Section 22.2. Complete PC Backup: Business Enterprise Ultimate

22.2. Complete PC Backup: Business ¢ Enterprise ¢ Ultimate

When your hard disk crashes, you lose more than just your personal files. You also lose your operating system and its settings and all the programs you've installed. It can take you a very long time to restore your PC to that state.

Windows Complete PC Backup, a new feature in Vista, solves the problem easily. It creates a disk image a perfect snapshotof your entire hard drive at this moment: documents, email, pictures, and so on, plus Windows, and all your programs and settings. Someone could steal your entire hard drive , or your drive could die, and you'd be able to install a new, empty one and be back in business inside of an hour .

It's a good idea to make a fresh Complete PC Backup every few months, because you'll probably have installed new programs and changed your settings in the interim.

Note: For the techies scoring at home, the disk image created by Complete PC Backup is a .vhd file, the same kind that's created by Microsoft's Virtual PC softwareand therefore, you can mount it using Virtual PC, if you like.

22.2.1. Make the Image

To make a Complete PC Backup, choose Start Control Panel. Under the System and Maintenance heading, click "Back up your computer." On the following screen, click "Back up computer again (instead of "back up files").

As described in the previous steps, you're now asked where you want to store the backup image. But your options aren't quite the same this time:

You can't back up to a network folder.
You can only back up to hard disks or removable disks that are formatted with the NTFS file system.

After you make your selection, click Next. You'll be shown your backup location as a way for you to confirm it. You'll also be told how many discs you'll need; be prepared, because if you're backing up to CDs or DVDs, you'll probably need a lot of them.

Click "Start backup"; the backup begins. You'll be prompted when you need to insert new DVDs or other discs.

22.2.2. Restore the Image

Restoring your entire system using Complete PC Restore is very easy. From the Backup and Restore Center, click Restore Computer, and follow the prompts.

Just be forewarned that this process reformats your hard drive , and in the process wipes out all your data and files. They'll be replaced with the Windows Complete PC Restore snapshot, and with the data from the most recent backup you've made.