How to back up windows.
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom, here for AskLeo.com
Askleo.com.
So if you've been following me for any length of time,
a week will probably do it, you'll know that I am a huge fan of backing up.
Backing up is the closest thing
to a silver bullet to protect you from just about anything that could go wrong.
And as we know, things can and do go wrong.
This video will essentially be an overview of the steps I recommend
you take to protect yourself with a backup of windows.
Now, I'm not going to be going into the details of each step.
However,
in the description, you'll find a link to the article that this video is based on.
That article has further links to detailed instructions for each of the steps.
Those links also include videos if that's your preferred style.
But the bottom line here is check out the link in the description.
It's askleo.
Askleo.com/30103.
So step one is an image backup.
Make an image backup.
An image backup is quite literally a full
image of absolutely everything that's on your hard drive.
It's fundamental to a backup strategy, in my opinion.
The reason it is so critical is
that there's no question about what is and is not within that backup.
It backs up everything.
The great use case that I think demonstrates why it's so useful
is that if your hard disk fails, well, you replace the hard disk,
you restore the most recent image, and you're back where you started.
There's no additional work.
It just works because you backed up absolutely everything.
That's step one.
Step two then is to make a recovery disk.
When you use backup software,
in order for that backup software to be able to restore to that replacement hard
disk, you need to be able to boot into something.
That replacement hard disk, for example, is empty.
So the restore disk, sometimes called a recovery disk or
an emergency disk, is actually a USB stick in most cases
these days, that is created by your backup software for use in an emergency.
What you do then is you boot from it.
And typically, when you boot from these
emergency desks, it will automatically fire up a copy of the backup software
you're using, ready to restore a backup image.
The good news here, by the way, is that an emergency desk
can also often be used to back up a machine that perhaps you can't boot into.
Number three, restoring an image.
It's what everybody asks about.
When I've got a backup image, great, what do I do with it?
Well, restoring an image is literally the process of taking that image
that you've created and restoring it to your hard disk.
Now, I don't suggest you do this unless or until you need to.
I have some ideas on how to go about basically ensuring that a restore will
work, but understanding what the process is
and how it works will help you understand why that backup image is so important
and how it will be used in case of that a disaster.
On the other hand, step number four is to restore individual files from that image.
You don't have to restore the entire image.
In fact, it's very useful to basically
recover an individual file or an individual folder or whatever you want.
Often, something you didn't realize was
important, and because it's an image backup, you have absolutely everything.
So being able to extract individual files
from that image is an incredibly useful piece of functionality.
Number five, we're going to move on from image backups,
and I'm going to suggest you go ahead and set up Windows File History.
File History uses space typically
on an external hard disk to back up files you're working on roughly as they change.
It's one of those things that is very easy
to turn on, very low cost, and the external drive you could use could
easily be the same external drive you're using for your image backups.
Number six, well, being able to restore a file from file history.
I want you to understand how that works, what that looks like,
so that you know what it is you're getting when you enable file history.
Number seven, use OneDrive.
Now, I say OneDrive because you have it.
If you're running Windows, you already have OneDrive on your machine.
However, this same philosophy works well
with Dropbox, Google One, Google Drive, other alternatives.
But I focus mostly on OneDrive, like I said, because you have it.
The issue is that a good backup strategy
includes making sure that there are backups of your important files
somewhere else, literally physically somewhere else.
Your external hard disk is probably right next to your computer or not far away.
If your entire house or building or
whatever were to be destroyed or caught up in fire, then what's called an offsite
backup is the way to basically protect yourself.
And by definition, OneDrive is an offsite backup and set up properly.
It works transparently in the background,
saving what you're working on often more quickly even than file history.
And then finally, step eight is OneDrive itself
has its own recycle bin, and it also has protection specifically for ransomware.
These are wonderful features that again provide another safety net
for files that are either accidentally deleted or corrupted or whatnot.
They could often be recovered by heading out to onedrive.
Com and restoring the file
from the backups, the recycle bin,
and the ransomware protection that are already enabled for you.
Now, one thing I haven't talked about, that I used to talk about when I talked
about this specific process, is the built-in backup in Windows.
It's referred to as the Windows 7 backup, and it allows you to create images.
Microsoft specifically has told us that we should no longer be using that.
It is deprecated.
What that means is that they're not making any changes to it, they're not fixing any
bugs, and they may eventually remove it from Windows completely.
They specifically suggest you use third-party tools.
So while there is an image backup, but built into Windows?
Don't use it.
We'll use third-party tools.
I typically recommend tools like Macrium, Reflect, or ESIS to do.
But there are other good tools that will do the same that will protect you
by creating the backups, the image backups that we're talking about.
So that's the overview.
Again, the link for the article that goes
into this in much more detail, including step-by-step instructions
for each of the steps I've talked about, is down in the description.
For updates, for comments, for all those links related to this topic and more.
Again, visit
askleo.com/30103. Thanks for watching.