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How To Set Up & Use Windows 7 Backup & Restore Feature

Tina Sieber — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 22:31:16 +0000

It’s hardly a secret when I tell you that sooner or later you will need a backup of your personal data. Do you have one right now? What keeps most people from preparing regular backups is convenience.

Windows 7 features its own backup tool, also known as the Backup & Restore Feature. Windows 7 Backup has many strong points, but its strongest one yet is convenience. No need to download and install a third party software, and if you know your way around Windows, you’ll have no trouble setting it up. If you are unsure and require step by step instructions, this article will guide you through the entire process.

What Does Windows 7 Backup & Restore Do?

It creates a backup of your personal files and you can also include a system image to back up system settings and program files. Per default, the backups runs on a weekly schedule, but the schedule can be customized or turned off. Should disaster strike, you can use the backup to restore personal files to a new installation of Windows.

What Do I Need?

You need a backup medium. Ideally, this is an external hard drive or a network drive, but it can also be a second hard drive or partition within your computer. Regardless of which medium you choose, it requires enough free space to hold your backup.

How Can I Set It Up?

Setting up a backup with the Windows 7 Backup and Restore feature is straightforward, taking only a few easy steps and approximately three minutes.

To launch Windows 7 Backup and Restore :

Go to > Start and type > Backup into the search field.
From the results select > Backup and Restore and hit > Enter.

In the Backup and Restore window, click > Set up backup in the top right. As you can see from the screenshot below, I presently do not have a Windows backup set up. For my custom backups I use Cobian Backup.

You will have to wait a moment, while Windows launches the backup tool.

Once the Set up backup window loads, you will see a list of backup destinations.

If you wish to connect to an external hard drive, connect the drive now and then click > Refresh.

Once the desired backup destination appears in the list, select it and click on > Next in the bottom right.

On the next screen, you can choose what to back up and you can either decide to > Let Windows choose or > Let me choose, i.e. choose yourself.

If you have private data saved outside your user profile, then you should go with the second option and set up a custom backup, which is what I will guide you through now. Note that you can always change your choices later on, by changing the backup settings.

After clicking > Next in the previous window, you can check the drives, partitions, and folders you want to back up. Note that Backup and Restore does not back up Program Files or system files, even if you include the system drive in your backup. However, you can > Include a system image in your backup, provided there is enough space available on your backup destination.

In a final step you can review your settings and manage the schedule of your backup.

Just to mention it, if you selected the first backup option, i.e. > Let Windows choose, you will be taken straight to the above screen where you can review your backup settings and manage the backup schedule. Creating a system image will not be an option.

Click on > Change schedule to create a custom time for your backup.

Click > OK to confirm the schedule, then click > Save settings and run backup in the > Review your backup settings window. This will take you back to the initial > Backup and Restore Control Panel window. The backup you just confirmed will start immediately, but you can stop it by clicking on > View Details. and then > Stop Backup (twice). and either wait for the next scheduled backup, or launch it manually by clicking the > Back up now button.

The Backup and Restore window will now list your backup and you can change your backup settings here, for example change what you want to back up or adjust the schedule. At the bottom of the window, there is a small section called > Restore. To restore backups, click > Select another backup to restore files from and browse for a previous backup you wish to restore.

If you wish to pause the backup for a period of time, you can click on > Turn off schedule in the top right. A > Turn on schedule link will then appear under > Schedule. And that’s it! That wasn’t hard, was it? The only thing you have to remember now is to attach the backup drive when it’s time for the backup to run and you’re set.

If you enjoyed this article, I also recommend the Windows 7 Backup and Restore Guide. I recently wrote an article on 5 Signs Your Hard Drive Lifetime is Ending & What To Do. If you have lost files, you might be interested in How To Recover Deleted Files Using Windows 7′s Restore Previous Versions Tool.

What do you find most challenging about setting up and maintaining regular backups?

How To Temporarily Reset Your Phone & Clear The SD Card [Android]

Ryan Dube — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 21:31:29 +0000

Recently, I started a new job where I was offered a Blackberry Bold. Being a tech geek that loves playing with new gadgets, this was a pretty cool turn of events. However, it is also bittersweet, because I am absolutely in love with my Droid. In my opinion, no matter what other mobile phone I ever use, the Android will always be king. I love the ability to quickly multitask with different apps, click on an address or phone number from a website, instantly dial or navigate, and so many other features too numerous to mention.

With that said, my kids both want a smartphone, and by offering my Droid to my daughter, I can avoid having to purchase a new phone and add a new data plan. I realized that many families may be in similar situations – where phones may change hands but never actually leave the house.

In this article, I’m going to show you how to save your entire phone setup – including the OS settings, applications and data – to a storage area, and then how to completely reset the phone to factory settings and clear the SD card. In the future, if the phone is ever yours again, you can simply restore from backup and it’s like the phone was never gone.

Reset Your Android Like New Again

It is surprisingly easy to reset your Android phone. What you really have to worry about is making sure you don’t lose anything important that you might have saved on your phone at some point – and so that you always have the ability to reclaim the phone as your own again.

In the following case, I am running a Motorola Droid with the CyanogenMod ROM. The instructions below are nearly identical for your standard ROM.

Back Up Your Phone Settings & All Data

The first thing you’ll want to do is install ROM Manager off the Android Market and do a full backup of your current ROM.

Once you click “Backup Current ROM“, it’ll reboot your phone and then take a full backup of your apps, settings and OS configuration to your SD card. It can take a while so make sure your phone is plugged in. When it’s done, the next thing you’ll want to do is move that backup file (along with all of your photos, music and other data) onto your computer or some other external storage device.

To do this, plug your phone into your computer, pull down the top menu and click the USB status. On the next screen, click on “Turn on USB Storage“. This will mount your phone as a drive in File Explorer.

It’s as simple as highlighting all of the files in that drive, and copying them to a backup location on your computer or external hard drive.

In my case, the entire backup was about 2.35 GB and took about 2 or 3 minutes. Just let the transfer do its thing, and when you’re done, your Android phone settings are now completely backed up and ready for use at some future date.

Restoring Your Android To Factory Settings

Now that you’ve backed everything up, it’s time to wipe out everything and transform the phone back in time to the first day you bought it. Well, I guess in my case that actually means back to the first day I installed the CyanogenMod ROM, but you get my point.

The process to do this is ridiculously easy (which is why it’s so important to back up everything first). Go into the settings menu and click on “Privacy“.

On the next screen, and click on “Factory data reset“.

Read the warning screen carefully, because trust me, they are not kidding. Everything gets wiped. That’s Everything with a capital E.

Upon reboot, you’ll need to go through the initial configuration steps that you did when you first bought your phone – including either logging into or creating a Google Account. Then the standard home screen will appear.

Just to make sure everything is fresh and new on the SD card, it doesn’t hurt to go into settings and click on the SD card & phone storage settings menu. In here, unmount the SD card and then click on “Format SD card“.

Now, you’ve completely and thoroughly wiped out everything on the phone and it is ready for the next user. It is currently using the same phone number and cellular account that I had previously. If you’re switching accounts, then you’ll want to take your SIM card out and insert the SIM card for the new user.

Have you ever traded your Android phone with family members or friends? How did you reset your Android? Did you use the same procedure as described here, or did you do anything different? Do you have any other preferences for taking a ROM backup? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

How To Recover Deleted Files Using Windows 7′s Restore Previous Versions Tool

Yaara Lancet — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:31:39 +0000

We all know the importance of backups. If we’ve it heard once, we’ve heard it a million times. Always have backups, always save after every change, always use Dropbox (or something similar) to save previous versions – and everything will be alright. But accidents happen even to the most safety-conscious people. I, personally, saved things by mistake when I actually didn’t want to save changes. What then? What if you purposefully delete a file permanently only to realize it was actually not the file you meant to delete?

Fear not, Windows 7 has the answer. This guide will show you how to restore previous versions and recover deleted files using the Restore Previous Versions tool.

System Protection & Restore Points

In order for this method to work, you will have to enable System Protection. System Protection creates regular restore points every week, and also before major events such as driver or program installations. If System Protection is disabled, restore points will not be created.

To check if it’s enabled, click Start, right-click My Computer and choose Properties. On the left side, click on System Protection. From here, you can choose your drive (you’ll have to enable it by drive) and click on Configure.

Here you can enable System Protection for all system settings and files, only for files and folders, or disable it entirely. You can also set how much disk space will be used to create restore points. The more space you allocate for this the more restore points you’ll have, but your disk space will be used up, so use it wisely.

As I mentioned earlier, restore points are created automatically, but if you want to create one manually, you can do so at any time. In the System Protection tab, click on “Create”, name your restore point and create it. It might take a few minutes, but actually not as long as you’d expect.

Restoring Previous Versions

To restore a previous version of a file, right-click the file in question and go to the Previous Versions tab. Here you should find previous versions of your file. If you don’t see any, there might not have been a restore point since you created it, or your last modification was long ago and the restore point has already been deleted.

Before you restore a previous version, click open to see if this is truly the version you want. You can also copy the file to somewhere on your hard drive just in case. If you choose to restore, this will overwrite your existing version of the file.

If you also use Windows Backup, you will also be able to restore from backup at this point. You will have to have the media you used for backup available for that.

Restore Deleted Files

So this is the reason we all gathered here – let’s restore some deleted files.

To do this, you would have to access the previous versions of the folder in which your deleted file used to be. Go to that folder, right-click it and go to the Previous Versions tab.

From here, you can choose the version of the folder that you want and double click it. This will actually open a previous version of this folder, complete with all the files that were in it at the time.

From this folder you can simply copy or drag files to wherever you want. Just grab your deleted files and copy them back to where they’re supposed to go, and you’re done!

When I tried to do this, I got this security message:

But it’s OK, my own files weren’t really harmful and everything worked just fine!

Conclusion

The Windows 7 restore previous versions tool is actually extremely useful. I usually use Dropbox for this, but this is something I can use for every file and folder on my hard drive, and it only takes a few clicks to do so. The only downside is that you can’t really schedule restore points to happen whenever you want, so this is not really a solution that can replace backups. But for your everyday accidental deletion or change, it can be a real life saver.

What do you use to restore older versions and recover deleted files? Share in the comments! Also don’t forget to read Tina’s Backup & Restore manual!

Image credit: Shutterstock

How To Restore Data Service To Your Smartphone [Android]

Matt Smith — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 15:31:49 +0000

Mobile data service is ubiquitous in most major cities, making it unlikely that an Android user will ever go without seeing the 3G or 4G logo lit up on their device. There are still many places however, that don’t have access to mobile data – and unexpected interference can also disrupt your connection.

Your options for restoring data service are limited, as you’re ultimately reliant on your carrier’s coverage. There are however, a few tricks that can help.

Try Wi-Fi

Mobile data is built to cover wide areas, and it does that well. A single tower can provide coverage to hundreds of customers over tens of miles if placed in an area with few obstructions from buildings or terrain.

This broad focus does sometimes result in a lack of service in unusual areas, however. Fortunately, you don’t have to rely on the broad focus of mobile data at all times. Instead, you can try searching for a local open Wi-Fi network.

Most open Wi-Fi networks are provided by businesses and use a wired connection, which means they’ll provide fast and steady data service. A town that does not have data service may well have a McDonalds – and since most McDonalds offer free Wi-FI, the golden arches are all you need.

Of course, some caution should be used on open Wi-Fi, since it may be possible for a third party to monitor your online activity. Accessing sensitive data, like your bank account, isn’t recommended.

Try A Window

If you’re in an area that generally has excellent coverage and data service suddenly goes missing, the culprit is most likely interference. This often takes the form of a physical obstruction. Although the radio waves used for mobile data can penetrate most structures, certain structures can block signals entirely. My Thunderbolt often has difficulty maintain a strong data connection in a local warehouse store, for example.

When this occurs, one option is to simply move to an area of the building that does not cause interfere with your device. Windows are excellent because they do not interfere with data service and they’re easy to seek out, but any part of a building that’s constructed mostly of wood and plaster should be a prime spot for data service.

Find An Area With Coverage

There are times where you may find yourself without any options for data service. In some areas of the world, such as the Great Plains of the United States, this is unlikely. In more mountainous areas however, providing coverage is a challenge for carriers. Big, hulking pieces of stone are not a boon to wireless data.

Moving to an area with coverage is a “well, duh” solution. Actually doing it when you already lack data coverage is another matter. If you have no data coverage, you can’t access your carrier’s data coverage map. So how are you supposed to know where to go?

There are some apps that can provide data coverage information, such as Rootmetrics, but they suffer from one problem – they themselves require mobile data to function. A better idea is to download a coverage map from your provider and place it on your phone as a file. This may require some planning on your part, but the map will be accessible at any time.

Purchase A Signal Booster

For most people, finding data coverage is a matter of returning to an area where data coverage is strong. However, some users live in areas where data coverage is consistently poor. One apartment complex in my area is notorious for this. Although located near a major city, most of the complex is a mobile data dead zone.

In these situations a signal booster may help. Once connected to your phone, the signal booster will ideally improve your data connection by boosting the strength of your device’s cellular radio and adding a larger antenna.

Ideal is the key word. Although a booster can help, it can only do so much. The apartment complex with the dead zone would be a decent place to deploy a booster, since a signal is nearby but not quite accessible in that area. However, attaching a booster to your phone won’t help you obtain service at a vacation home nestled deep in the mountains. Price and bulk are also issues, as most signal boosters are both large and expensive.

Conclusion

Restoring data service usually isn’t easy. Wi-Fi is usually the easiest route and it’s thankfully becoming more widely available with each passing day. If no Wi-Fi is available, your options boil down to moving where data coverage is available or buying a signal booster, which may or may not improve your situation.

Let us know of your experiences with this situation in the comments below.

MailStore Home – One Of the Easiest Free Email Backup Tools Available [Windows]

Saikat Basu — Mon, 23 May 2011 17:30:57 +0000

Emails operate on a ‘fire and forget’ principle. We fire it out and forget about it. From there on they contribute to the clutter and chaos that’s our inbox. Far sighted email management calls for two things – a systematic backup plan and an efficient search system to find the email that’s lost like the needle in the archived haystack.

Do you have one? Combing for email has improved vastly with improved search in both offline and online email services. For email backup, we still have to fall back on third party tools. So, why not look at MailStore Home, a free solution for email archiving and backup.

MailStore Home (ver.4.2) is a Windows only freeware that is a single stop backup and archiving solution for all your email accounts scattered across the digital world. In brief, MailStore allows you to create a central storehouse of all your emails from all your accounts and makes it searchable so that you always have ready access to a buried but important email.

The Scope & Reach of MailStore Home

Take a look at the MailStore interface; the email backup tool works effortlessly with the following accounts – online mail services like Gmail and Yahoo; Microsoft Outlook 2000, XP, 2003, 2007, 2010; Microsoft Outlook Express and Windows Mail; Mozilla Thunderbird and SeaMonkey; any POP3 and IMAP mailboxes; hosted Exchange mailboxes; email files like EML, MSG, PST, and MBOX files. Some specific features like exporting to PST files are available only in the commercial server version.

Oh! That’s not me in the profile pic. You can change the pic and introduce your own.

Installation & Setup Is Easy

The 10.7MB freeware can be setup and configured in a few easy steps. Basically, you have to select your email account(s) and enter your sign-in credentials.

Advanced settings allow you to specify the date range filter for the archival process. You can choose to skip and include specific mail folders to streamline the process.

After that, MailStore Home goes to work scanning your folders and creating the archives for single or multiple email accounts. The first run takes a bit of time depending on the quantity of emails of course.

Features That Make MailStore Home A Great Backup Tool

MailStore Home behaves like an email client. You can search for that long buried email and read it just like you would in any email program.

MailStore also searches all types of file attachments. The Search E-mail feature has advanced features like reusing saved search queries.

One of the features that I really dig is that I can select an email from the archive of one email account and compose a reply using any of my installed email clients.

I can also choose to just export any email to my installed email client. But a more serious backup move would be moving it to an external storage medium like a CD, DVD, or USB as EML (readable by any email application) or MSG files (readable by MS Outlook).

But perhaps the killer feature could be the ease with which MailStore Home allows you to export and transfer POP/IMAP emails from one email service provider to another. Setup the email server access from MailStore and transfer your archived folders to an online email account like Gmail or Yahoo. The following screens show the successful transfer of emails from MailStore Home to an online account like Gmail.

MailStore Home also has a portable version which can come really handy for setting up an email archive on any USB flash. You can store all your emails on an USB drive and use the portable app to open and browse your email archive on any computer within seconds.

MailStore Home does not lock all your archived emails in a proprietary format. Old email can be easily restored and read with a click. From its email client-like reading pane to archive management features, MailStore Home is a well rounded solution for backing up all your old emails.

We had taken a brief look at this email archiver along with four others in the early days with 5 Ways to Backup your Email. We have revisited the latest version again. What do you think of MailStore Home as a backup tool?

3 Things To Check When Your System Restore Is Not Working [Windows]

Jessica Cam Wong — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 01:31:16 +0000

When your computer works smoothly, don’t you wish it would always stay this way? Even if you exercise caution with the programs you download, regularly perform defragmentation and do other things to ensure your system runs at its best, problems may still arise without warning.

System Restore may work wonders and save your behind in those cases. If however you find system restore not working, there might be a number of things to check before you reinstall Windows. If you’re sure System Restore is turned on, but it’s still not working properly, try the following.

Run System Restore From Safe Mode

If you get any problems while running System Restore, or System Restore did not complete successfully, try running System Restore in Safe Mode. To run Windows in Safe Mode, restart your computer and press F8 (if you have Windows installed only). If you have a dual-boot configuration, select Windows and press F8 before the Windows logo appears. You can also make the system go into Safe Mode by typing ‘msconfig’ in the Start search box and enabling Safe Boot in the Boot tab.

When you’re on the desktop in Windows Safe Mode, type ‘System’ in the Start search box and press Enter when System Restore is highlighted. You should be able to run System Restore at this point. If System Restore works in Safe Mode, then perhaps your antivirus program or a corrupted file is preventing it from starting. You may need to adjust your antivirus program (like turn off Norton’s Tamper Protection feature) or perform scans before attempting to run System Restore again.

Sometimes, your System Restore files may also have become corrupted. You may have to use an earlier restore point (especially if you’ve tried the more recent ones without success), but if that doesn’t work, you may need to switch System Restore off (this will delete all your existing restore points), restart your computer and turn it on again.

Configure Disk Space Usage (300MB)

If you still can’t get System Restore to run properly, try adjusting the disk space allocated for System Restore since you might have run out of it. Microsoft recommends at least 300MB of free hard disk space and since System Restore might actually use up to 15% of space, you might look into increasing the allocated space or deleting old restore points.

To adjust disk space for System Restore, type ‘create restore’ in the Start search box and press Enter when Create a restore point is highlighted.

Now click on the Configure button and move the slider in the next dialog.

To delete old restore points, you can use the option below the slider to delete all restore points and previous versions of files (which I would not recommend), or only delete older restore points while still keeping the last, most recent one. To do the latter, type Disk Cleanup in the Start search box, right-click on the first item and choose Run as Administrator.

Now click on More Options, and then on Clean up.

Try System Image Backup Programs

System Restore may have always worked for you, but if you’ve tried a lot of things and System Restore just doesn’t work at all, try performing system image backups. These will create an image of your system when it’s stable and performing smoothly so you can restore your machine to that state in case it runs into problems. Windows 7 already has a function for you to create system repair disks and images. Just type ‘repair’ or ‘system repair’ in the Start search box and follow the instructions to create a repair disk.

To create system images, type ‘back up’ in the Start search box.

Click on Create a System Image on the left of the window.

You’ll be prompted to choose somewhere to save your system image so you can start saving the backup. To restore image backups, read this.

You can also use Clonezilla, Paragon’s Drive Backup Express or any of the excellent 5 tools in this list.

If you would rather reinstall Windows, read Jorge’s guide for reinstalling without losing your data.

Additional Consideration: Make Sure Restore Points Are Being Created

Just to be on the safe side, check regularly that restore points are being created because the last thing you want is to find out your System Restore function doesn’t work after your computer has gone awry. Type ‘rstrui’ in the Start search box. Click Next on the dialog and on the next screen, make sure there are recent restore points.

How do you deal when System Restore is not working? Let us know in the comments!

Photo credit: Shutterstock

DOWNLOAD Stuff Happens: The Backup & Restore Guide

Justin Pot — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 13:45:51 +0000

Disasters happen. Unless you’re okay with losing all of your data, you need a good backup system. If you know this but haven’t got around to setting up backup on your PC, this is the guide to read.

“Stuff Happens: The Backup and Restore Guide” outlines everything you need to regularly back up your PC. Author Tina Sieber outlines backup strategies, what to backup and what tools to use for the job.

Backups are necessary because data has value. Whether this is sentimental, commercial, or legal value, a backup is a way of securing valuable information. The worst loss would be files of which we own the only copy in existence, such as personal documents or photos.

Protect these priceless files. Back them up. This guide can teach you how.

This guide explains:

How to use the built-in Windows 7/Vista backup tool.
Which files you should backup.
Putting your data and your operating system on separate partitions or disks.
The various kinds of backups you can run.
The costs and benefits of local, optical and online backups.
The benefits of syncing your files.
Alternative backup programs.

DOWNLOAD Stuff Happens: The Backup and Restore Guide
(take a moment and share this guide with friends on Facebook and Twitter
using the social network sharing buttons below)

Read now on Scribd

Take & Restore Quick Snapshots Of Your System State With SmartClose [Windows]

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 06 Apr 2011 18:31:50 +0000

Sometimes I wish life has a rewind button that will let us go back to the past and undo all the damage that we’ve done – to restore everything to the ‘previous working state’. Events in our life might be irreversible, but things are different in the computer world. You can restore your system to any previous state you want, as long as you have the necessary backups.

Windows users have “System Restore” that they can count on. But that feature isn’t the quickest way to do it. Meet SmartClose, a really tiny application that will help you to quickly take and restore snapshots of your system state.

Take This Tiny Tool

Other than long-term safety precautions, taking system snapshots is also advisable prior to software installations, especially for those who install and uninstall lots of software regularly. With a snapshot ready, one can cleanly erase the presence of a newly installed software. This method is better than traditional uninstallers which always litter the system with unwanted leftovers.

Looking at various system maintenance applications with DVD-size files, I never thought that SmartClose would measure less than 700KB. It’s small enough that you could put it in your Dropbox folder and install it on your other computers. The interface is also simple; just one small window with five menus. So everything is accessible from here.

With the program installed, we are ready to begin.

Snap Some System Shots

The first time you use the app, you will be guided by a wizard. Check the “Don’t show this introduction page again” box to skip it the next time you take other shots.

The first step of the wizard is to choose tasks to be performed before taking the snapshot. In general, these tasks are mainly about stopping every unnecessary computer activity before taking the system snapshot.

The wizard will also let you add applications to the “Protected Programs” list. The list contains critical applications that will not be closed due to their importance to the system.

The next step will let you choose the location to save the snapshot.

Before starting the process, you will see a window with a list of all the tasks. Click “Start” to begin.

Restore From A Recorded Shot

To restore your system using one of the snapshots, choose the second menu under “Create a system snapshot …“. You will have a similar wizard guiding you, but the steps go the opposite way from the first one.

The wizard starts by letting you choose which system snapshot you want to restore from. The default choice is the last saved snapshot.

Then it will relaunch all the closed applications. If there are some applications you’ve opened before running the restore wizard, click the “Uncheck Running Programs” button before clicking “Next“.

The wizard continues by asking you which components you want to restore.

Then you’ll see the list of tasks. Click “Start” to begin the restoration process.

To see how SmartClose performed, I took a snapshot of my system, installed several new applications, then restored my system using the latest snapshot. I found no trace of the applications I had just installed. So we can conclude that SmartClose would be a great companion for people who love to try out new applications.

Do you think SmartClose would be useful for you? Do you prefer to use Windows’ System Restore instead? Or do you use another better alternative? Please share your thoughts using the comments below.

Backup Your PC With Ease For Free Using Easeus Todo Backup [Windows]

James Bruce — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 17:31:10 +0000

Backing up your data is one of those things in life that you really won’t understand until disaster strikes, by which time it’s too late. For most people who haven’t experienced data-loss, the task of backing up just seems like such a good idea in theory, but so much effort in reality.

But take my advice, use this incredible free Easeus Todo Backup software and it’ll be so easy you won’t even have to think about it. And if the worst does come to the worst, and you do lose any data, then you will be covered.

Types Of Backup

There are 2 basic types of backup you can do with Todo Backup, so first take a moment to think about your requirements.

File & Folder Backup

This is the simplest form of backup there is, and basically just makes a copy of files. These kind of basic backups are suitable when your documents or data are the most important thing, but you don’t care about your operating system or the applications installed on it. As you have a fine control over what to backup, the size of your backup is determined by your data only. However, once you’ve taken a full backup, you can run “incremental backups” subsequently, which only backs up the files that have changed. This saves space and time, while still giving you an up to date copy of files should the worst happen.

Partition & Drive Backup

This can save a copy of your entire computer, including the operating system. It’s the best choice if your computer is your primary work machine and getting it up and running again quickly is important, or if you have a lot of applications installed that you don’t want to lose. With a full partition and drive backup, you can simply change the broken drive and restore everything back to it in a few hours. Of course, these kind of backups will take longer to perform, and they include everything on that partition, so they tend to grow large. You can reduce the size with compression though.

Easeus Todo Backup

This handles both of these effortlessly, and allows you to make a bootable restore CD or USB. One point to bear in mind is that while you can backup to a shared network drive (like one of the awesome drobos we gave away last week), you cannot restore from one. If you want to be able to restore your whole system, you must backup to a physical device plugged into the computer, such as another internal drive (see my guide to adding another internal drive) or a USB hard drive.

Automated, No Effort Backups

Automation is the key to back-ups. If you have to actually launch some software every time you want to update the backup, then believe me after the first time you never actually will.

Hands-On Test

To see how the software really performs, I decided to do a full system backup of my Windows machine. The whole system is only about 10GB as it’s primarily for work. To test the restore capabilities, I’ll delete a bunch of random critical Windows files to simulate a system error, then change the drive, and attempt to restore from the backup using a bootable CD made using the Easeus software.

To start, I chose Schedule Backup -> Disk and partition backup, and gave it a name. When it comes to choosing what to backup, I made sure to select only the main Windows drive as I already had the backup drive plugged in. I then chose the backup drive E: as the destination – the USB drive I had plugged in. Be sure to check the box “Check Backup Integrity“, or there is a possibility that your backup will be corrupt. I chose a Daily backup at 8:45pm, and made sure to enter my administrator account password.

While that was running, I went ahead and made a bootable rescue USB key from the tools menu.

Make sure you don’t choose your backup drive if that’s also plugged in through USB. The process only took a few seconds. I then waited for the backup to finish, which according to the log took less than 10 minutes.

Curiously, the backup image was only about 5GB – I checked later and by default a basic amount of compression is applied. Less compression will make the backups quicker but larger, more will take longer but result in a smaller file. Regardless, I went ahead and deleted random files (don’t try this at home) until it refused to boot Windows, then unplugged the main drive and installed a new one. Just to complicate things, I replaced the original drive with a smaller one. I then booted from the USB drive. With the USB backup drive plugged in, it automatically recognized it and found the backup image, and soon enough I was choosing the drive I wanted to restore the system to.

You can even resize the partitions during the restore process. 10 minutes later, Windows was back up and running. Fantastic!

Summary

Even if Easeus Todo Backup wasn’t free, it would still be one of the best backup solutions for Windows. It is free though – and with features otherwise only found in expensive packages, it’s also incredibly simple to set up a regular automated full backup plan. If you don’t already have a decent backup solution in place, I strongly suggest you download this now. There are also full guides on the site for every type of backup operation you could want.

Again, here’s that download link for this incredible piece of software. Let us know your experiences in the comments if you’re a current user – or what backup software you use instead?

How To Move A Full Operating System From An Old PC To A New One

Matt Smith — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:31:12 +0000

Buying a new desktop or laptop computer is always good geeky fun. Although computers have generally accelerated beyond the level needed for mere “adequate” use, the performance wars haven’t calmed down in the slightest. New PCs also often have cool features like touchscreens.

The only problem with buying a new PC ““ one that has existed for years and that hardware technology can’t solve ““ is when you want to move the operating system to your new hard drive. Simply copying your operating system from one hard drive to another doesn’t work, and trying to install your old hard disk into your new PC may result in issues as well. There is a solution to this issue, however.

Making Your Clone

Operating systems are finicky beasts. They don’t like to be copied directly over to a new hard drive, and the operating system on your new PC will most certainly won’t let you copy over it (at least as long as it’s running). There’s good reason for this, in terms of curtailing security threats and preventing accidental operating system damage, but it certainly makes moving a full operating system more difficult.

Since copying operating system files the old-fashioned way doesn’t result in a bootable operating system being transferred over, you’ll need to rely on a process called cloning. Cloning a hard drive replicates all or some of the files on it and also replicates the file structure of the hard drive. This creates a perfect bootable copy. Other MakeUseOf authors have discussed this topic already, so check out Tina’s post about popular freeware cloning software and Benjamin’s post about how to clone a hard drive with Clonezilla.

Cloning Problems

Unfortunately, while cloning does create a perfect copy of your hard drive and the operating system on it, it isn’t always the best solution. The process of cloning is itself a bit complex, and it will presumably require that you at some point have an extra hard drive, since directly cloning your existing drive to the drive on your new PC would wipe out the new PC’s drive entirely.

The other issue with cloning is that creating a perfect copy does not guarantee that your old operating system will work with your new PC. When an operating system installs itself on a PC, it also installs a plethora of drivers relating to your PC’s hardware. If you transfer your existing OS to a new PC, much of that hardware is going to be different ““ and that can be a shock to your OS. It will have drivers for certain hardware, but that hardware is gone. It will try to compensate by installing new drivers automatically, but if it can’t find the right drivers it will likely crash.

You may be able to repair the operating system if you still have the install disc around, or can load the installer onto another bootable device, but this can be a frustrating process.

Transferring Files

If cloning sounds like too much work, or you’ve tried it and found that it failed, you can forgo trying to transfer the entire operating system and instead transfer only your files and system settings.

Windows has a utility for this called Windows Easy Transfer. As the name implies, the goal of the software is to transfer everything from your old PC to your new PC that could easily be lost. It doesn’t transfer software, but it does transfer documents, photos, music, program settings, etc. Once the process is complete, your new PC should behave much as the old one did, and should have all of your personal files as well.

The Windows Easy Transfer software is free, but a direct USB connection between computers requires that you buy a Windows Easy Transfer Cable. You can skip this, however, by connecting two computers via a network and transferring files that way. A direct Ethernet connection is usually quickest.

Linux users can accomplish this same task by using a utility called Rsync. Apple users aren’t left out in the cold, either ““ OS X comes with a utility called Migration Assistant that will help you transfer files to your new Mac from an old one.

Conclusion

Personally, I don’t recommend that most users go with cloning, although it is the only option that results in a true full operating system transfer. Utilities that transfer all critical system information and your personal files usually give you a better result ““ they transfer important data, but don’t leave room for driver compatibility issues that could cause crashes.

Let us know if you have done this, and if so, what method you chose to go with. How did it go?