I am trying to back up my whole drive using Windows system backup...as in doing a full copy but it always stops around 4gb. Is there any way I can increase this?

 

What kind of media are you backing up to?

Another option is Ghost.

 

Are you running out of room?

 

use full + incremental backups

 

i use the windows built in back up utility. when i back up to my external hard drive, it only backs up 4gb then stops. i have about 160gb external hard drive space and am trying to back up about 30 gb of system state and data. when i create the back up on the local hard drive, it completes all 30gb of back up. but then when i try to transfer this backup file to my external hard drive, i get an error message " cannot copy file. parameters incorrect.

 

^^ what is the file system used? FAT32 limits files to 4GB.

Make sure you are using NTFS.

 

Your external disk is probably formatted FAT32 which has a 4GB limit. Convert it to NTFS.

EDIT: Damn Zamo beat me to it.

 

Isn't FAT32's limit 32gb? the external hard drive is FAT32 though. i will format to NTFS and see if that makes a diff.

 

FAT32 Max volume size: 2 TB

http://www.ntfs.com/ntfs_vs_fat.htm