Welcome back to IT Free Training’s free Windows 7 training course. In this video I
will look at backing up your Windows 7 system. With any computer system you should perform
regular backups to protect your data from loss. Regardless of how new or old your computer
system is and how much you paid for it, hardware does fail from time to time, taking your data
with it. Windows 7 comes with backup software called
Backup and Restore. This software will not only backup up your data files, but it can
also backup your operating system. It achieves this by using two different methods.
To backup the complete system, Backup and Restore creates what is called a system image.
A system image has all the files and folders on the hard disk including the operating system
files and program files. It is basically a complete copy of your Windows 7 hard disk.
A system image can also be used in what is referred to as a bare metal recovery. This
is when you restore the operating system to another computer with different hardware.
For example, if your laptop was stolen and you purchased a new one with different hardware,
you can restore Windows 7 to the new laptop with a system image and Windows will detect
all the hardware changes. The disadvantage of a system image is that
you can’t restore individual files. It is either all or nothing. The backup itself is
stored in a VHD file. A work around is to restore single files from a system image is
to mount the VHD file in the operating system and then extract the files you need from it
with Windows Explorer. This is not the most user friendly way of restoring files from
a backup for the average user. To have a more user friendly backup, Windows
7 also allows you to backup individual files and folders. This gives you a simple way of
backing up documents and user files. The advantage with this method is that the backups tend
to be smaller and thus you can keep more backup revisions. You could for example run a backup
each day of the week and restore files from any day of the week. Windows 7 will automatically
manage the space allocated for backups maximizing the amount of backup history your computer
can hold. So why does Backup and Restore need two different
systems? System images tend to be quite large in nature since they contain all the files
on your hard disk. They also contain system files and other information about your system.
For example, they contain the boot sector from your hard disk, basically everything
you need to recover your system. So considering how big system images are, some administrators
may create a manual system image every six months and put it somewhere safe.
The file and Folder backup unlike the system image backup allows you to choose which files
and folder to backup. You could choose to backup the system and program files in this
backup however this backup does not support a full Windows 7 recovery. If your hard disk
were to crash, you would only be able to recovery individual files not the complete system.
How would you use the two backups types together? If you had a complete hard disk failure 3
months after you completed a system image backup, you could use the system image to
recover the operating system. Once done, use the file and folder backup to recover your
data files. Having said this any software that was installed after the image backup
was complete will have to be reinstalled. Windows Updates, new device drivers and additional
software can be re-installed quite easily. Since the file and folder backup contains
all the most recent document changes you have not lost anything that can’t be recovered.
In some cases you may not even want to restore the operating system. You may be quite happy
to install a fresh copy of Windows 7 and start again as long as your documents have been
backed up. You can see how having two backup types gives you a lot of options.
In this video I will look at configuring a Backup in Windows 7 and restoring individual
files and folders. In the next video I will look at how to restore the whole system using
a system image. With Backup and Restore in Windows 7 you can
backup up your data to a number of different destinations. Each option has its own advantages
and disadvantages. When considering which option to use, you need to consider what you
want to achieve. In the simplest case, a user will want to
restore a file or folder when they accidently delete it or the files become corrupt. If
you want to recover data that has been lost because of a fire or theft, you need to store
the backup in a secure location. The first backup media supported by Backup
and Restore is a second internal hard disk. Backing up to an internal hard disk is the
fastest option available for Windows Backup and Restore. The problem with internal hard
disks is they are not always easy and quick to remove. For this reason they are not good
candidates for regular offsite storage. Some computers have eSata connections. This will
allow you to externally connect a hard disk to your computer. This is one way to use an
internal hard disk but have the freedom to easily remove the hard disk to take it off
site. An internal hard disk also gives you the ability to restore the system if the primary
hard disk were to fail. The next option is to use an external hard
disk. An external hard disk tends to be slower than an internal hard disk. External hard
disks are drives that are connected by connections like USB and FireWire. The difference between
these devices and eSata is that an eSata drive is treated like a standard sata hard disk.
The operating system essentially sees eSata hard disk as another internal sata hard disk
even though the hard disk is external to the computer.
The advantage of external hard disks is that they are easy to connect and to disconnect
from the system and transport. You only have to plug them into Windows and they will be
installed automatically for you. External hard disks don’t like being bumped around
too much so having them transported to your off site location on a daily basis may reduce
the life span of the drive. However if you just want to transport it to your fire proof
safe on site, they work really well. The next option is optical media which is
very cheap nowadays and can easily be taken off site. The media does not take up much
room so you could easily take it home in a brief case and is quite resistant to forces
like being dropped. If your data is larger than the optical disc, Windows will span the
data over multiple discs. Optical backups are good for a cheap once off backup of your
system but keep in mind that optical media does have a life span. After a few years the
media does start to become less reliable.
The disadvantage of optical disks is that system image cannot be included with a regularly
scheduled backup. As you will see later in the demonstration, when you configure Backup
and Restore, you can configure a schedule for backup to include a system backup. With
optical media you need to run a system image separately.
Lastly, optical media does not support incremental backups for system image backups. Incremental
means that backups performed after the first full backup only save the changes. In order
to support this feature the destination media must be on NTFS which optic disk are not.
The next type of media is USB flash drives. These are small and easy to carry but the
capacity is not that great. Removable media like USB flash drives do not support system
image backup using the scheduling feature. With the limited amount of space on the flash
drive it is unlikely that you would want to store a system image backup on the flash drive
anyway.
Lastly, you can store your backup on a network share such as network attached storage device
or on a file server. The speed of the backup will be determined by how fast your network
is. The disadvantage of a network backup is that it only supports one system image backup
using the scheduling feature. Media like hard disks can store multiple system images in
the one file given multiple backups to restore from.
In order to use Backup and Restore to a network location, you need to be running Windows 7
Professional or above. Regardless of which media you select, it can
be any size assuming it is large enough to hold the data that you are backing up. The
larger the media the more revisions of each file that it will be able to hold.
With Windows Backup and Restore there are some options which are not supported. First
you can't backup Windows to the same volume as Windows. Also you can't backup to a recovery
partition or a partition that has been encrypted with BitLocker. Lastly Windows Backup and
Restore does not support tape drives. That’s all the basic theory for Window Backups.
I will now switch to my Windows 7 computer and demonstrate how to use Windows Backup.
To access the backup and restore settings in Window 7, open the start menu and go to
all programs, maintenance and select Backup and Restore. No backup has been configured
on this computer yet. To configure one, select the option set up backup.
Windows will automatically detect the available local destinations the backup can be stored.
In this case I have the option for the DVD drive and a second internal hard disk. If
you want to save the backup to a network location, select the option save on a network. Here
you can enter in the details for the network share that you want to save the backup to.
In this case I will cancel out of here and select the option for the second internal
hard disk. On this screen you can let Windows decide
which files to backup or select the second option to choose your own options. I will
choose the second option so we can see which options are available. Windows by default
will backup the user profiles on the system. Things like the items in the recycle bin and
temporary files are automatically excluded by the backup.
By default items like program files are also not included in the backup as shown here.
Windows Backup and Restore assumes that you will back up the program and system files
using a system image. The tick box, include a system image of drives, creates a system
image. A system image contains all the files on the drive including the system and program
files. The system image can be used to recover the complete system if the hard drive fails.
The system image does not support single file restores. If I were using a media like optical
media this option would be greyed out but could be performed manually using the Backup
and Restore control panel. On the next and final screen of the wizard,
select the option change schedule. You are free to run the backup as often as you want.
The backup does use system resources when it runs so if your computer is on all the
time, schedule the backup to run when you are not using it.
Once the wizard is complete, the first backup will run. If you want more details about how
the backup is running, press the view details button. The first backup will take the longest
as all files need to back up. Once the first backup is complete, Windows Backup and Restore
will do incremental changes when possible. The backup does take a long time to run so
I will pause the video and return shortly. Once the backup is complete I can go back
to Backup and Restore and get some information about how much space the backup is using.
If I select the option manage space I can get more information about how much space
is being used and for which type of files. Windows Backup and restore will automatically
remove old backups when they are no longer needed. To see which backups are available,
press the button view backups. The amount of backups that Windows will hold will ultimately
be determined by how much space you have for backups and how often the backup runs and
how many changes happen on your hard disk between backups.
On the previous screen there are also options for system image. The system image contains
a copy of all the files on the hard disk so it is generally larger than the file backup.
The system and programs files only change when new programs are installed or Windows
Updates are applied. For this reason you may want to keep only one copy of the system image.
Having only one copy of the system image will save hard disk space and thus allow you to
keep more regular file backups. Having more file backups means that you have more restore
history to choose from when restoring files. If I exit out of here and open Windows Explorer
and open the e drive, you can see all the backup files that were created by Windows Backup
and Restore. Drilling down through the folders there is a folder with the backup in it with
the filename containing the time stamp of when the backup was run. These files are the
backup files. If you were to access these files on another computer using Windows Backup
and Restore, you would be able to use restore files in Windows Backup and Restore on the
other computer. Going back to the Backup and restore interface,
to restore a file or folder press the button restore my files. Here you can search for
files or if you know the file or folders that you want you can select the file or folder.
As you can see using Backup and Restore to backup and restore files is easy when Windows
7 is running, but how do you recover the system when you have a hard disk crash? To find out
how, see our next video, Recovering Windows 7 from a System Image. Thanks for watching
another free video from IT Free Training. For the rest of the course please see our
YouTube channel or web page.