4TB MyBook running out of space

WD External Drives External Drives for PC
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My brand new 4TB MyBook is running out of space while backing up my 2 hardrives.

I have PC computer with SSD 256GB and 3TB hardrive. When I choosed to backup both of them I got message that there was not enough space. I had success to back up only my SSD but I cant backup the other 3TB drive.

My 3TB using 2.2TB and my SSD 180GB so there should be plenty of space on my 4TB MyBook.

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

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The 4 TB figure is not the actual size of the drive. After formatting it will be less than 4 TB. Same with your 3 TB drive. If it is badly defragmented it could be nearly full with 2.2 TB.

It’s not clear if you are trying to backup both drives at once. A backup program needs working space and it’s not clear if you are doing an image backup or a straight backup. If the backup is being done from the 3TB drive there may not be enough room on the drive for the backup program to work, especially if it is defragmented.

Have you tried backing up the 3 TB drive first to see how much space is left? It might be using close to the full 3 TB if your drive is seriously defragmented and you are doing an image backup.

Before you do a backup, run chkdsk (with the /f parameter) on the drives then run a disk cleaner to remove unnecessary files like an Internet browser cache. Get the free app Windirstat and run it on your drive. Go through the file map it creates looking for large files that may be left there by other applications. I have found very large junk files created by Windows alone in the Windows directory. You may be able to lower the 2.2 TB on your 3 TB drive significantly.

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Thank you for your answer.

I believe that 3TB hardrive should fit in to 4TB hardrive. My 3TB using 2.2TB and total capacity is 2.7TB so youre right that the size is smaller than the number on the box. In this case there is 1TB difference so it should fit as my WD backup drive have more than 3.5TB available after backing up my small SSD hardrive.

I tryied to backup both hardrives at same time and I failed. Then i tried to only back up my 3TB hardrive without any success. I was lucky to buck up my SSD hardrive of 180GB. This is not why i bought 4TB hardrive.

I’m using my big drive to store my work, librarys and other documents,Its never used for internet files or any other stuff like you mentioned. I also run the recommended software and there is nothing hidden.

I have 2 weeks to figure out this before I leave this drive back to shop. I really hope to find solution because now its doesnt make sense,

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When I do an image backup, it tells me before I start the backup how much disk space it will use. Your backup software should tell you the expected size of the backup. What does it say?

Also, have you confirmed that you have 2.7 TB free on your backup drive. I just noticed that Win10 uses a huge system partition on my main drive. If you’re using Win 10, check to see if it has set up a partition on your backup drive…

You can see that using some defrag apps. They will show what is already on your drive.

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The WD software doesn’t tell me the size of the back up. Only say there is not enough space.

I took a screenshot from my disk management. Can this be of any help?

1348Ă—593 23.8 KB

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This image is more complete

1341Ă—683 23.9 KB

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Today I took my 3TB hardrive and I started to deselect files and folders until i reached the threshold of 1.75TB before the 4TB backup drive accepted it. So if 4TB back up drive can only take approx 2TB then something is not correct. I would like to figure it out how this works.

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They might not like me saying this on a WD forum but I would use the Windows 7 backup or later. From what I have seen, WD backup is good for local file backup but if you want to make a system disk image or a serious backup to an external drive, it does not seem to be made for that.

You should be able to add backups to nearly the full 4 TB drive. The backup software usually uses storage to do it’s work and if it is using your external drive as a storage facility while it does the backup, that limits the amount of storage you have on that drive. You need to be sure the backup software is not on your external drive.

I don’t know how WD backup works but it often comes loaded on an external drive. If you run it from the external drive it could be using up valuable space. Win 7 backup, on the other hand, resides on the C:\ drive, or the drive on which Windows is installed.

The first thing i do when I buy a WD drive with WD software is take it all off the drive and store it somewhere else.

A rule of thumb when doing a backup is not to run it on the drive to which you are backing up.

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Thanks a lot of taking part in this conversation. Maybe I just misunderstood the way back up drives works and I took conclusion that 3TB should fit in to 4TB harddrive. If divide 3TB in small pieces and do several backups after each other this will solve the problem. However I gonna need to get used to only backup few important GB at time.

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I don’t use a backup program other than to do a system backup image.

If your hard drive fails, a normal backup will do you no good. You need a system image, which is normally an image of the partition on which Windows is installed. The image copies the entire partition, or drive, sector by sector, depending on your setup. If you have a hard drive crash, you can buy a new drive and install the image directly onto the new drive and you’re up and running.

With a straight backup, you would have to re-install Windows and all the programs you had installed previously, then restore your backups.

I realize that some people need daily or regular backups for their data. I get around that by partitioning a larger drive so that Windows is installed on a relatively small partition. That way I can do a system image that is between 50 and 100 GB. Since all the other applications depend on the Windows registry, as long as I have an image of the Windows files and the registry I don’t care about backing up all my apps. They are normally all stored in the Windows partition anyway, under Program Files.

You can have your apps on the Windows partition and their data stored on a different partition or drive.

If you are running a dual boot system, say with XP on the 1st partition and Win 7 on the 2nd partition, you need to do an image of both the XP and W7 partitions together or separately… That’s because W7 on partition 2 keeps it’s boot files always on the first partition. If the drive fails, you can restore the partitions to a new drive and have both systems ready to go.

As far as backups, I backup other partitions as needed but they are simple backups. It is possible to do images of each partition using some free backup software. If you have images of each partition, if the disk fails, you restore the system from the system image then the other partitions from their respective images. Of course, you have to repartition the new drive to the same size partitions as the original.

You only really need to backup data that is changing regularly. Your system restore will catch most of it if you do regular saves using system restore.

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