Windows Backup Software – Best Practice

Using Windows backup software for protecting yourself from data loss can be confusing at the first moment. How often should a backup be created? Should one create a full Windows backup or just some files? How would one get his data back if computer crashes? Is it possible to create a hard drive backup? This article will provide you a complete Windows backup solution for keeping your files safe. But first let’s take a look at what are the common dangers that make it necessary to backup a computer.

1. System crash. This happens more often than most users think. They have their machines working now and it seems that it would be like this always. But sometimes you need just to reboot the machine to get BSOD (Blue Screen Of Death) instead of Windows logo. And not always such issues have fast and simple solution – it may be that you’ll have to reinstall Windows completely with all the applications you have… and also you may loose some or even all of your data!

2. Hard drive crash . Sometimes hard drives die. This can cause data loses, non-booting operating system and many other issues. In case of hard drive crash one would need to buy a new one and somehow migrate with all his data from an old disk to this new one – that is the job for Windows backup software.

3. Operating system works slowly and produces many bugs. This is also a common issue. Every Windows user knows that system works best right after the installation – when it is ‘fresh’. Later system becomes less productive because of registry changes, disk fragmentation, computer worms and viruses, different adware and spyware programs working in the background etc. Fixing the system would take a lot of time and would not return the system to the initial state. That’s why at some moment we may decide to restore our previously created Windows backup.

4. Accidental file deletion That is the most harmless situation. In most cases you can just recover accidentally deleted files from the recycle bin. But what if recycle bin was already cleared? This is another way in which Windows backup software may become useful.

So how should one organize his Windows backups to be highly protected against all these dangers? Here is a simple strategy that would be useful in all above cases. That’s what should be done.

First of all you’ll need to format your hard drive and reinstall the operating system with all the applications that you use. Install some Windows backup software also. If you have important data on your machine – copy it temporarily to external drive or network share. Reinstalling operating system and applications can take much time but as they say - “For every minute spent in organizing, an hour is earned.”

Once you have a fresh Windows installation with all the applications you need (try to install all necessary programs now – it is better then adding them later) you will need to create a full Windows backup and save it on some external location like usb hard drive. My personal choice as Windows backup software is Acronis True Image – I’ve been using it long enough to believe that it is the right solution for me. You may also refer to this article to get more information on how to use windows backup software for creating full system image.

When that is done you’ll have a Windows backup with all the programs that can be restored at any moment returning you to a fresh installation. But what about data? Everyday you create, download and modify lots of files. If you restore the Windows backup we’ll get fresh system but will loose all files! To get around this you’ll need to schedule an incremental backup of your data folders right after the full Windows backup was made.

Incremental backup is different from full one – it will only add modified data to the backup saving you a lot of disk space. (When first launched it would create full backup however, but all next incremental backups scheduled will just add files that were created or modified since previous backup was made). You can schedule the data incremental backup to run every evening saving all the folders that you use for storing your data.

Then at every given day you would have a complete Windows backup and a bunch of data backups that store all your data. If something happens with the operating system or your drive you can just restore the full Windows backup first and then restore your data backup to the clean system and get back and running in an hour with minimum data loses. (You would loose only files that were modified or created after the last incremental backup, but if you do incrementals every day you would not loose more than one day). 

You can also restore the files from data backup without restoring full Windows backup – that would protect you against accidental deletion of important data. 

Using the recommendations above you can save yourself a lot of time and protect your data. The only last thing you have to do is choose the right Windows backup software.