Using Windows Backup Utility - Part 1

Most us today do keep a backup of our important data, sometimes online, and sometimes on secondary hard drives. Windows XP come with a backup utility, but hardly anyone of us uses it. This tool is not all that bad, infact, a person just need to know how to use it; so, I came up with an idea to let you all know about how to use the backup utility in windows. It will be covered fully in 3 posts. Here’s is the How To Do of Windows Backup Utility.

1. Open up the Backup utility, accessible from Start –> Programs –> Accessories –> System Tools –> Backup Or type NTBACKUP in Run
2. On the wizard untick “Always start in wizard mode” and click Advanced Mode (I believe everybody will be a advanced user for backups, after reading this series )
3. There you will see 3 options of Backup Wizard, Restore Wizard, Automated System Recovery Wizard. I will cover Backup Wizard completely in this post.



4. Click on Backup Wizard, and you will see a wizard that comes up. First Option that comes up asking you “What to back up“, and it gives 3 options. Back up everything on this computer which will backup whole My Computer, Back up selected files, drives or network data which allows you to select files and folders you I want to backup, and Only backup system state data which will backup the booting files only
5. After selecting one of the option it will ask you to select the place and name of your backup
6. The wizard is about to end, but just before clicking finish, click Advanced, and you will see some more advanced options there
7. The first option you will see is of different types of backups namely; Normal, Copy, Incremental, Differential, DailyLet us see what these type of Backup means:-

   

   • Normal :- A normal backup would backup all selected files and folders, and clear the archive attribute of each file. The files of this type of backup are large, and are taken when backup is taken for the first time. No scheduling can be done in case of normal backup
   • Copy :- This backup is similar to normal backup, and the only difference is that it does not add the Archive bit to files, which in turn would not effect the other backup operations
   • Incremental :- An incremental backup would only backup those are created or changed since the last normal or incremental backup. It adds the Archive bit to files. This backup is fast, but restoring is slow. The space taken by this type is less as compared to others
   • Differential :- A differential backup copies files created since the last normal or incremental backup. It does not add the archive bit to the files. This backup is slow but the recovery is faster, and scheduling can be done on daily basis
   • Daily :- A daily backup would take backup of all selected files that have been modified or added in a day. It does not add the Archive bit, but looks for this bit while taking backup which is one of the difference between differential and daily backup
8. After selecting the type of backup you want, you can verify the files after backup, use compression mode, and disable Shadow copy if using NTFS partition
9. You can then schedule your backup, decide when to start the backup

This way you can use the Backup utitliy in XP.

Stay tuned for Restoration and Automated system recovery process.

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