File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

So, where will Windows 2008 Hyper-V server run?

Andy Lalaguna — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 14:26:00 GMT

Keen to play with one of my toys. Also wanted to play with hyper-V... so will they both run together

Answering your questions about File Backup in Windows Vista

The Filing Cabinet — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 21:12:28 GMT

Savvy Windows Vista users have been asking tough questions about some of the design decisions we made

re: File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

Still can't believe it — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:47 GMT

After using the vista for a year, I still have never used the backup/restore feature since my initial try. As stated in previous comments it is totally useless at providing any functionality/data management, especially for business users.

If MS puts out a business version of an OS it better not give us features that are for the "consumer" market.

Anyway, how hard is it to add an advanced setting where I can select whatever folder or file I want to backup? You don't have to change the basic interface that makes things simpler for "core consumers". I mean seriously did not a soul at MS think of this or are they just plain lazy?

Back(-up) to Core Business

The things that are better left unspoken — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:56:37 GMT

Windows Server 2008 brings the successor to ye old NTBackup. The role that can be installed separately

Back(-up) to Core Business

The things that are better left unspoken — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 14:15:32 GMT

Windows Server 2008 brings the successor to ye old NTBackup. The role that can be installed separately

re: File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

Paul Coddington — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 14:31:32 GMT

The apparent lack of documentation for the most obvious of questions is very frustrating: for example, if I set up some Subversion or Visual SourceSafe repositories off the root of C: outside the C:\Users\ structure, there is no way to know if they are backed up or not without actually trying it and studying the result. And even if they are backed up, will some of them be accidentally considered to be 'system files' and left out? How can I be sure without manually differencing the content of the ZIP files after each backup?

Another problem is EFS: although Vista provides a means for backing up EFS certificates, the online Help specifically states that EFS protected files are always excluded from backup. This seems somewhat bizarre: what use is the certificate itself if all the files encrypted by it are lost "by design" through this wholly unanticipated "feature"? If someone has not taken the time to read the online Help before starting, they will be horribly caught out by this one.

I can also see backups being overly large for no good reason: for example, Windows Media Player causes ripped CDs to be marked as 'changed' even though they are not modified by the user: presumably a 'number of times played counter' or similar is doing this. The mere act of playing your ripped CD collection can add hundreds of megabytes to each incremental backup and this cannot be safely excluded. Of course, this is more an issue with Windows Media Player, not Windows Backup. Hopefully this sort of problem is not happening with Windows Photo Gallery as well.

I think ZIP files are an excellent idea: presumably this means you can use WinRAR or similar to check backup integrity, which is something that was never possible in the past with .BKF files. This was especially terrifying with tape backups where one could never be certain if one of the many block errors routinely reported during a backup or restore was fatal or not.

I suspect that most users will not miss tape backups: they seem to be the slowest, most inherently expensive and unreliable of all the options available, especially now that removable hard drives are larger and cheaper than ever before. Domestic tape drives are now (in hindsight) a cruel joke only made possible by the lack of viable competing technologies at the time.

Simple is good, but I think users need to know with absolute certainty that all of their files are being backed up. For example, if user settings are not backed up, is a custom spelling dictionary a settings file or a document? It would be a shame to rely on this tool and then discover down the track that some critical files were missing after disaster had struck.

Even if all the bases are indeed covered, the documentation does not give the user any assurance of the fact or confidence in the utility: using it is an act of blind faith by design. If this could be addressed without compromising the simplicity, I think it would silence most critics.

I would also like to express hope that future versions of this utility will include an automatic pruning feature (removing the oldest backups to make room for the newest as the disk fills).

Finally, I should emphasise that the backup utility included with Windows has always been more important than 3rd party offerings because it has been (and still is, last time I checked) the only option available for home users which caters for all NTFS features. All of the mainstream 3rd party utilities I have tested (and I have tested as many as I could find with Google) fail on one or more of the following features: junctions, hard links, Unicode file names). I hope that Microsoft will continue to bear this in mind with future development.

re: File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

Tim — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 01:31:11 GMT

yeah, a advanced button option should have been implemented...but looks like the developers didn't have time, so didn't do it altogether.

Would be nice to be able to back up other computers on the network also to the main computer with the storage.

re: File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

cedric — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 00:23:03 GMT

What a bunch of bs.

There is no good reason for the removal of the tape backup support, especially with the luxury of so many years to work on a new windows.

It's exactly like the defrag utility, with Vista you actually pay an upgrade for what is sometime/often a loss of feature or inferior software.

re: File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

andreiv — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 23:49:30 GMT

I noticed the following strange thing: I did a complete backup of my system drive (C) first on another partiton of the same hdd (D) and then on DVD. On D, the backup VHD file takes about 11 Gb, while the backup on DVDs took 1 full DVD (4.3 Gb) and 1.5 Gb on another one, which makes a total of 5.8 Gb. Why this big difference between the backup on DVD and the backup on the hard drive?

re: File Backup in Windows Vista FAQ

tdracz — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 16:45:11 GMT

Regardless of what is says in the documentation, it DOES backup Program Files and every other single unimportant file - I find it pretty useless. I thought that Ultimate version will be fine for a software developer that I am, but I find it rather more suitable for my granddad. I guess there must be Vista Developer edition somewhere there, but available only internally for Microsoft developers. Or they just use third-party software.