Windows 7 Backup Feature

Robert · 23 May 2010 at 10:33

How are people finding this?

Meatball · 23 May 2010 at 10:58

I use it as my main backup program. It's neat, uncluttered and simple to use. My computer is scheduled to back itself up to an external USB HDD every month

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EYEREX · 23 May 2010 at 11:10

used acronis for years but since windows 7 has it's own software i changed over, works great and easy to use only down side is that the image files can be a little on the big side compared to acronis

Carter · 23 May 2010 at 11:37

EYEREX said:
used acronis for years but since windows 7 has it's own software i changed over, works great and easy to use only down side is that the image files can be a little on the big side compared to acronis

Yep, I stopped using it, it was filling up my partitions at an alarming rate. Still prefer Acronis, YMMV.

SiriusB · 23 May 2010 at 11:50

You can delete older backups you realise? By default it creates several and of course this can take up a lot of room. If you go into Backup and find the option to manage your disk space or similar, you can delete all but the latest.

theheyes · 23 May 2010 at 12:40

It's one of the best features in my opinion. The Home Premium version is limited in the fact it can't back up to a network location, but there you go. Mine runs every night and I can't say I even notice it, and recovering from a backup is fast.

Raumarik · 23 May 2010 at 12:42

I only have it backing up the OS drive as I found it was backing up my libraries which I do manually anyway to an external USB drive. No point backing the same thing up especially as it added about 800Gb to the backup which was normally about 35Gb!!

Carter · 23 May 2010 at 12:52

SiriusB said:
You can delete older backups you realise? By default it creates several and of course this can take up a lot of room. If you go into Backup and find the option to manage your disk space or similar, you can delete all but the latest.

Yes I know

, I just prefer Acronis.

SiriusB · 23 May 2010 at 14:03

Halfmad said:
I only have it backing up the OS drive as I found it was backing up my libraries which I do manually anyway to an external USB drive. No point backing the same thing up especially as it added about 800Gb to the backup which was normally about 35Gb!!

Exclusions are your friend! First time I used it it backed up nearly 1TB of stuff. I was like :eek:

then realised it did all my media!

Carter said:
Yes I know , I just prefer Acronis.

Fair enough!

metalmackey · 23 May 2010 at 15:01

If I run Backup every week or month, do I really need to have System Restore on too?

Thanks

mrk · 23 May 2010 at 15:30

No but system restore is handy for shadow copies/previous versions and uses next to no space on a decent drive if set to 1% of the drive space so around 4.5GB.

I don't use the initial Backup/Restore feature but instead opt to create a monthly System Image via Backup & Restore only. This means I have a single image each month which is replaced the following month with the latest creation.

I can then mount that VHD image and pull out what I need if need be or restore it via the Windows 7 Restore disc that I have created within Backup & Restore.

metalmackey · 23 May 2010 at 17:02

Is the Windows 7 restore disc standard for all PC's? I made mine before a hardware upgrade and was wondering if I need to make another one.

mrk · 23 May 2010 at 17:36

Yes it just boots into the system recovery/restore mode and allows you to load a VHD image to restore from among other diagnostics and stuff.

metalmackey · 23 May 2010 at 17:53

Ah ok, cheers

jbloggs · 23 May 2010 at 18:57

I make a new backup of each Win 7 box usually every 3-4 weeks, deleting the old one, so with me it doesn't take up much room and I only backup my Windows folder + programs, have run the restore function from the boot CD and it works well, except, you cannot put the backup image onto a smaller HDD/SDD, only one of the same size or bigger...

AbsenceJam · 23 May 2010 at 19:31

Acronis and others are faster and allow more configuration but I've been using it myself recently after I realised it does incremental backups.
It's just so poorly documented so not all of its behaviour is understood and some things are weird. For example I wanted to clone W7 to another drive so I replaced the old drive, connected the backup disk and booted from a USB key with W7. The system image restore kept failing with an error, but worked when I removed the USB key just prior to the final confirmation.... Seems to be a common issue.

Since my backups involving connecting another drive to my laptop I think I'll stick to this rather than going back to ShadowProtect, Acronis or Macrium. If I was using a desktop with multiple disks I'd be more likely to use one of those products for more frequent backups.

thedoc46 · 23 May 2010 at 20:53

I use Windows 7 to make a decent image. Then i use the DOS command robocopy /mir to make copies of my user files... Basically it only takes 2mins cos it makes an exact copy of my user files, via mirroring but knows which files are untouched.. In the event of a disaster, i reckon i could be back up and running to a perfect machine in less than an hour, with minimal loss and this is being with my backups only taking less than two mins.

thedoc46 · 23 May 2010 at 21:17

To make things clearer, I make an image that's been installed and configured to my liking, then create two batch files.. One to make a backup of all my game saves into a folder locally on the C: and then i run a 2nd batch file that backs up all my user folders to an external drive... All in all the whole process takes less than 30 secs. Also all my PST's reside in a local c: file that gets backed up.

Game Save Batch file
ROBOCOPY "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\TheDoc46\half-life 2\hl2\SAVE" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Half Life 2" /S
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Activision\Call of Duty 4 - Modern Warfare\players" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Call of Duty MW" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\AppData\Local\Activision\CoDWaW" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Call of Duty World At War" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Documents\BlazingAngels2\Profiles" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Blazing Angels" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Documents\CAPCOM\STREETFIGHTERIV" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Streetfighter IV\Path1" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\AppData\Local\CAPCOM\STREETFIGHTERIV" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Streetfighter IV\Path2" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\AppData\Local\Rockstar Games\GTA IV" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\GTA4" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Documents\NFS SHIFT" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Need For Speed Shift" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Documents\Codemasters\GRID\savegame" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\GRID" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\call of duty modern warfare 2\players" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Call of Duty MW2" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\AppData\Local\Microsoft\XLive\Content\E00002DF5C6FDC00\FFFE07D1\00010000" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Gears Of War" /s
ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\TheDoc46\AppData\Local\LucasArts" "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files\Game Saves\Lego Star Wars" /s

Backup Batch File

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Documents" "H:\Backup\Documents" /MIR

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Favorites" "H:\Backup\Favorites" /MIR

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\TheDoc46 Files" "H:\Backup\TheDoc46 Files" /MIR

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Mame" "H:\Backup\Mame" /MIR

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Music" "H:\Backup\Music" /MIR

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Pictures" "H:\Backup\Pictures" /MIR

robocopy "C:\Users\TheDoc46\Videos" "H:\Backup\Videos" /MIR

GolfBryan · 23 May 2010 at 21:41

I found it very very slow but I was backing up quite a lot.

thedoc46 · 24 May 2010 at 00:37

Khaaan! said:
No but system restore is handy for shadow copies/previous versions and uses next to no space on a decent drive if set to 1% of the drive space so around 4.5GB.

I don't use the initial Backup/Restore feature but instead opt to create a monthly System Image via Backup & Restore only. This means I have a single image each month which is replaced the following month with the latest creation.

I can then mount that VHD image and pull out what I need if need be or restore it via the Windows 7 Restore disc that I have created within Backup & Restore.

The disadvantage of this is that your registry becomes bogged down with junk as time goes on.. Since you are making monthly backups you'll be restoring to the last of your images which will never be as clean as the first one you make, which will contain a nice clean registry and so on... Also you have the wait time on your images, which can take a good hr, making your PC out of action during that time and because it takes an hr, you'll only be doing every month or so. That will become less and less frequent as time goes on.