How do I back up before a Windows 10 upgrade?
Hi, everyone,
Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com, where I've been answering questions about
technology and encouraging you to back up since 2003.
So if you're about to update your
operating system, that's a pretty major change, be it the monthly security
and updates or the every half year feature update.
Or if you're actually upgrading from one
version of Windows like Windows seven to Windows 10, that's a pretty major thing.
I have long recommended that the thing you do immediately prior to doing such
an upgrade is to take a complete system image backup.
The reason I focus so much on what I call
a system image backup is that it is an image of everything on your hard drive.
That means it includes the operating system, all of your applications,
all of your settings and customizations and of course, all of your data.
Without having to think about what
to backup, you're simply backing up everything.
Now, I do suggest that you do so before major changes of any sort.
This video, of course, is focusing on Windows 10 updates.
But honestly, any time you're about
to make a major change to your system, this is something I recommend you do.
The reason is very, very simple.
If something goes wrong with the update or
the upgrade, this represents an undue in other words, if things just don't work
or you don't like the result of your update or upgrade, you can simply restore
this backup image and be back where you were before the backup was taken.
So it is something that I so strongly
recommend simply because it's your ultimate safety net.
I recommend you use an external drive.
In other words, when you create a system
image backup, you create that image file or you have your backup software.
Write that file to an external drive.
Something that is outside of your machine is generally good practice for backups
anyway, but specifically for these scenarios.
That's something that you can then save for some later time when perhaps you
suddenly realize that that upgrade really wasn't what you wanted.
Now, the question, of course, is what do I do if I need this?
How do I recover, if I want to do that?
Undo you talked about?
Well, there is a little bit
of preparation, but fortunately, it's the kind of a thing that you actually
don't have to do before you take the backup.
How it works is simply this.
You create a rescue or recovery disk using the software that you're used to back up.
If you're using Windows 10's built in backup, you can use the original
installation media if you have it, or you can create a recovery disk.
If you're using backup software like EaseUS Todo
or Macrium Reflect, they include a specific task that will
create a recovery or rescue or emergency disk.
They're all really the same thing, different terms for different software.
You would then boot from this rescue media instead of booting from Windows itself.
That rescue media then would allow you
to restore the backup image that you had created to your hard disk in one step.
Here's the thing,
99 times out of 100, you will never need to use this backup, 99 times out of 100.
Everything will work just fine, 99 times out of one hundred.
You'll eventually be happy with the result
if it just happens to be a matter of taste.
But the bottom line is, most of the time, you really don't need this.
It's that one percent,
that one time out of 100 or one out of a thousand where something really does
go wrong and you want to be able to recover,
you want to be able to restore, then you'll be incredibly glad that you
took the time to take that image back up before the upgrade or update.
Now, again, to be completely honest, none of this should be new.
In fact, it's very possible you don't have to do a thing.
Here's why.
If you've been following my recommendations over the years,
you already have a system image backup in place.
You've got it happening nightly every night.
You're taking system image backups.
You may be doing a full backup once
a month, followed by daily incrementals, but that's an image backup.
And if you're doing it daily, as I recommend, that means that if today
you happen to install something that completely trashes your system.
Without having to do a thing, you've got yesterday's back up to go back to.
So if you're already backing up,
if you're already following my recommendation of doing system image
backups of some sort every day, you may not need to take any additional steps.
But if you're not or if you're backing up
less frequently, which is certainly a very valid approach to backing up,
then immediately prior to those major system changes like Windows feature
updates, take that backup image just in case.
For the article on which this video was based for a number of related articles,
including specific How-To Steps for updates and comments, visit
askleo.com/19932
I'm Leo Notenboom.
This is askleo.com. Thanks for watching.