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What Files to Backup?
People invest a great deal of
personal and business time into their work on a computer. If by
chance the computer crashes or a virus attacks then all the
efforts might be lost. To minimize the impact of this, backing up
files helps the user to recover when a crash occurs. There are two
main types of files to take backups of, one is user data and the
other one is system data.
Let’s see what files need to be
backed up for safety and the ways to restore them.
User Data Includes
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Bank records and other financial
information
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Digital photographs
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Software you purchased and
downloaded from the Internet
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Music you purchased and downloaded
from the Internet
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Personal projects
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Your e-mail address book
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Your Microsoft Outlook calendar
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Your Internet Explorer bookmarks
System Files Include
Ways to backup the user data
Windows incorporate a build-in backup
utility which is useful to backup user data. It can be launched by
clicking Start -> All Programs -> Accessories
-> system tools -> Backup.
This launches a wizard which gives
two choices of creating backup files and settings and also to
restore files and settings. From here you can select options such
as what kind of files to backup and selecting next takes the
backup of the selected files. We can restore it whenever necessary
by selecting the restore option in the wizard.
Ways to backup system settings
Sometimes during booting the
system shows error report like these:
[Windows XP could not start because
the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM
]
[Windows XP could not start because
the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SOFTWARE
]
[Stop: c0000218 {Registry File
Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): \SystemRoot\System32\Config\SOFTWARE
or its log or alternate
System error: Lsass.exe]
These are due to corrupted registry
and system settings files in the system directory.
<Root Drive>\windows\system32\config\system
<Root Drive>\windows\system32\config\software
<Root Drive>\windows\system32\config\sam
<Root Drive>\windows\system32\config\security
<Root Drive>\windows\system32\config\default
Where <Root Drive> is the drive where
the windows operating system is installed.
These files are not easy to copy to
take backup. Because these files are locked by the operating
system for security reasons.
Using windows backup systems settings
can be easily take as backup. Other than this there are many
utilities to backup the system files and system settings.
VistaBootPRO:
VistaBootPRO is the utility to manage
and modify boot settings and also used to backup boot data. It is
a third party tool capable of changing boot options for older
versions of windows and latest versions.
For schools and other educational
institutions they take backup of the whole drive and they restore
these images periodically. The backup is taken in CDs or other
secondary storage devices and can be restored when needed. Some
utilities are available to take such backup. Norton Ghost is the
very famous backup tool helps us to take the whole drive image
backup. This gives up a bootable CD with backup image. On booting
the system with the backup disc give some options to restore the
whole drive.
Restore IT is another backup utility
where the whole drive backup is stored in a separate partition
called recovery partition. We can restore it without any separate
backup media. The recovery mode is very simple like single click
recovery. These types of recovery are used only when the data is
the root drive is not important one. |
