Hello All,

          This thread is a spin-off from the "suspicious email" thread that will focus on how to back up your machine in its entirety using the Windows built-in utilities.  Yes, there are third-party applications to do this and many of them are quite good and some of them are accessible, but I am sticking to what you already have built-in to your Windows machine going back at least to Windows 7.

          Control Panel remains available up through Windows 10 and if you open Control Panel you will encounter an entry that's called either "Backup and Restore" (in Windows 7 and Windows 8, I believe) or "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" if you're running Windows 10.  You must have an external drive large enough to store the system image you are going to create.  These days one can get USB-powered compact backup drives that are 1TB or larger for under $100, sometimes well under that figure if you keep your eye out for a sale, and anyone with a computer they rely upon would be very well advised to acquire one ASAP if you don't already own one.  This is very cheap insurance and gives you peace of mind in the event of a complete system crash, hijacking by ransomware, etc.

          Taking a System Image is very easy.  You just open the Backup and Restore feature under Control Panel and activate the link that reads, Create a System Image.  If you have your external drive plugged in it will walk through asking where you want the image placed if you haven't established a specific drive already.  When you take later system images you should not be asked for this information provided you are using the same external hard drive that you used before.   A System Image taken using this utility is precisely that:  an exact image of your computer as it exists at that moment in time.  This includes all users (if you have more than one), all the user data, and the operating system itself.  The whole purpose of doing this is so you could restore your computer to its exact state at the time the image was taken in the event of some catastrophic event that wipes it out.    If you have not already done so, you should also grab yourself a blank DVD and activate the "Create a System Repair Disc" link as well.  Should you need to recover from a system image you'll generally be booting your computer from a System Repair Disc to get that process going.

           Taking a System Image is not something you generally do all that frequently.  My metric for taking a full system image is when I've installed or uninstalled enough software or customized enough about my machine that I'd be very unhappy if I had to do that work again from scratch (and try to remember what I've done, too).  If you're using Windows 8 or 10 use the File History feature along with your backup drive to keep a rolling, versioned backup of your user data files in case you'd need to recover some of those.  The File History utility allows you to pick and choose individual files that you want to get back.  A System Image Restore is an "all or nothing" affair.  You can't pick and choose anything in a restore from a System Image, you get precisely what you put in.

           In the case of Windows 10, I suggest that people take system images prior to installing any of the major updates.  If your machine is currently running the pre-Anniversary Update version (1511) I'd definitely take a full system image before applying the Anniversary Update.  Then, after the Anniversary Update is installed, I'd take a system image of that while it's fresh either immediately afterward or wait only a few days after installation.

--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Vogel

To: win10@win10.groups.io

Sent: Friday, September 16, 2016 11:32 AM

Subject: [win10] Backing Up your Windows Computer using the Backup & Restore Utility #tutorials

Hello All,

          This thread is a spin-off from the "suspicious email" thread that will focus on how to back up your machine in its entirety using the Windows built-in utilities.  Yes, there are third-party applications to do this and many of them are quite good and some of them are accessible, but I am sticking to what you already have built-in to your Windows machine going back at least to Windows 7.

          Control Panel remains available up through Windows 10 and if you open Control Panel you will encounter an entry that's called either "Backup and Restore" (in Windows 7 and Windows 8, I believe) or "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" if you're running Windows 10.  You must have an external drive large enough to store the system image you are going to create.  These days one can get USB-powered compact backup drives that are 1TB or larger for under $100, sometimes well under that figure if you keep your eye out for a sale, and anyone with a computer they rely upon would be very well advised to acquire one ASAP if you don't already own one.  This is very cheap insurance and gives you peace of mind in the event of a complete system crash, hijacking by ransomware, etc.

          Taking a System Image is very easy.  You just open the Backup and Restore feature under Control Panel and activate the link that reads, Create a System Image.  If you have your external drive plugged in it will walk through asking where you want the image placed if you haven't established a specific drive already.  When you take later system images you should not be asked for this information provided you are using the same external hard drive that you used before.   A System Image taken using this utility is precisely that:  an exact image of your computer as it exists at that moment in time.  This includes all users (if you have more than one), all the user data, and the operating system itself.  The whole purpose of doing this is so you could restore your computer to its exact state at the time the image was taken in the event of some catastrophic event that wipes it out.    If you have not already done so, you should also grab yourself a blank DVD and activate the "Create a System Repair Disc" link as well.  Should you need to recover from a system image you'll generally be booting your computer from a System Repair Disc to get that process going.

           Taking a System Image is not something you generally do all that frequently.  My metric for taking a full system image is when I've installed or uninstalled enough software or customized enough about my machine that I'd be very unhappy if I had to do that work again from scratch (and try to remember what I've done, too).  If you're using Windows 8 or 10 use the File History feature along with your backup drive to keep a rolling, versioned backup of your user data files in case you'd need to recover some of those.  The File History utility allows you to pick and choose individual files that you want to get back.  A System Image Restore is an "all or nothing" affair.  You can't pick and choose anything in a restore from a System Image, you get precisely what you put in.

           In the case of Windows 10, I suggest that people take system images prior to installing any of the major updates.  If your machine is currently running the pre-Anniversary Update version (1511) I'd definitely take a full system image before applying the Anniversary Update.  Then, after the Anniversary Update is installed, I'd take a system image of that while it's fresh either immediately afterward or wait only a few days after installation.

--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

----- Original Message -----

From: Brian Vogel

To: win10@win10.groups.io

Sent: Friday, September 16, 2016 12:43 PM

Subject: Re: [win10] Backing Up your Windows Computer using the Backup & Restore Utility #tutorials

Rosemarie,

            You're quite welcome.   One thing I guess I should also add is that it makes sense to kick off the taking of a System Image when you're not going to be using your computer actively for a while.  My favorite time is just before I'm retiring for the night.  This process obviously involves a huge amount of reading from the operating system disc and writing to the backup drive, which is time consuming and tends to bog down your machine.  I'd rather have this doing its thing when I'm not trying to do other work at the same time.
--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

Chris,

         I can't answer that question, particularly if one has to change the
boot order in UEFI/BIOS, and one often does.  Since someone made reference
to having had a system image, and implied that they used it to restore, in
the other thread perhaps they can offer a set of possible steps.

         There are some things that I don't know how to do without sight
and, in this case, I'd strongly suggest that one call in sighted help simply
because there is not going to be any screen reader feedback that I know of
during a system restore.  I don't and haven't done these frequently enough
to have any "step-by-step" memory of the whole process itself.  This really
is a "disaster recovery" type situation.
--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

Sampath,

            You can use a single external hard drive to do system image and
separate user data backups for one or more computers.  I back up three
laptops and a desktop to a single 2TB external hard drive.

            Since the machines I'm currently backing up have the OS and
their user data on the same logical and physical drive, C:, all is backed up
in a single click.  I think the same is true if you have your user data
separated on a different logical and/or physical drive as long as Windows is
set up such that this location is what it knows of as the location of your
user data for an account or accounts.  Taking a Windows system image always
includes the OS and user data and you cannot "pick and choose" what you want
to restore in the event you need to restore from a system image - it's an
all-or-nothing deal.  That's why the File History utility and its successor
in Win 10 Backup came into existence for user data backup.  This backs up
user data and allows you to select what you want to recover.
--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

Sampath,

            I'll be happy to help, but a 32 GB jump drive is not adequate
(nor appropriate, in my opininon) for a full system backup anyway.  You
really need to invest in a good external compact USB drive that is at least
500GB in size.  I favor a minimum of 1TB these days just because it lets you
keep a far more extensive "versioned backup" of your user data files via
File History.

            You're not going to fit a system image backup, at least not for
any Windows system I've ever worked with, on something as small as 32GB
since the OS itself generally takes up more space than that.

--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

Hi Brian, what you say is true, but I have made an system image in
that 32 GB pendrive through one key recovery as adviced by the dealer
at the time of purchase and I don't want to make any change to that
image and I going to keep it for ever without any upgrades.
But for the case of backing up at regular intervals of the current win
10 1607 version I have another hard disk of one TB and I already have
some information stored in it.
My doubt is whether I may lose the current data/ information which I
have stored in my 1 TB drive if I take a system backup using the
'backup' option in my win 10.
Sorry for confusing you with the former 32 GB pendrive...



On 9/18/16, Brian Vogel <britechguy@gmail.com> wrote:

Sampath,

            I'll be happy to help, but a 32 GB jump drive is not adequate
(nor appropriate, in my opininon) for a full system backup anyway.  You
really need to invest in a good external compact USB drive that is at
least
500GB in size.  I favor a minimum of 1TB these days just because it lets
you
keep a far more extensive "versioned backup" of your user data files via
File History.

            You're not going to fit a system image backup, at least not
for
any Windows system I've ever worked with, on something as small as 32GB
since the OS itself generally takes up more space than that.

--
Brian

Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day-to-day living that wears you
out.

      ~ Anton Chekhov

Sampath,

          The WindowsImageBackup folder is precisely what it sounds like.
 If you take a system image a that folder is created and a folder under it
with the same name as the machine name that you're backing up.  Under mine
there are three folders, each having the name of the respective machine
whose system image data resides inside the respective folder.  You would
specify the correct folder on the Restore were you trying to restore a
system that had completely crashed and burned.  With a complete "crash and
burn" that means you'll either be launching recovery/restore from the
recovery partition on your hard drive or booting from a system restore disc
using the optical drive.

           As to your separate attempt, the results there sound like you
used the "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)" feature of Control Panel to do it.
 That variant of Backup and Restore creates the new "WindowsImageBackup"
folder (which started with Win8, I believe, but it may be Win10 and I have
no way to check that now) and also the special folder (with its own special
icon) that triggers the Windows Backup function when activated with the
dialog box asking if you want to restore files from this backup.  That
special folder always has the machine name that the system image was taken
from.   I'm not getting this when I use only the "Create a system image"
link alone, and no other features of "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)."

           File History is meant to back up user data files and keeps
multiple versions of those files over time.  I recently changed the default
setting from keeping versions "forever" to keeping them for 6 months.  I've
never needed to go back and retrieve a years old version of a file and only
care about fairly recent iterations.  Of course, once a file is backed up
and you stop working with it, eventually you will end up with a single
backed up version as those versions older than 6 months are aged out and
only the most recent backup, which can then age "perpetually" (meaning it
stays there until or unless you actually delete the original file and an
additional 6 months after deleting elapses [or the time period you've chosen
yourself in File History elapses]).

           I cannot explain exactly how a full backup using "Backup and
Restore (Windows 7)" differs from simply using the "Create a system image"
link that's a part of it.  The only thing I can say for certain is that when
all I'm doing is using the "Create a system image" link I do not get the
special folder with the machine name as part of the output.  I simply get a
regular folder created under the "WindowsImageBackup" folder on my backup
drive.  I just noticed also that if one opens File History from Control
Panel there is a link in its dialog that reads "System Image Backup" that
one could use to take a system image.

           It really doesn't matter what mechanism you're using to make
system images when you feel having a fresh one is a good idea.  Just make
sure you take them at intervals that are frequent enough that between
recovering from that system image, and getting your most recent user data
files since that system image was taken from File History, will get you back
to where you want to be.  It does no good to have a system image from, say,
three years ago if you've installed a bunch of new programs, had hundreds of
Windows Updates, etc., since that time as your baseline.  Mind you, it's
better than nothing, but would you really want to have to do all the work to
re-create the environment you had?  System images aren't something one takes
daily, or generally even weekly.  Taking one quarterly or semi-annually is
generally enough and keeps you close enough to whatever your current
environment is that you don't have to spend tons of time redoing things.
 Always take one if you've been installing new software all around the same
time.  I've said before that my personal metric for taking system images is
that they get taken any time I know that I would tear my hair out if I had
to redo whatever work I've done since the last one to get the system to its
current functioning state that I'd like to have back in the event of a
crash.
--
*Brian*

*Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?*

*    ~ Paul Samuelson , winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics*

Sampath,

          I can't honestly answer your question since you have to use both a
System Rescue Disc and the system image to restore a machine that will not
boot.  This means that you have to tweak UEFI (the BIOS part) to boot from
the optical drive as the first boot device.

          I do not know how anyone who is entirely blind could do a full
disaster recovery like this because there is no option for screen reader
assistance with this process, or at least the majority of it.

          There is a big difference in how UEFI handles boot compared to old
straight BIOS, and even then you don't have screen reader assistance until
after the operating system itself boots.

--
*Brian*

*Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?*

*    ~ Paul Samuelson , winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics*

Yes, you do have to employ a system repair disc (which can be on optical
media or USB) in order to recover from a system image in the event that you
cannot even boot into repair mode or you have had to entirely replace your
hard disc drive.   You do create that via the "Create a System Repair Disc"
in the Backup & Restore (Windows 7) utility of Control Panel.

If you were actually using the system repair disc you would use it as a
bootable device and then use the utility on it to reimage the new drive
using the system image you created on your backup drive.  I always have to
look up the steps for the Win10 version of the system repair disc because
the interface was changed enough that I'm not "on autopilot" with it, and
probably never will be.
--
*Brian*

*Well when events change, I change my mind. What do you do?*

*    ~ Paul Samuelson , winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize in Economics*