Getting started

[tetsu]

I have progressed a bit further and have managed to set up source files for My Documents and My Pictures, but can't work out how to set up a new destination drive on Windows 10. The old one was drive F which has now disappeared when I unistalled the previous Cobian. As you can see from my latest screenshot, this is no longer reocgnised.

Many thanks for your continuing attention.

Check on your task > edit > files > destination > and put your destination directory.
Check on your task > edit > advanced > and put the username and password where you going to backup your information.
And run the task again, I had this problema a while ago, I checked this and worked.

Regards

[Graham]

... can't work out how to set up a new destination drive on Windows 10. The old one was drive F which has now disappeared when I unistalled the previous Cobian.

Drive F: did not disappear because you uninstalled Cobian Backup. Drive F: has gone for a different reason. Do you know where Drive F: was? Was Drive F: on a USB device? Is the USB device plugged in?

[JohnGodfray]

F drive was never supported by a USB. It looked a bit like the E drive as in BACKUP (E:) on the attached screenshot (where GHIJ have supported various external hard drives via USB sticks). I would like to be able to set up F, K, L, M, whatever, on the main desktop so as to receive backup files for Documents and Pictures.

[cobian]

If you are using USB destinations I recommend to use a manual destination with the %DISKLABEL parameter in order to avoid problems if the system assigns a new drive letter to it for some reason.

[Graham]

F drive was never supported by a USB. It looked a bit like the E drive as in BACKUP (E:) on the attached screenshot

It would be useful to know how many physical disks you have in your computer. It might be that you have one physical disk and this one disk is divided into two or more partitions. Each partition would have a different drive letter. It might be that C: and E: and F: are all on a single physical disk.

It is not recommended to backup files for one partition to another on a single physical disk because the physical disk might fail.

Press and hold the ... Windows ... key and tap the ... X ... key and Select .... Disk Management ... from the menu. This should display a list of physical disks and partitions.

[JohnGodfray]

Thanks for your reply. For some reason I have been unable to take a screenshot of the Disk Management dropdown, which I accessed in accordance with your suggestion; so I have had to attach an iphone picture of my screenn instead. Grateful if you can advise next step. The E drive is already full of Dell-related material and as far as I know cannot be used as a backup. It has nearly always been F with the old Cobian backup.
Thanks for your continuing assistance - John G

[cobian]

Change the destination from F: to E: then.

[Graham]

The E drive is already full of Dell-related material and as far as I know cannot be used as a backup. It has nearly always been F with the old Cobian backup.

Disk Management shows that there are two disks in the computer ... Drive C: and Drive E: are both 464 GB in size.

Drive E: is more than 450GB ... It is nearly certain that this cannot all be "Dell-related material" ... Please check the content of Drive E:. I suspect that Drive E: used to be called Drive F: and contains your previous backups. In any event, I am confident that there is a ton of stuff on Drive E: that can be deleted so that you can backup to Drive: E.

[JohnGodfray]

Thanks your patience: I think we are almost there now. It does look as though the contents of the E drive in my latest attached screenshot (below) represent the previous contents saved by the earlier version of Cobian backup. The dates shown beside My Documents and My Pictures probably reflect the last occasions on which the earlier version worked. I am reluctant to delete everything because for the new backup version I have only registered My Documents and My Pictures, leaving aside all the other material which I don't recognise.

So, the question now is: by saving to E drive, will the latest versions of My Documents and My Pictures replace what's there already (which I would prefer), or create a duplicate entry taking up more space?

Thanks again for your support
Regards
John G

[cobian]

If your task is not creating separated backups, then the files will be overwritten