Vista - Full system backup is so small?

I just did a full backup of my Vista RTM to an USB disk.

Before starting the backup I cleaned up unnecessary files and
'cleaned' th ehibernation file to reduce size.

Drive C then still contained about 60 GB of files (little or no data
files: those are stored on another drive, I backed up C: only).


Because backup finished surprisingly fast, I took a look at the backup
files afterward: there's only 15 GB. How come it's only 1/4 of the
contents of my C drive?

compression...
if you have any doubts, do a restore to test it all out




"Lucvdv" <name@null.net> wrote in message
news:t9s7p2dquctmiascvfijdkogf4iq9i3cm4@4ax.com...
>I just did a full backup of my Vista RTM to an USB disk.
>
> Before starting the backup I cleaned up unnecessary files and
> 'cleaned' th ehibernation file to reduce size.
>
> Drive C then still contained about 60 GB of files (little or no data
> files: those are stored on another drive, I backed up C: only).
>
>
> Because backup finished surprisingly fast, I took a look at the backup
> files afterward: there's only 15 GB. How come it's only 1/4 of the
> contents of my C drive?

The once, and only once, that i actually used the Complete PC Backup option
in Vista the resulting backup file was not compressed. I had 30GB of data to
backup and the backup file was 30GB. Assuming that compression was available
(and i haven't found any compression options as of yet) there is no way that
60GB would be compressed down to 15GB - even Acronis True Image can't
compress the file that much. 50%, maybe but not down to 25%

--
John Barnett MVP
Associate Expert
Windows Shell/User

Web: http://xphelpandsupport.mvps.org
Web: http://vistasupport.mvps.org

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"Lucvdv" <name@null.net> wrote in message
news:t9s7p2dquctmiascvfijdkogf4iq9i3cm4@4ax.com...
>I just did a full backup of my Vista RTM to an USB disk.
>
> Before starting the backup I cleaned up unnecessary files and
> 'cleaned' th ehibernation file to reduce size.
>
> Drive C then still contained about 60 GB of files (little or no data
> files: those are stored on another drive, I backed up C: only).
>
>
> Because backup finished surprisingly fast, I took a look at the backup
> files afterward: there's only 15 GB. How come it's only 1/4 of the
> contents of my C drive?