bin file. I have not made restore files or sucessfully made a backup in any way yet. Are these files appropriate? I haven't messed with them.

Will do. Should I try again to make a back up and tell you step by step what I'm doing?