Windows XP in built backup

[Paddyw01]

Hey guys,

I've just ordered myself a 1tb WD external hard drive as a backup device, and I was wondering if any of you use the built in backup feature included in XP, which makes .bkf files. Is it any good? I've tested it before (on smaller files) and the file was intact, so is there any danger or any reported data loss in using this feature?

Thanks

 

[musicman53]

Hey guys,

I've just ordered myself a 1tb WD external hard drive as a backup device, and I was wondering if any of you use the built in backup feature included in XP, which makes .bkf files. Is it any good? I've tested it before (on smaller files) and the file was intact, so is there any danger or any reported data loss in using this feature?

Thanks

The "built in"backup is only in XP Pro by default.
If you have or are getting XP(not Pro)then you have to install from the install cd.

 

[Paddyw01]

I have Home and yes I have installed it from the CD. Have you any experience in using it though?

 

[ChileanLlama]

I've not used it for a long time - but it was always reliable.

You might have problems if the whole archive gets corrupted as it is one file, also it was never the fastest backup solution. Finally if you're planning to move to another machine with a different version of Windows, it may not be able to read the older .bkf files.

Personally I prefer to use Acronis for backing up if you want another recommendation.

 

[Paddyw01]

I've not used it for a long time - but it was always reliable.

You might have problems if the whole archive gets corrupted as it is one file, also it was never the fastest backup solution. Finally if you're planning to move to another machine with a different version of Windows, it may not be able to read the older .bkf files.

Personally I prefer to use Acronis for backing up if you want another recommendation.

I'll be backing up my movies/pictures/music etc in individual .bkf files so if one gets corrupted then atleast I won't have lost everything. But what exactly do you mean by file corruption? Viruses or hard drive sector problems?

Your point about updating to another more recent version of windows is interesting, but I'm not going to move away from XP anytime soon. I'm probably going to either buy myself a netbook or build a new Win7 rig and leave this one as it is

I've looked at Acronis before, but was never really tempted as Windows includes a free backup feature anyway, rather than one you have to pay for.
But surely, files can still be corrupted when using Acronis. Right?

 

[ChileanLlama]

I'll be backing up my movies/pictures/music etc in individual .bkf files so if one gets corrupted then atleast I won't have lost everything. But what exactly do you mean by file corruption? Viruses or hard drive sector problems?

It could be either of those circumstances. Say you have 100 photos. If you hit a problem it'd be unusual to lose all 100 photos. If you have 1 .bkf containing 100 files and that gets corrupt you lose them all. But it's no biggie because it's a backup anyway. Just make sure you periodically test the backup to make sure it's intact.

Your point about updating to another more recent version of windows is interesting, but I'm not going to move away from XP anytime soon. I'm probably going to either buy myself a netbook or build a new Win7 rig and leave this one as it is

That's fine. Just pointing it out so you were aware that it could be a problem.

I've looked at Acronis before, but was never really tempted as Windows includes a free backup feature anyway, rather than one you have to pay for.
But surely, files can still be corrupted when using Acronis. Right?

Yes files can still be corrupted. Acronis is more flexible, easy to navigate it's archives to find individual files and allows you to create boot options to restore your entire PC.

Overall I don't think there is any major reason why you shouldn't use Win Backup. Just pointing out some areas to think about. You just need to use something your happy with and fits in with your work flow/backup schedule

 

[Paddyw01]

It could be either of those circumstances. Say you have 100 photos. If you hit a problem it'd be unusual to lose all 100 photos. If you have 1 .bkf containing 100 files and that gets corrupt you lose them all. But it's no biggie because it's a backup anyway. Just make sure you periodically test the backup to make sure it's intact.

Good advice That's precisely what I'm going to do.

Yes files can still be corrupted. Acronis is more flexible, easy to navigate it's archives to find individual files and allows you to create boot options to restore your entire PC.

Overall I don't think there is any major reason why you shouldn't use Win Backup. Just pointing out some areas to think about. You just need to use something your happy with and fits in with your work flow/backup schedule

Interesting, I think I'll look into Acronis in more depth. Thanks for that.

Well whenever I backup, it can take anywhere from 6 to 12 hours so I just set the backup overnight or something. Would be nice if it were faster though.

Does anybody have any horror stories about XP backup? Any negative reviews etc?

 

[Paddyw01]

So my 1tb WD Elements hard drive came today and it's a great piece of kit! Small but heavy and 931gb worth of backup space too

The problem is that I tried to backup 200gb worth of lossless music using the XP backup feature. Everything was going alright until it was literally finishing off, then my entire computer froze. Literally! I could not even ctrl+alt+del my way out of it, so I had to manually reset it, which, after 5 hours of backing up, ****ed me off!!
I've googled the problem and it seems that it's a known issue, but I couldn't find a fix for it. Does anyone have any idea what the problem might be?
I'm performing a disk check on the hard drive right now, and everything seems to be fine. AVG hasn't detected any virus either, so what could be causing this rather annoying problem?

In the meantime though, I've downloaded the free trial of Acronis and I'll be giving that a go