I just got a new Sony Vaio with Win 7 on it and ran a backup only to find the backup took up 366 GB of space from my total 458 GB C drive. I feel like this is a waste of space...but then again it might not be if the backup image is very important. I know the amount of space being taken up is very large, but is there a way to compress it and be able to take it off my computer and save it on a DVD or something instead? I have a recovery disk made...would that be enough to save my computer in case of any mishaps or do I need to keep the huge-____ windowsimage backup file on there too?? Thanks! :)

Are yuou sure you're reading it right? 366GB just doesn't sound right. My desktop system backup is only 4.37GB for a system of 67.3GB. I do have my Page File on my D: drive. But, you can move it to another drive. I discovered you cannot do a backup with image to a USB stick. So, I used an external USB hard drive and then transferred the infor to a 4GB USB stick and subsequently verified it by restoring my system drive from the USB stick. I did this with my Eee PC 1000HE.

Yes...or at least it appears to be. When I go into the Backup folder, there is a folder called WindowsImageBackup and when I right click it then go to properties, it says the size is 366 GB. And then looking at my C drive's property, it also says 423 GB out of the 458 are used up. Is it possible there is a WindowsImage and other subsequent backups as well? Do you think that could have caused it? When I recently discovered this, I put my very most recent backup on my external hard drive. Do you think it would be ok to delete the WindowsImageBackup and other backups on my computer? And then perhaps make and save a new windowsimage after deleting the 366 GB worth of backup files? Thanks! I really appreciate the help!

I never back up my system to the same drive the system is on. I always use a 2nd internal drive or an external drive. If you backup to the system drive and the drive crashes how are you going to recover your system? I would think you should delete backups on the system drive and then do a backup with image to an external drive. Writing the backup to the system drive may cause a recursive situation in which any and all backups on the system are included in the current backup.

Thanks Rick, Yes, I realize you shouldn't back stuff up on the same drive as your system is on, but this kind of all happened unknowingly. I just deleted the backup and got by 366 GB of space back, hooray!!! :)