Vista Tutorial - For 2009, resolve to back up your computer files, and do it

The new year has brought new resolutions, including a question from a reader who asked my recommendation for the best ways to back up a PC.
My real recommendation is that you actually do it.
I was doing some renovations in my house over the holidays and moved my main computer from one floor to my new home office on another floor and when I turned it back on I got a flurry of blue screens of death.
(Apple users, commence snickering.)



For 2009, resolve to back up your computer files, and do it : Tech : Ventura County Star



Do you back up your files/computer?

I totally agree Airbot, without hesitation!!

I don't know how many pleas for help that I have read on this Forum in the last few days, that haven't also included the phrases, either 'I don't want to lose......', or 'but if I do that I'm going to lose.......', or ' I'm afraid I have lost.......'

Please Folks, DON"T BECOME A LOSER!! It is such a simple thing to do in creating a back-up of all YOUR important Folders and Files. Remember that they are yours, and yours alone, and only YOU CAN REPLACE THEM! Conversely, without a back-up, they are also YOUR responsibility if you LOSE THEM.

Lost programs and software are easily reinstalled, lost personal Folders and Files, remain lost Folders and Files.

And while you are here, why not click on to Airbot's 'My System Specs'.....kinda looks like the "Declaration of Independance" doesn't it? The thing is that it is all there, for others to see, if he ever needs any help. Checkout my paltry "My System Specs"......they may look a bit like a 'Toys 'R Us' shopping list, but they also serve the same purpose......they provide information to the helper, if ever I ask for help.

For further information, check the link at the bottom of my page.

Cheers to all........so, when are you going to do your backup?? Oh! After you've
updated your 'My System Specs'....Great.

I haven't got around to installing Acronis on this Vista machine yet but I do keep backups of my data.

Whenever I put photo's into the Pictures folder they get burnt to CD before going into their appropriate folder, my Excel work starts in a cash book then each month is printed off and filed.

The Documents folder gets burnt to CD on a regular basis and if there's any emails I want to keep I'll print them.

The only thing I haven't done on this machine is do an image of the whole thing with Acronis

I just use windows backup, works perfect for me.

Still haven't got around to exploring that yet either Airbot

I back up all my raw photos strait from the card before I do any processing on them. Any downloads, updates and patches for games.
Anything else I want to keep.
All go on a external usb 500gb hard drive.

I back up weekly with Acronis.
Once a month i burn the latest image to DVD and store it and delete the old ones.
Worst case scenario i am 3 weeks away from my last restore.

Works for me.

I use the Vista backup for my files once a week and for the entire computer once a month. I have thought about Acronis or Norton ditto, but I am not sure of what benefits that would bring. You who use it could perhaps explain?

Other issue is malware. If you suddenly find you have a bad malware infection, your backup would certainly be affected too. It may be bad enough to make you format the HDD. What do you do then and how do you best protect yourself against that?

Vista Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate has the built-in "Complete PC Backup" option which backs up the OS (and Data) as an image file. No need to use a 3rd party software like Acronis.

I recently upgraded my hard drives and restored the images made by "Complete PC Backup" to the new drives... no problems at all, I had my desktop and all applications up and running on the new drives in less than 2 hours.

For those using Vista Home Premium without the complete PC Backup option, check out Clonezilla, an open source disk imaging software based on a Linux Live CD.

If you were creating incremental images, say on a monthly basis, you could just restore the image from an earlier date before you got infected by malware. If you also have backups of your files on a weekly basis, you could then restore the individual files/directories from the files backup.

The advantage of having image backups is that it also protects when your drive breaks down. You could easily restore the images to a new hard drive.