Chapter 10: Backing Up Your Files with the Backup Utility

Overview

The most important thing to say about backing up your files is this: Back up your files. You can back up your files onto floppies, tapes, flash drives, network servers, extra hard drives, DVDs, writable CDs (CD-Rs or CD-RWs), tape drives, or whatever you happen to have. The new Windows Backup Status and Configuration tool, however, does limit the devices you can back up to when making a partial or complete backup. For instance, if you use Backup Status and Configuration, you can back up to a hard drive, CD-R, DVD-R, or network drive. How you back up your files is much less important than that you do it. If you have only a few files or folders to back up, you can use Windows Explorer to make the copies to floppy disks, USB flash drives , or other portable devices.

Windows Vista includes the Backup and Restore Center, which provides access to four main backup and restore features:

• Back Up FilesWizard Guides you through backing up types of files

• Complete PC Backup Creates an image of your hard disk

• Restore FilesWizard Enables you to restore files and folders from a backup

• Complete PC Restore Enables you to restore your computer from a backup image

Windows Vista Backup also includes a technology called Shadow Copy Backup that controls backups of open files and shared documents on Windows servers.

To fix problems on your system, Windows Vista still includes the System Restore utility that was introduced with Windows XP.