Tips for backing up your computer system and data files – Using the Windows Backup Utility

Posted on March 12, 2007 at 7:57 pm

Make sure to read other posts from the Backup Data series!

Backup unlimited data online and offsite for free using Zoogmo
Backup your computer by making an image of your hard drive
Synchronize files or replicate data between PC computers using Allway Sync
How to backup your blog using Feedburner and Gmail
Create a bootable backup or clone of your Mac OS X hard disk
Share, transfer and sync files between computers with FolderShare
Windows Tips – How to automatically backup or update your computer’s device drivers
Tips for backing up your computer system and data files – Using the Windows Backup Utility
Tips for backing up your computer system and data files

In a previous post, I wrote how you can backup your computer data to various media such as CDs, DVDs, external hard drives or online storage, but all of these methods require a good amount of effort on the part of the user having to go through many different folders and copying that to the backup media. And if this is done on a regular basis, you can end up spending hours just backing up your data!Luckily Windows has a built-in application that you can use to automatically schedule backups of your computer and it only requires you to choose the folders you want backed up ONE TIME. This makes backing up your data a lot less tedious and will make it much more likely to actually be done!

So here are the steps to use Windows Backup Utility.

1. Click on Start, All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, and then Backup.

2. You will be prompted to go through the backup and restore wizard. This is useful for beginners, so we’ll go ahead and stick with it instead of going to advanced mode. Go ahead and click Next.

On the next screen, choose Backup files and settings and click Next

The next screen asks you what type of backup you would like to perform. It gives three options: Backing up the your personal My Documents folder and settings, backing up everyone’s My Documents folder and settings or backing up the entire computer. Here’s the scoop on how these work: The first two options mean that your data will be backed up, but the operating system files will not be backed up. What this means is that if your system ever becomes corrupted and you can’t run Windows, then you’ll have to reinstall a fresh copy of Windows and re-install all of your applications and then RESTORE all your data files using the backup file. The third option backs up the entire operating system and files and is the best option, but there’s a slight catch. You still have to re-install a fresh copy of the operating system again, however, instead of having to install all your apps again and configure your settings, this time you would go to the Backup utility in the freshly installed copy, say Restore and it will effectively “update” the whole system state with all your applications and system settings and your data files.

Go ahead and choose All information on this computer and click Next

The next screen, Backup Type, Destination and Name will vary depending on your what you have connected to your computer. If Windows does not find any backup device connected to your computer, the backup type box will be greyed out with File as the default. For Choose a place to save your backup, go ahead and click Browse and save the file to the local drive on your computer which has the most avialble space. The way the backup utility works is that it creates a single file with a .bak extension that holds all the data, so this file can be very large. You can check whether or not the file will fit on your comptuer by checking how much space is currently being taken up on your computer and making sure you have that amount of space free. Basically, if more than 50% of the space on your hard drive is take, then you can’t save the file to your computer. You’ll need to attach an external drive and browse to that drive and save the file there.

In the Save file dialog box, go ahead and give your backup file a name (preferably with the date so you know how old it is).

Once you choose the location and type the file name, click OK and then click Next. You’ll reach the final screen and once you click Finish, Windows will begin to backup your computer and at the end will ask you to insert a floppy disk in order to save the boot information. This boot disk will allow you to boot into a state where you can point to the location of the backup file and it’ll restore the entire operating system. We’ll go through that in another post.

Now the backup process will start and may take a while. Once it’s done though, it’ll ask you to insert a floppy disk and will create your boot disk. And that’s it! You don’t have to go through manually copying your data back and forth! You’ll then see your file in the location you specified and if you put it on your local computer, you’ll want to go ahead and move it off to an external hard drive.

Good luck!

» Filed Under Windows XP

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One Response to “Tips for backing up your computer system and data files – Using the Windows Backup Utility”

How to Mount a Virtual Hard Disk in Windows 7 Says:

[...] have some cool options for backing up and restoring your computer. I’ve previously written about backing up your computer using the built-in backup tool in Windows XP, but the new version is way [...]
November 10th, 2009 at 5:57 am