Win7 Backup & Restore question

[Steve Silverwood]

I recently had to back up my user profile prior to a system rebuild,
and found that I could not use Windows 7's internal Backup and Restore
application to back up contents from the Windows folder structure.
Specifically, I wanted to back up the \Cursors, \Icons, \Web\Wallpaper
and \Media folders and folders within those, but the \Windows folder
structure was not available for selection.

I'm presuming I will have to use a third-party backup system in the
future, or just copy the files directly, but I was curious why this
was made off-limits. Any ideas or speculation appreciated, if only to
satisfy my curiosity.

Thanks in advance.

//Steve//

--
Steve Silverwood, KB6OJS
Corona, CA 92879 USA

Email: (e-mail address removed)
Blog: http://stevesilverwood.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/steve.silverwood
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kb6ojs
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/steve-silverwood/7/54a/b06

 

[Wolf K]

I recently had to back up my user profile prior to a system rebuild,
and found that I could not use Windows 7's internal Backup and Restore
application to back up contents from the Windows folder structure.
Specifically, I wanted to back up the \Cursors, \Icons, \Web\Wallpaper
and \Media folders and folders within those, but the \Windows folder
structure was not available for selection.

I'm presuming I will have to use a third-party backup system in the
future, or just copy the files directly, but I was curious why this
was made off-limits. Any ideas or speculation appreciated, if only to
satisfy my curiosity.

Thanks in advance.

Backup/Restore is AFAIK designed only to create a system restore point
in case you have problems on that specific machine. If it did more than
that, you could use the backup to transfer the system to one or more
other machines.

You could transfer the whole system using a disk image (Acronis is one
highly recommended product, but I've not used it myself). You'll have to
reregister your copy of W7 for the new hardware, though. MS has
information on its support site(s) on how you do that.

HTH

 

[Jason]

Backup/Restore is AFAIK designed only to create a system restore point
in case you have problems on that specific machine. If it did more than
that, you could use the backup to transfer the system to one or more
other machines.

You could transfer the whole system using a disk image (Acronis is one
highly recommended product, but I've not used it myself). You'll have to
reregister your copy of W7 for the new hardware, though. MS has
information on its support site(s) on how you do that.

HTH

One happy Acronis customer here. I've used it for years - it wasn't
always without problems, especially the standalone recovery environment,
but that has been ok for a while now. It has saved my bacon on many
occasions...it makes you fearless about trying things!

 

[Ken Springer]

Backup/Restore is AFAIK designed only to create a system restore point
in case you have problems on that specific machine. If it did more than
that, you could use the backup to transfer the system to one or more
other machines.

You could transfer the whole system using a disk image (Acronis is one
highly recommended product, but I've not used it myself). You'll have to
reregister your copy of W7 for the new hardware, though. MS has
information on its support site(s) on how you do that.

Don't confuse Win 7's Backup and Restore with System Restore, they are
totally different animals.

While I had a Win 7 computer in my hands, I experimented with Backup and
Restore, but did not get into the gritty details.

With Backup and Restore, you can create a system image for your drives
or partitions. And store that image on an external drive or multiple
DVD's. You can also image individual partitions, if I understood things
correctly.

You can also schedule backups. But I don't know for sure what those
backups give you.

I can say, that when I imaged an entire drive, there was only one drive,
the image restored the drive back to the condition it was in when I made
the image file. The drive had 3 partitions, and the image included the
recovery partition, and the computer would restore itself from the
restored recovery partition. You must have a System Repair DVD, that
you make, in order to access the system image file and restore your
computer.

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.8.2
Firefox 18.0.1
Thunderbird 17.0.2
LibreOffice 3.6.3.2

 

[Steve Silverwood]

Backup/Restore is AFAIK designed only to create a system restore point
in case you have problems on that specific machine. If it did more than
that, you could use the backup to transfer the system to one or more
other machines.

I think you have System Restore and Windows Backup confused. System
Restore does the restore points for backing out of a change if it
messes up the system. Windows Backup can either make a system image
backup, or back up individual files. It's the latter that I'm asking
about. Thanks for your reply, though.

-- //Steve//

 

[Steve Silverwood]

One happy Acronis customer here. I've used it for years - it wasn't
always without problems, especially the standalone recovery environment,
but that has been ok for a while now. It has saved my bacon on many
occasions...it makes you fearless about trying things!

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid having to outlay the $$ for a
third-party solution -- cash is a bit scarce these days for me -- but
I'll look into it.

-- //Steve//

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid having to outlay the $$ for a
third-party solution -- cash is a bit scarce these days for me -- but
I'll look into it.

-- //Steve//

Or look into EaseUS Todo. It's similar to Macrium Reflect and Acronis
True Image, but cheaper.

By cheaper, I mean there's a free version available for home use, but
IIRC, it's not easy to find on their site.

http://www.easeus.com/

 

[Dave]

Don't confuse Win 7's Backup and Restore with System Restore, they are
totally different animals.

While I had a Win 7 computer in my hands, I experimented with Backup and
Restore, but did not get into the gritty details.

With Backup and Restore, you can create a system image for your drives
or partitions. And store that image on an external drive or multiple
DVD's. You can also image individual partitions, if I understood things
correctly.

You can also schedule backups. But I don't know for sure what those
backups give you.

I can say, that when I imaged an entire drive, there was only one drive,
the image restored the drive back to the condition it was in when I made
the image file. The drive had 3 partitions, and the image included the
recovery partition, and the computer would restore itself from the
restored recovery partition. You must have a System Repair DVD, that
you make, in order to access the system image file and restore your
computer.

Windows backup and restore works fine. However, it creates a directory
structure (no problem) and you can only restore the whole thing.
Macrium offer a free version of their backup software, it lacks the file
backup and restore of the full product. It creates a single image file,
including the smaller partitions most OEM's use. The image file takes up
about 1/2 the space of the windows backup. In each case you will need to
create recovery media. With Macrium you can view and restore any file or
directory in the image, very useful.

 

[Steve Silverwood]

Windows backup and restore works fine. However, it creates a directory
structure (no problem) and you can only restore the whole thing.

The version in Windows 7 allowed me to restore individual files and/or
directories, no problem with that process. I didn't have to restore
the entire backup.

-- //Steve//

 

[Wolf K]

I think you have System Restore and Windows Backup confused. System
Restore does the restore points for backing out of a change if it
messes up the system. Windows Backup can either make a system image
backup, or back up individual files. It's the latter that I'm asking
about. Thanks for your reply, though.

-- //Steve//

I think you're right. Thanks, and to Ken too, for catching this error.

 

[Char Jackson]

Or look into EaseUS Todo. It's similar to Macrium Reflect and Acronis
True Image, but cheaper.

By cheaper, I mean there's a free version available for home use, but
IIRC, it's not easy to find on their site.

http://www.easeus.com/

Is the free version of EaseUS Todo that much cheaper than the free version
of Macrium Reflect? ;-)

 

[gufus]

Is the free version of EaseUS Todo that much cheaper than the free version
of Macrium Reflect? ;-)

VBG

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Is the free version of EaseUS Todo that much cheaper than the free version
of Macrium Reflect? ;-)

It is for me because I have the *paid* version of Macrium Reflect (and
no sense of logic!).

Even without that, though, the free version of EaseUS is about half the
price of the free version of Macrium.

 

[Char Jackson]

It is for me because I have the *paid* version of Macrium Reflect (and
no sense of logic!).

Even without that, though, the free version of EaseUS is about half the
price of the free version of Macrium.

Point taken. With nothing but pocket lint, I could have two free EaseUS
Todo's for the price of a single free Macrium Reflect. It's a no brainer
when you put it that way.

 

[Gene E. Bloch]

Point taken. With nothing but pocket lint, I could have two free EaseUS
Todo's for the price of a single free Macrium Reflect. It's a no brainer
when you put it that way.

Yeah, I have to agree: the operative term is just as you said: "no
brainer".

I've been careless about saving my pocket lint. Thanks for the reminder
- though I guess it's too late for a New Year's resolution for 2013.

Are we having fun yet?

 

[Craig Martineau]

On Wed, 6 Feb 2013 19:42:41 -0500, Jason <(e-mail address removed)>
wrote:
>One happy Acronis customer here. I've used it for years - it wasn't
>always without problems, especially the standalone recovery environment,
>but that has been ok for a while now. It has saved my bacon on many
>occasions...it makes you fearless about trying things!

Thanks, I was hoping to avoid having to outlay the $$ for a
third-party solution -- cash is a bit scarce these days for me -- but
I'll look into it.

-- //Steve//

Try EaseUStodo - free backup and restore, versatile and free

 

[majicwang]

free download data recovery software

is it what you say ?

 

[aggie]

Easeus Data Recovery Wizard can not only effectively recover deleted files and formatted partition, but also recover data for data loss in different situations. It supports FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS file systems, and it also supports types of hardware equipment like IDE/ATA, SATA, SCSI, disc, ZIP, and so on. To common picture formats, e.g. BMP, JPEG, GIF, PNG, Easeus Data Recovery Wizard offers a function of preview.