Windows XP for Starters: The Missing Manual: Exactly What You Need to Get Started

11.7. Microsoft Backup

Consider this: the proximity of your drive's spinning platters to the head that reads them is roughly the same proportion as the wheels of an airliner flying at 500 miles per hour , twelve inches off the ground. It's amazing that hard drives work as well, and as long, as they do.

Still, because a hard drive is nothing more than a mass of moving parts in delicate alignment, every now and then disaster strikes. That's why backing up your data (making a safety copy) on a regular basis is an essential part of using a PC. Even if computers aren't your career, there's probably a lot of valuable stuff on your hard drive: all of your digital photos, the addresses and phone numbers you've spent hours typing into your Contacts list, a lifetime's worth of email, the Web sites in your Favorites folder, and so on.

Now, if you use XP in a corporationa distinct possibility, considering its target audienceyou probably don't even have to think about backing up your stuff. A network administrator generally does the backing up for you and your co-workers . (You're probably instructed to save your files on a network server PC instead of your own, so that the administrator can back up all of the employees ' files in one swift move.) In that case, you can skip the remainder of this chapter.

If you use Windows XP at home, or in a smaller company that doesn't have network nerds running around to ensure your files' safety, you might be grateful for Microsoft Backup, a very simple backup program that comes with Windows XP. It lacks some of the specialized features of commercial backup programs, but at least it lets you back up entire drives or selected files and folders, at times and under the conditions you specify, to other disks or tapes. You can even schedule it to run at regular intervals (using the Task Scheduler program), so that you always have a recent copy of your data on hand.

11.7.1. Backup Hardware

An external hard drive makes an extremely convenient backup system, since it spares you the hassle of inserting and tracking multiple removable disks (like Zips or CDs).

Still, removable disks are the safest disks of all, because you can store them somewhere else: in a fireproof box, a safe deposit box at the bank, or the trunk of your caranywhere but in your office, making your data safe even in the case of fire or burglary .

Here's a rundown of popular removable backup disks:

• Floppy disks . Forget it. Unless you work with nothing more than a few text files, your stuff will never fit onto floppies.

• Zip, Jaz, Peerless . When it comes to removable cartridge drives like these from Iomega, consider capacity and expense. The older Zip cartridges, which hold 100 or 250 MB, may be too small for most backup purposes. The newer 750 MB drives are a better bet.

  Jaz and Peerless cartridges can hold a lot more, but they're expensive. Divide the number of megabytes by the cartridge price to figure out which is the most cost-effective .

• Recordable CD . Burning your backups onto blank CD-R and CD-RW (or even blank DVD) disks is another viable alternativeespecially since blanks are dirt cheap. Unfortunatelyand incrediblythe Windows XP Backup program doesn't recognize CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drives as backup devices.

  Many other backup programs do, however. Your CD/DVD burner may even have come with one. As long as you don't have many gigabytes of files to back up, this system can work well.

• Tape cartridges . Magnetic tapes are economical, retain their data for years , and offer huge capacity in a compact package. Better yet, Microsoft's Backup program works with them. Tape drives are available in either external USB versions or internal units that you install yourself.

  The main drawback of a tape system is that you can't use it for anything other than backups. You can't get to a file at the end of the tape without fast forwarding through all of the data that precedes it, so you wouldn't want to use these as everyday disks.

11.7.2. Creating a Backup Job

To launch the Backup program, choose Start All Programs Accessories System Tools Backup. A wizard walks you through the process of setting up a backup job, as follows .

11.7.2.1. Backup or restore?

The first wizard screen (Figure 11-9, top) wants to know whether you want to back up your files (because you're a shrewd, confident, happy person in a time of PC health) or restore them (because you're a desperate, unhappy person whose files have somehow been deleted or corrupted).

To back up your files, of course, click "Backup files and settings" and then click Next .

11.7.2.2. Create a backup job

The next wizard window asks what you want to back up:

• My documents and settings, Everyone's documents and settings . These options assume that you're using a PC shared by several people, each with a separate account (see the next chapter). It's asking whether you want to back up just your files and settings, or those of every account holder. (If you're the sole proprietor of your machine, just use the first option.)

• All information on this computer . This option tells Backup to copy every single file and folder on your drive(s), including almost two gigabytes of Windows itself. This is a massive projectand, in general, an unnecessary one. After all, you already have a backup of Windows itself (on your Windows CD) and of your programs (on the original software disks), so there may not be much point in making another copy.

• Let me choose what to back up . This option leads to a Windows Explorerlike display (see Figure 11-9, bottom) that lets you choose the specific folders and files to be backed up.

11.7.2.3. Select the backup medium

The next screen asks where you want to store the backup files you're about to create. The drop-down list starts out suggesting that you back up your hard drive onto floppy disks not exactly a forward-thinking choice. Considering the massive size of today's hard drives, you'll be inserting blank floppies for the next three presidential administrations .

Instead, if your PC does, in fact, have a backup disk connected (a magnetic tape drive, for example, or a Zip drive), choose its name from this drop-down list.

The other option, available on all computers, is to back up the selected data to a file on your hard drive. You can use this option to create CD- sized backup files for burning onto CDs later, to back up your data to another hard drive in the same computer, or to back up to another computer on the network. (To use the latter option, click Browse.) In any case, click Cancel if you're asked to insert a floppy disk.

The Save As dialog box that appears asks you to name the backup file you're creating (its filename extension is .bkf ). Click Save when you've selected a location and typed a name.

11.7.2.4. Advanced backup options

The final wizard screen now appears (Figure 11-10). If you click Finish, the backup process beginsa process that may take several seconds or several hours, depending on how much you're copying. Your work here is done.

On the other hand, if you click the Advanced button on the final wizard screen, you're treated to yet another wizard. Most people, most of the time, will never need these special-case options. One important exception is the When to Back Up screen, which lets you indicate when you want this backup to take placenow or at a specified time and date (click the Set Schedule button shown in Figure 11-10).

11.7.2.5. Click Finish

When Backup is finished backing up your files, a window shows how many files and bytes were backed up. (If you see a message indicating an error, click Report to see a written record of what happened during the backup.)

After the backup is complete, click Close to close the Report window. Your data is safefor now.

11.7.3. Restoring with Microsoft Backup

Restoring files is less complicated than backing them upa good thing, considering the emotional state of anyone who's just experienced a total hard drive meltdown. That's because, unless you're a spectacularly unlucky individual, you don't perform restores as often as you do backupsand you don't schedule them. The Backup program's Restore Wizard does all the work for you.

Perform regular test restores, to make sure your data is retrievable from the backup disks. (Consider restoring your files to a test foldernot the folder where the files came fromso you don't wind up with duplicates.) There's no other way to be absolutely sure that your backups are working properly.

To restore files using the Restore Wizard, here's the plan (which assumes that, if your whole hard drive was trashed, you have already replaced it and reinstalled Windows XP):

1. Click Start All Programs Accessories System Tools Backup .

   The Backup or Restore Wizard Welcome screen appears.

2. Click Next. On the second screen, click "Restore files and settings," and then click Next .

   The What To Restore page contains the now-familiar expanding display that lists your PC's backup devices. The display lists a File icon, too, so that you can restore from a backup file (see "Select the backup medium" on Section 11.7.2.2). Backup displays the date and time each backup file was made, making it easy to select the right file. If you use a tape drive or other device for your backups, the display lists the tapes or disks you have created.

   Click to select the items you want to restore, exactly as you did when selecting files to back up.

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   Tip: Clicking the + button expands a folder so that you can select an individual file inside it. This is also a great trick if you're restoring, from your backup file, a document that you've accidentally deleted from the hard drive.

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3. Select the tape or disk that contains your backup. Select the data to restore.

   When you select the backup disk or tape, the right pane in the What to Restore screen contains an expandable list of its contents. Double-click the folders seen here for a list of individual files. Turn on the checkboxes of the files and folders you want to restore, as shown in Figure 11-11.

   Figure 11-11. The Restore Wizard's What to Restore page is similar in format to Windows Explorer, except that it displays only the contents of a particular backup tape or disk. You can select from the backup tapes, disks, or files you've created.

   Whenever Backup backs up your files, it remembers which files it put on which backup disks by creating a table of contents on the disk or tape that was in the drive when the job ended.

   That's why, as you browse the files listed on a backup disk, you may be asked to insert that final disk or tape. Only then can Backup show you what's on it.

4. On the Completing the Backup or Restore Wizard screen, click the Advanced button, if you like .

   Ordinarily, Backup restores every backed-up file onto your hard drive in exactly the same folder from which it came. If the original file is still in that original folder, however, it doesn't bother copying the equivalent file from the backup disk. If that arrangement sounds good to you, skip to the next step.

   But suppose you'd like Backup to put the files in a different folder, or you want them to replace the duplicate files it encounters. In that case, the Advanced button is just the ticket. It lets you specify where you want the restored files to go: into the folders they came from or some other disk or folder.

   If you choose "Alternate location," you can type in the path to (or Browse to) a different folder (like C:\Rescued ). If there's no such folder, Backup will create it for you.

   If you turn on "Single folder," Backup dumps all of the selected files directly into one specified folder, loose (not in a hierarchy of folders). Choose this option if you're simply trying to reclaim a few important files, rather than trying to reinstate your entire drive.

5. Click Next. Indicate whether or not you want Backup to overwrite duplicate files .

   Backup's file-restoring feature isn't only useful when you've had to wipe out your hard drive completely. It can also be handy when something less drastic went wrong, like a folder accidentally being thrown out. All the rest of your files and folders are OK.

   But suppose you've indicated that you want your My Documents folder restored from the backup disks. What should Backup do when it encounters files that are still in your My Documents folder, and in perfect shape? You can choose one of three options. Leave existing files means that Backup won't restore any file that's already on the hard drive. Replace existing files if they are older than the backup files makes Backup replace a file on your hard drive only if it's an older version than the backed-up copy. Finally, Replace existing files restores every file, replacing its equivalent on the hard drive, regardless of which is newer.

6. Click Next .

   The options on this penultimate screen pertain to specialized security and system files. In general, you should just click past them.

7. Click Next. If the restore summary page looks good, click Finish .

   Backup swings into action, asking you to insert backup disks or tapes as necessary, and restoring your backed-up files safely onto your hard drive.