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Backup settings - how to get a single backup file of a full backup

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Hi,

Tried the search and read a lot, but didn't find the answer I wanted so maybe one of you can help.

Bought a new hard drive for the laptop (went from 50 to 500GB SATA). The laptop backs up the Iphone and ran out of space. I also am giving up one of my portable drives for backup (300GB). The plan is to create a compacted full backup for a full restore if needed and then do some incrementals.

During your first full backup, wasn't there a way to get a single backup file that is say 30GB in size (for the 50GB I'm backing up)? Instead, I'm getting a whole lot of single files. Also it looks like they total way over the 50GB size and use up the whole portable drive.

Does anyone know what I'm doing wrong. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to partition this new drive, but right now I'm not to sure.... Thanks for any help, Bill

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If you do a Full backup, does it backup in pieces?
Is the target drive an NTFS or FAT drive. FAT has a limit on files size that forces ATI to split backups into pieces.

Thre should be an option in the Backup task when yo set it up to split files automatically (iirc, that's the default) or you can specify a size or no splitting. If the files pslitting is set to a spsecific size, then ATI will split the backup -- that option let's folks make big backups they can then burn onto optical disks.

But a FAT formatted disk can't accept files over 4GB (actually 4GB minus 2 bytes) and FAT 16 can't accept over 2 GB..

Also note that if the drive is formatted as FAT, you usually can covert to NTFS without losing data or reformatting. You can look up instructions in Windows Help.

NTFS is a recommended format for a number of reasons, not the least of which is filesize/partition size issues and the fact that it is a journaling files system and FAT is not. A journaling file system keeps a log (journal) of updates in process or to be made to directories and files. -- in XP the journal is the log file $Logfile. In the event of a crash, a full journaling filesystem ensures that the data on the disk has been restored to its pre-crash configuration. It also recovers unsaved data and stores it in the location where it would have gone if the computer had not crashed, making it an important feature for mission-critical applications.