If there's one thing I've consistently hated about Windows, it's the lack of a good backup and restore solution. Sure, there's the NTBACKUP tool, but it doesn't let you create a full-system backup you can restore to "bare metal": you have to have a working Windows installation to use it, which kind of obviates the point if your system's toast.
Someone at Microsoft was thinking, though, and one of the Vista features that has gladdened my heart to see is the ability to not just back up files and folders, but to back up and restore a whole system from scratch. XP users who have had to rely on copying files by hand, struggling with NTBACKUP, working with freeware that doesn't cover all the bases or shelling out cash for an actual third-party backup solution are going to love this. I know I do.
Incidentally, our old friend System Restore is still here, and in much the same condition, but for the time being I'll talk in detail about the new backup/restore functions; a discussion of System Restore can wait for another article.
1. The Backup and Restore Center
Pop open the Backup and Restore Center in the Control Panel and you'll be greeted with a no-nonsense display: everything is exactly what it appears to be. Click a button to get going.
When you create a backup set for either your files or your whole PC, the computer expects the same file location to be present in the future. For instance, if you do a file backup to an external hard drive, the computer expects the same hard drive to be there when you make another (incremental) backup set in the future. If it isn't there, you'll get a pop-up balloon error, and you'll either have to reattach the missing drive or create a whole new backup set.
If, like me, you're used to using something like NTBACKUP to back up your system or files to a discrete file, this takes a little getting used-to. Backup and Restore doesn't save the results to a specific file when it does a backup, but instead a repository of folders (which contains both full and incremental backups for a given file set or system). These folders are protected by NTFS security so they can't be casually tampered with.
Note that full machine backups are stored as VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) files, which is the same format that Windows uses for Virtual PC. It's an open and broadly-documented standard, so it's theoretically possible for any third party program to restore it -- unlike NTBACKUP's closed and proprietary format, which you couldn't open with any other program except NTBACKUP. This full-system-image method also means no more messing with the "System State" backup to do a full recovery, which is a real relief.
Again, if you're used to the old NTBACKUP way of doing things, you'll need to change your habits a bit. On the plus side, it means backing up and restoring both the whole system and individual files is a lot less complicated than it used to be; I just hope it isn't so simple that I have to engineer an end-run around it to do certain things! (From what I understand, however, it is possible to back up multiple Vista systems to the same drive.)
Summary: Bye-bye NTBACKUP, and good riddance -- just remember you're not really backing up to discrete backup files anymore.
2. Backing Up Files
Click on "Back up files" to open up a dialog that describes where to store backed-up files. You can choose a network path, a local hard drive, or a CD/DVD drive.
Rather than choose a specific file path or folder, you'll be prompted for what types of files to back up. I suspect that integration with this tool by third-party applications is not something that is automatically honored: for instance, if you're using Thunderbird instead of Windows Mail and you select "E-mail" as one of the items to back up, I'm not sure the tool understands that Thunderbird's data is one of those things. However, this is more or less eclipsed by the "Additional files" and "Documents" selections.
One very large drawback is that it's not possible to audit a list of the files that will be backed up; you're essentially working blind, which is annoying. But all the boxes are ticked by default, and you can make a test backup and explore it later to see if a given thing you want backed up does indeed register.
Next up is scheduling. If you haven't done this before, you'll be allowed to run the first backup set immediately.
Like NTBACKUP, the backup process works through Windows's Shadow Copy subsystem, so you can continue to work uninterrupted while the backup operation runs. You'll be alerted by a pop-up balloon from the System Tray when the whole thing's done.
Summary: Be wary of what files might not be backed up by one of the categorical choices; create a sample backup and explore it to see.
3. Backing Up the Whole Computer
Click on "Back Up Computer" to start a full-system backup. This backs up both your user data and the operating system, and lets you rebuild everything from one of these backups in case things get mortally trashed. As before, you'll need to pick a location -- however, you cannot make a full system backup to a network path; it has to be a locally-connected drive or a removable drive (like a CD/DVD drive).
Once you choose a location, Windows'll give you a rough estimate of how much space the full backup will take. If it's too big for the drive you're saving to, you'll get a warning.
Once you give the okay, the full system backup will run with the same transparency as a file/folder backup. You can continue to work, although things might be a bit slow in the interm.
Summary: It doesn't get any easier than this. Seriously.
4. Backup Status and Configuration
After you've made a backup, a "Change Settings" link will appear in the Backup and Restore Center under the "Back up files" button.
Click it and you'll be presented with a window with three panels: one for performing backups and changing backup settings; another for manually restoring files; and a third for doing full backups.
Note: if you click "Back up now" in this window, it's the same as clicking "Back up" in the previous window. "Change backup settings" will allow you to edit the schedule for an existing backup set, or create a whole new set.
The "Restore files" window lets you restore from the last / current backup set, or pull files from a backup set made for another computer.
"Complete PC Backup" is much the same as the main window's full-PC-backup options.
Summary: Nothing too complicated here.
5. Restore Files
The process of restoring files is also a bit unlike what I was used to with NTBACKUP, but once you get used to the way it works it's not difficult at all. Before you start, you need to make sure whatever media or drive you backed up to is handy, or Backup and Restore won't be able to find it.
[A side note: If the file(s) you're trying to recover were deleted fairly recently or even overwritten, you might want to try recovering them by first using the Shadow Copy / Previous Versions feature, which I'll be talking about in a separate article.]
When you select Restore, you'll be asked where you want to restore files from.
The most recent backup is the default choice, but you can see a full catalog of all the backups made in the current backup set by selecting "Files from an older backup".
One small drawback of this approach is that if you don't remember exactly when you backed up a file, you may need to dig through several seperate backups to find it.
Once you've settled on which backup set to use, you'll be asked to choose which files or folders in the backup set to restore.
Note that when you explore folders to restore, you will not see the contents of those folders. You need to be in the Add Files view to see the files themselves. This is a bit deceptive and at first it made me wonder if the earlier backup operation had worked okay!
Once you finish adding files, click Next to select a location to restore to.
Files in a backup set can be restored either to their original location (the most likely choice), or to a manually-specified location -- a newly-created folders, with the original drive-letter / folder hierarchy optionally recreated beneath it.
Click Start and the backup will be restored as per your demands.
Summary: Watch out for the "empty folder" gotcha when restoring, but otherwise, all you need do is plug in your backup set and point to what to restore.
6. Restore the Whole Computer
A full restore process can be done one of two ways. The most convenient is through the Windows Recovery Environment -- which is not part of Windows Vista by default, from what I can tell; it's added by a manufacturer on a preloaded PC. [Note:
If you click "Restore the Whole Computer" in Backup and Restore, you'll be presented with this message:
Option #2, which is what most of us are probably going to fall back on, is to boot the install DVD, select "Repair your computer", and follow the prompts for "Windows Complete PC Restore". The process is pretty self-guiding, but make sure you have the restore media available beforehand (i.e., if you've backed up to an external hard drive, plug it in).
Summary: Again, not too hard, but let's see if there will be a way to install a Recovery Environment manually in Vista once it's gold.
That's it for now -- next time I'll look at the Shadow Copy / Previous Versions function, which is also new to Vista (although it's been extant in Windows Server 2003) and definitely worth covering as an adjunct to this. See you soon.
Hi Sir,
I am stuck in the vista backup utility. I did a backed up my data on to a different computer. Now how to restore back to the original location.
Please suggest.
You have got to be kidding! How can you like Vista's backup vs. ntbackup? With NTbackup I could select what files I wanted to backup and backup only those files. With Vista I'm forced to backup all or nothing. For example, I have a couple hundred GB worth of digital photos and videos I personally created using digital cameras and cam corders. Most of them, all but about 20GB, are burned to DVDs and taken off-site and thus backed up off-site, the problem is to backup the 20GB I've not yet burned to DVD I have to backup ~250GB worth of unnecessary files. The Vista backup solution is a total joke and insiders at MS I've spoken with know it. During the beta they told me there'd be no .bkf restore option now there is. Futhermore, there's absolutely no security in Vista's backup either by the use of unencrypted .zip files. It's a joke and one played on all of us, Vista is desinged for home users who have no idea what a real backup is. Show me one, just one commerical backup system that doesn't allow individual file selection.
As for backup sets, I can create incremental backups on multiple tapes or disks in XP (sorry, no more tapes in Vista either). To put all your incremental backups on one disk is idiotic at best.
BTW, .bkf files are as standard as it gets, given that 95% of the PCs in the world have ntbackup PREINSTALLED on them so you don't have to worry about some unknown 3rd party app.
The whole thing is just a bad joke. Users will quickly find out that hours upon hours of backing up junk they don't need will get old and they'll stop using it. I'd rather use WinZip 11, it's 10x faster, more secure as it can be excrypted, and actually backs up what you need.
[I've started posting a series of articles about how to address some of the inadequacies in the native Vista backup tool, actually. One of the biggest is the security issue -- native NTFS security won't help if the drive is stolen -- but there are a couple of possible ways to work around that which I'll be exploring in the future. --ed.]
How can i turn off backup and retore>?