Windows 7 has been available for only a short while but is already is proving to be popular with users, including those who were distinctly underwhelmed by Windows Vista. Windows 7 has a snappier personality than Vista, with faster boot times, better use of memory and a less fussy interface. Yet Windows 7 builds on many new features that were introduced with Vista, including a new Event Viewer and new monitoring tools. One of these new features is Windows Backup, located in Control Panel as “Backup and Restore”.
Microsoft touts the new backup utility as easier to use, with the ability to “configure regular backups in three clicks”. Backup jobs can be saved to local drives, USB drives, network shares or burned directly to a CD-R or a DVD-R.
Users can choose to backup individual folders or files, or to backup the files stored in a user’s Windows profile folder. While creating any backup of specific files or folders the backup wizard will offers to create a system image as well. A system image backup can be made of all drives on the system that contain files critical to Windows 7’s operation. The image files are created as VHD files which have some interesting possibilities as a file type. The VHD can be accessed by Virtual PC or Virtual Server 2005 but cannot be booted as a virtual machine inside those applications. The VHDs created by Windows Backup and Restore can be mounted and accessed through Disk Manager and can be used to perform a bare-metal recovery of a failed computer. It is interesting to note that Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate can be installed into a special type of VHD which can be copied as a single file to another computer and booted on that system. A Windows 7 computer that is booted from a VHD has nearly the same performance of a conventionally installed system. The VHD created in Backup and Restore is not bootable but intended for system recoveries only. If a computer has suffered a hard drive failure simply boot from the Windows 7 DVD, select the “repair your computer link”, and load Windows PE from the disk. Window PE is a small operating system than can use the many features of the WinRE or Windows Repair Environment to rescue a failed system.
WinRE tools include a Startup Repair tool that can repair boot file, the ability to select a System Resort point, networking capability and command-line tools such as CHKDSK, ATTRIB and DiskPart. The WinRE tool I like best is a special version of Backup that permits a complete restoration of the computer usinga VHD backup image. The procedure is simple: boot to the Windows 7 installation DVD, load Windows PE, enter the WinRE environment, select the Complete PC Restore option and point to the location of your VHD. Then you can sit back as your Windows 7 computer is rebuilt. Windows 7 Backup uses Shadow Copy to create backups that includes files even if they are changing as the backup is being created. Nothing is skipped and all files are consistent.
-Mark
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