Once youâve backed up your system, how do you restore it? Just attach the
medium youâve backed up with (external hard drive, DVD/CDs, etc.) and hope that
it launches? I recently tried my first and unsuccessful backup (I didnât have
enough DVDs). But the files that were backed up seemed encrypted.
This is actually a very common question â and a very important one.
Depending on how youâre backing up, and what youâre backing up, there may be
some key steps youâll want to take prior to needing those backups so as to be
able to use them when the time comes.
While the specifics vary dramatically from situation to situation, the
concepts do not. Iâll cover those concepts and point you to the things you need
to know before disaster strikes.
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Iâll start by splitting backups into two broad category: file and image.
Restoring File Backups
up.â
File backups are just that â backups of selected files. It can be many
files, it might even be nearly all files, but itâs never a backup that can be
used to restore a machine completely. The primary purpose of file-based backups
is to be able to restore or recover:
- any of those files, but only those files
- to a working system
For example: letâs say you mistakenly delete, overwrite or somehow trash the
file containing your bookkeeping records. You can recover that file from a
file-based backup.
The biggest issue with recovering from a file-based backup is getting it out
of whatever storage method your backup program uses. This is where we canât
really dive into specifics, since each program might use its own.
Some programs simply copy files â literally. Restoring the file is nothing
more than locating the backup copy of the file on some storage medium, such as
the external hard disk it was backed up to, and copying it back.
More commonly backup programs create large backup archives in single files
that contain the backed up files in some compressed conglomeration. In those
cases, youâll need to run the same backup program which would then have a
restore or browse option to let you locate and extract the file or files youâre
looking for. The key is that youâll need that backup program to be able to
access the contents of the backup archive. (Caveat: in most cases. Some backup
programs actually use common formats like âzipâ files for their backups, so you
might be able to use other tools. Not many do, so make sure youâre prepared in
any case.)
But thatâs all it really boils down to for restoring files from a file-based
backup: locate the backup and use the original backup programs browse
functionality to locate and extract the files youâre looking for.
Restoring Image Backups
Image backups backup an image of your hard drive. (Iâm lumping both
sector-based and file-system based image backups into this category, since for
the purposes of this discussion theyâre the same.)
There are two approaches to restoring a complete image:
- An image can be restored to a secondary hard disk on a working system. That
means you canât restore it to the hard disk thatâs in use by the system
(typically C:), but you can restore it to some other hard disk installed on the
machine. In this case, you typically just run the backup software and use a
restore function that it should provide. - An image can be restored to the primary hard disk on any system by booting
from some other media. In other words, in order to perform a complete
restoration of your primary hard drive (again, typically C:), you have to
boot from something else. Most image backup programs also include the
ability to create a bootable restore disk for just this purpose.
Itâs that last scenario that is both the most powerful, and the most
confusing. And the thing that most people donât prepare for.
Preparation is actually fairly simple. Before you ever need your backup â
ideally when you set up your periodic backups in the first place â make sure
you have or create the restore boot disk that your backup program should
provide. Save it in a safe place so that if you ever need to perform a restore,
youâll have it ready.
Note that this is not the same as the disk containing your
actual backup. That disk is rarely bootable by itself. The bootable media is a
separate disk â often just a single CD â that you have or create once and keep
somewhere safe.
When your hard drive needs to be completely restored from the backup image
you would:
- Boot your machine from the bootable restoration media.
- Attach or locate your backed up data â perhaps by attaching the external
hard drive youâd been backing up to. - Run the backup program which was on the bootable media and use its restore
function to restore data from your backup drive to the hard disk in the
machine.
Again, conceptually simple, but itâs very easy to overlook that initial
step.
Whatâs unique about restoring an image backup is that you donât need to have
anything installed on the machineâs hard drive; it can be a brand new and
completely empty hard drive. You boot from a CD, and then restore a backup
image to that new hard drive.
Restoring Files from an Image
Sometimes even with an image-based backup you just want to restore a
file.
The good news here is that almost all image-based backup programs will also
let you view the contents of an image backup and extract from it just the file
or files you need. In many ways this is just like a file-based backup. Just
fire up the backup program and use its restore or browse features to examine
the contents of one of your backups to locate and restore your file.
An image-based backup can be considered a superset of a file-based backup;
it has everything that the file-based backup has, and more. The cost? The size
of the resulting backup, and perhaps the amount of time it takes to perform
either the backup or restore.
âą
No article on backing up would be complete without reminding you that all of
this is moot if youâre not actually backing up.
Back up regularly, so that when the time comes youâll have some of the
options above to choose from as you successfully restore your data.
Tried to like this post âHow do I restore from a Backupâ. Got error message unable to reach Leoâs site
I repartitioned my disk to one partition moved all of my user files to My Documents and made a little batch file to back My Documents and a few files such as Firefox shortcuts and Thunderbird files to my removable drive. This works for me. Iâve never had a crash but Iâve restored from this backup successfully a few times after installing a new os. Iâm considering signing up to Carbonite. It seems exceptionally reasonably priced. In act my hesitation is that it seems too good to be true at that price. Does anybody out there know if itâs really as good as they say or at least doesnât have any hidden problems?
Since I have created simple backup methods for small businesses, this is my favorite topic. Most backup programs, problem 1: You donât know if the backup worked unless you restore. Who has the time and dedication for that? Problem #2: most commercial backups create one or more gigantic files and itâs impossible to restore one fileâitâs all or nothing. Solution: buy an external drive, USB or ESATA, and simply copy your files to that. You can even use simple DOS commands which keeps files and folders intact. Many copy programs will even be bootable, so you can boot to the backup! Image and ghosting methods used to make sense when hard drives had small capacity and were expensive. No reason to use them anymore.
I was âluckyâ enough to buy from Norton.com their backup. When I lost my info they were hopeless,the workers (4) on their online chat support knew nothing.They want me to call them free on 1-800 but I donât live in the U.S.A. and I told them 6 times it wonât connect. So I lost and am peeved.
Although an experienced researcher and writer, I know not from anything technicalâ-and I am very generous in my definition of technicalâ-so, I discovered an offline siteâMozyâwhich gives you 4GB free automatic backup of everythingâand for pretty cheap will give you unlimited spaceâ-Leo, do you recommend Mozy or any other âofflineâ backup services? We just got a new Mac in our office and transferred 2 GB of data in a matter of secondsâ-I used to spend hours in my friendâs computer shop waiting for the old hard drive to be âghostedâ over to the new oneâ-Iâm glad those days are goneâŠ..
26-May-2010
In response to Mark Jacobs 24th May, I have been using carbonite for a few years and find it an excellent backup system, I have it installed on 2 computers and the unlimited storage cappacity is excellant value. On one computer we have over 24G of photographs stored on Carbonite which is an excellent secure off site storage for these irreplaceble files. However it will only back up your files on your computer for more than one computer you need an additional subscription. Please NOTE: It does not do an image backup, in addition it doesnât backup any external hard drives so if you wish to back up these file you will need another backup program. I have used the windows 7 âRestore Previous Versionâ function on quite a few occassion of late and find this an extremely effective way of restoring individual files or folders, cheers from downunder, the land of oz.
I found that the best and safest backup strategies are with imaging. The native Windows facilities are too complex and not always reliable. There are several reputable imaging programs that I have tried, but found that free Macrium is the easiest to handle and comprehend. If you care to try it, here is a Macrium tutorial that I posted on a forum: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I
Great article. I find it best to use a combination of Image and incremental backup. As Leo pointed out an Image takes a lot of time and space, so it is not something you want or need to do often. If my computer crashed today, I would restore the Image I have which is 3 months old. Now my computer is restored to 3 months ago. I take the My Documents folder that is in my incremental that I run weekly and drag that to my restored computer. Now my computer is up to date. The only thing that I would have to load would be any applications I have installed since my last Image.
Your answers are in depth. But, when I need speedy answers I donât like to look in your comments cos they are lengthy. I suggest you create a pane for summary (quick answers).