How to backup Windows Ten and the Eleven. Hi everyone.
Leo Notenboom here for Askleo.Com.
It's a common question.
How do I back up?
Well, what I'm going to give you in this video is essentially a top
to bottom list, and pointers to all of the instructions that I have out on
askleo.com, for exactly what I think you
should be doing when it comes to backing up.
As you know, I'm a huge fan of backing up.
Step One: Make an image.
Honestly, it doesn't really matter whether or not you understand what this is.
It's a starting point.
I want you to start by making an image of your machine as you'll discover it is
something that you can always return to so that no matter what happens after this,
you can restore that image and be no worse off.
You can always reset the clock.
It's kind of like the ultimate undo.
My article, Creating a Backup Image using
Windows built in Backup will walk you through the process of using the tool
that's already included in Windows Ten and Eleven.
Next, make a recovery disk.
A recovery disk is what you will boot your system from should you ever need
to restore the image you just created or any other image.
Create a Windows recovery drive goes through the process of creating exactly
that, and you can do it to CD, DVD, or USB stick.
Number three.
Restoring an Image. You don't necessarily
need to do this right now, but I'm going to suggest you be familiar with it.
Restoring an image is the process of using
the recovery disk we created in the previous step with an image we
created in the step before that that then gets restored to your hard disk.
In the case of hard disk failure, malware, whatever else happens to have gone wrong.
Restoring an image backup using Windows
built in backup walks you through the process of exactly what that takes.
Like I said, you don't have to do it right now, but it's worth being aware of because
it's what you'll do when you have a problem.
Step four.
Restore files from an Image this is
something that I think a lot of people overlook.
Once you've got an image,
you've got a copy of absolutely everything on your hard disk.
Everything.
All of your files, all of your programs, all of your everything.
It's nice to be able to restore the entire image, but what if you just need a file?
You can do that.
Windows allows you to extract individual
files, folders, whatever it is you need from this image collection of everything.
Restore individual files from a Windows backup image shows you how.
Next, set up file History File history is backing up as you go.
What it does is it allows you to designate
an external drive, some portion of an external drive,
whatever that you can then tell Windows you know what?
Every time I make a change to my files,
my data, my whatevers copy it over to that external drive.
That way, as you go along,
the data you're working on is getting periodically backed up.
That means you can then restore it, which is the next step.
But first, "Enable file history in Windows" will get you started.
As I said, the next step, then,
is to understand what it takes to restore a file from file history.
Now the difference, of course, is that an image is going to get taken
every so often, like maybe once a day or whenever you think of it,
file history keeps going, and it allows you to go back to different
versions of the file up to however much space you've allocated for file history.
Restoring files with file history will
walk you through the process of examining what's in your file history,
choosing what it is you want to restore, and then restoring it.
Next, using OneDrive for backing up.
In a way, it's kind of like file history
because it will back up files as you make changes to them.
However, the difference is that it will back them up to the cloud.
One of the things we talk about with backing up frequently is that it's
important to have what's called an off site backup.
The idea is that should anything ever happen to your computers, your home,
your backups, you've got this other copy of your data that's stored somewhere else.
By definition, One drive, any cloud service is somewhere else.
In fact, it's usually many somewhere else's.
But the point is, by using OneDrive by default as where you
keep your data, then every time you make a change, it's getting automatically
copied off to the cloud and saved for that ultimate disaster.
It's also useful for sharing your data
with other machines, but this is a focus on backing up.
Using OneDrive for nearly continuous
backup will show you how to set this up and what you need to do.
Number eight, "Restoring a file from OneDrive history.
What a lot of people don't realize is OneDrive has a Recycle bin.
Things get aged out after a certain amount of time ten or 30 days.
But the bottom line is that if you realize
that the document you saved yesterday is the one you really want,
but you since overwritten it on your own machine and you have no idea where it is,
it's not in file history, it's nowhere to be found.
One drive might be your savior.
You can go online and examine what is
in OneDrive's Recycle bin and possibly very likely restore the file
in the version that you wanted from a few days ago.
Recover deleted files in OneDrive covers that topic.
Another article that I suggest you take
a look at is "Recovering from ransomware with an online backup" because that uses
another feature in OneDrive to not only allow you to recover from potential
ransomware attacks, but it will even notify you when it
suspects something suspicious has happened.
There's a problem with the first part of what I've just described.
Using Windows built in backup is something
that Microsoft actually says you probably don't want to be doing anymore.
They call it
the Windows Seven Backup Tool, and now that we're here at Windows Eleven,
it's still called the Windows Seven Backup Tool.
It's not been changed, and Microsoft has told us that they plan
to remove it at some point, or at least no longer support it.
What they suggest is that you get yourself
a third party backup program to do those steps instead.
Those are the steps we discussed as image backup related.
So what you might want to look into are the next four steps.
Making an image using
EaseUS Todo EaseUS Todo as a free Edition There are other tools,
but we'll talk about EaseUS Todo here that will allow you to do essentially
the same thing as making an image backup with Windows built in backup.
Creating a backup image using essays to do free will walk you through the process,
and I think you'll find that the user interface for Esys to do is significantly
easier to understand than what Microsoft has provided.
Similarly, then we'll also want to make a recovery disc for EaseUS Todo.
And that's our next step.
Creating Ancestor Do Emergency disc goes
through the process of using ISIS to do to create the USB stick or DVD whatever it
is you'd like to boot from that you would use at the time of an emergency to boot
your machine to restore an image you've created with EaseUS Todo.
The next step then and again, this is another one that you don't have
to do right now, but you should at least be familiar with is, "Restoring an image
using EaseUs Todo." That article will show
you exactly how to restore that backup image you took with EaseUs Todo using
the emergency disk you created for EaseUs Todo.
And finally in the EaseUs Todo corner.
"Restoring an individual file from an Easeus
Todo image backup" is another article that will let you do exactly that.
Again, since an image contains absolutely everything that was on your hard drive,
you may want to be able to pick and choose which files you want to recover. Easeus Todo
lets you do that, and this article shows you how. Bottom line? Do this... back up.
I've often said that the best backup is whichever one you'll actually do.
Hopefully this video,
the companion articles that go with it will give you the tools you need to get
this set up and get your data protected for updates.
For related links, for comments and more,
visit AskLeo.com/30103 I'm Leo Notenboom and this is Askleo.Com.
Thanks for watching.