Windows® 7 Secrets®

Chapter 24. Keeping Your Data Safe: File and PC Backup

In This Chapter

• Backing up and restoring data

• Utilizing Windows Backup

• Creating and restoring data backups

• Managing automatic backups with Windows Backup

• Backing up an entire PC using system images

• Restoring an entire PC using the Windows Recovery Environment

• Using the Previous Versions feature to recover old versions of data files

With Windows 7, Microsoft expands on the pervasive and reliable backup and restore solutions for both data files and the entire computer that it introduced in Windows Vista. You can use Windows Backup to copy your important files and folders to a safe location or create a system image that can be used later to restore a broken PC. There's even a cool new feature that debuted first in Windows Server that helps you recover old versions of data files if you save the wrong version. Windows 7 has everything you need to make sure your data is safe. You may never need to turn to a third-party backup and restore utility again.

Note

That's right: years before Apple shipped a feature called Time Machine in Mac OS X 10.5 that it promoted with a "go back in time" marketing mantra, Microsoft had this feature in Windows Server and then later in Windows Vista first—and you thought only Microsoft copied features from other operating systems.

Different Backups, Different Goals

Now that you've moved to digital storage for your most valuable data, it's time to start thinking about creating backups, copies of your original data ...