Digital Home Advisor

Schedule Automated Backups in Vista

Once you've decided where you'll save your backups, configure Windows Vista to automatically save new copies of your data. Open Control Panel, System and Maintenance, Backup and Restore Center, and click the Back up files button. Choose an external hard disk or a CD or DVD drive, or click the radio button to connect to a network location. Click Next.

Choose the types of files that you want to back up. I like to back up as much as I can, checking all of the boxes. (This isn't the same as backing up a complete disk image for a full PC restore, which I'll talk about at the end of this article.) Checking all the boxex basically saves everything that you create or add to a computer other than applications and their settings. The operating system and its settings won't be backed up. Click Next.

Choose a schedule by considering how much data you can afford to lose. If you use this PC for critical, daily work, schedule backups every night. If it's an occasionally used computer, consider backing it up every week. The first time you make a backup, the process may take a few hours, depending on how much you're saving. After that, the system will look for files that you've added or changed, copying only those items to save time and storage space.

Roll Back Individual Files

Certain editions of Windows Vista — Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate — let you browse backwards through a single file, recovering a specific version, not just the most recent copy. Microsoft calls this feature Shadow Copy, and it's enabled by default. Right-click a file or folder, and select Restore previous versions. Each system restore point or backup point that Windows creates initiates a new Shadow Copy. Browse through the different modification dates, and click Open to preview the file as it was. Click Restore to retrieve a copy from the backup for current work.

Thriftier versions of Windows Vista create Shadow Copies but don't allow you access to them. The free ShadowExplorer adds this retrieval feature. After installation, launch ShadowExplorer, and choose the restore date from the pop-up menu. Navigate through the file browser to locate an item. Right-click it, choose Export, and save it to any location you like.

Roll Back Windows to an Earlier State

Windows includes a couple of backup tools to revert your PC to a previous, working condition: Restore Points and device driver rollback. These are most helpful if your system becomes unstable and you need to reset it to an earlier point where it was reliable. Unlike Shadow Copy, these don't let you selectively browse back; they're essentially all-or-nothing switches.

Locate Vista's Restore Points by opening Control Panel, System and Maintenance, System. In the left side, click Advanced system settings. Choose the System Protection tab. Click System Restore.

Windows automatically creates a restore point each day, and before making significant changes to the system. You can also create a restore point manuallly by selecting a disk under the System Protection tab of the System Properties control panel and then clicking Create. If you want to revert to the most recent restore point, click Next; otherwise, click the Choose a different restore point radio button. Choose the date and time, and click Next. Click Finish to begin the process.

In Windows XP, open Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. You should see Restore my computer to an earlier time. Click Next, and pick a date to which the system will revert. Click Next twice to begin the process.

The Device Manager also allows you to undo a single software driver. In XP or Vista, double-click a hardware item, click the Driver tab, and choose Roll Back Driver to revert to an earlier state. This option is most useful if you have problems immediately after updating a driver.

Image a Disk

Once you have a new system working perfectly, consider saving a full copy of the drive as a disk image. That way, if you have to reinstall everything, the image file will already contain your applications and Windows updates — in other words, you can restore your OS and applications in one swoop, and then restore all of your documents from a recent backup.

Many backup and disk suites include imaging software. True Image Home 11 handles nearly any imaging need, with encryption options and even incremental images, so you can keep appending the image without starting over.