Windows 8.1: Backing Up Your Data

Imagine if you will. Your laptop is 4 years old. It's midway in the 3-to-5-year life expectancy. Your warranty expires a year ago. You have EVERYTHING stored on it: Your music library. All the digital photos and videos of your kids back to the day they were born. Work-related files. Financial records. Etc. Then, one day, your hard drive crashes. All your data is GONE! WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO! Well, you're not going to panic. You were smart. You backed up your HDD and all your data is recoverable. 

Computers crash. Hard drives fail. Data gets lost or destroyed. The easiest and best way to prevent data loss is to back-up your data.
(You: "Gee, thanks, Captain Obvious.")
(Me: "You're welcome.")

I work for a company that sells cloud back-ups as one of our main services, but I never really did anything to back up my data. Sure, I'd occasionally copy my data to an external drive, but I never really had a back-up plan.

I've had laptops suffer hardware malfunctions over the years and "die", but I've been lucky to not lose much data. I was able to pull the HDD each time and recover my data to my new laptop. But luck only holds out for so long and there are some things I prefer not to take chances with.

I recently purchased a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 1TB Portable External Hard Drive from Amazon. It came with a back-up application named Seagate Dashboard. I don't like it. All it does is create a copy of your selected folders / files to the external HDD. I can do that without wasting my internal HDD space on an app like that.

I was looking for a back-up utility that allows me to create schedules, chose what to back-up, compresses the data, do incremental back-ups, and maybe even encrypt the data.
I checked PC World's web site and ran a search on Google, and one of the hits I got on both was for a product called AOMEI Backupper Standard. It got pretty good reviews and did everything I want.

I configured the back-up to include only the folders and files I actually want to back-up. I selected a schedule. I selected whether I want full, incremental, or differential back-ups. Then I "seeded" the data by running the initial back-up. It took a little while, but I was left with a 56.4 GB compressed "archive" file that contains all the data I selected for back-up. For reference, I included the following folders:

• Documents: 3.80 GB
• Favorites: 70.8 KB
• Music: 48.2 GB
• Pictures: 3.90 GB
• Videos: 3.21 GB
• Total: 59.11 GB

Granted, the compression wasn't great, but digital audio, video, and pictures files are (usually) already compressed and don't compress much more in back-ups. But, the kicker was that the incremental that ran later this evening was only 4.95 MB. It's significantly smaller because it only backs up files that are added or changed since the last back-up. I'm not endorsing AOMEI Backupper Standard, but I like it and will likely continue to use it.

Types of back-up are:

• Full back-ups include everything you select every time whether it changed or not. It also adds any folders of files, as appropriate.
• Incremental back-ups include the data that changed or was added since the last incremental back-up. When my incremental back-up ran this evening, it only backed-up any changes or additions since my initial full back-up earlier today. When it runs tomorrow, it'll only include changes in the preceding 24 hours. What you end up with is the initial full back-up with a series of files or safesets that include all the changes over time.
• Differential back-ups are cumulative back-ups of all changes made since the last full backup. In this case, all you need is the initial full back-up and the most recent differential.

Both incremental and differential back-ups have their advantages and the type you use is up to you. I chose incrementals because each night the back-up will include the changes and additions from the preceding 24 hours. What if I change something on Tuesday, and change it again on Wednesday, and decide on Thursday that I want the file back the way it was on Monday? In my mind, the incrementals would more easily facilitate that recovery.

Some of you may have noticed that all I've talked about so far is data back-ups and may be wondering about full system back-ups? In our business, we call that a BMR - Bare Metal Restore.

A system or BMR back-up includes EVERYTHING on your HDD in a single back-up. AOMEI Backupper Standard is capable of system back-ups, but they necessitate creating a boot CD / DVD. If you need to restore your entire system, you boot off the CD or DVD into the recovery environment. This allows you to run the restore from your external HDD. Once the process is complete and you reboot your computer, it should be exactly the same as it was when the back-up ran.

Bear in mind that this will include ALL changes and additions since the last back-up. For example, your web browsing history will be included as well as any temp files from Windows Update.

You may wonder why I'm not doing that. It's because Windows and most computer vendors include utilities for creating restore media. In my case, Toshiba includes an interface called Desktop Assist that allows you to interface with various utilities to manage your system. The one I'm focusing on tonight is Recovery Media Creator. This utility allows you to use CDs, DVDs, or even a thumb drive, to create restore media in case your computer suffers a HDD failure.

Be advised that this is like the old restore media that computer vendors use to include and restores your computer back to new out-of-the-box condition. It restores your operating system and all the apps and utilities from the vendor. And, it removes all your files and customer settings. Use this only as a last resort. As we speak I'm using a 16 GB thumb drive to finally create the restore media for my laptop.

Windows 8.1 has a Recovery feature that allows you to create a recovery drive to refresh and reset your computer, as well as troubleshoot OS issues. Apparently the refresh and reset features allow you to roll back the OS to an earlier state without losing your data. Almost as if you're doing a clean re-install of the OS. Resetting your PC reinstalls Windows but deletes your files, settings, and apps, except for the apps that came with your PC. Restoring your PC is a way to undo recent system changes you've made. Here's an article from Microsoft on that: How to refresh, reset, or restore your PC.

Almost all Windows computers come from the vendor with a hidden recovery partition where the source programs are stored. Creating the restore media allows you to access that partition. It's their way of not having to provide us with the restore CDs / DVDs.

Windows also allows you to configure how and when the system creates restore points. Restore points are the saved state of your system at a given point in time. Windows Update normally creates a restore point prior to installing the updates.

Like anything else, you can find a wealth of information on the WWW about back-ups. It may take come time to wade through it all, but in the end, not backing up your data is just unwise.

As always, I'm open to questions and constructive comments. Your feedback is welcome.