Backing Up!

[DaveB]

Hi Guys

Backing up is always a good topic but which is the best way to go around it?

I lost Win7 a few days ago due to an as yet unknown bug of some sort which started life as a browser hacker and ended up trashing my C: drive. I'm back in the land of the living again with a new install but of course, everything I had on my old C: is to all intents, lost. Fortunately, it wasn't a huge drive (a 128gb SSD) so not a lot was on there but it's still a trauma having to rebuild what you had from scratch.

So.. my question is, what's the best way to backup? I've heard of creating an ISO which, I presume, creates an exact replica of a drive but how do you go about doing that? Do you need specific software to do it or can Win7 do it itself? I'm not sure whether backing up in the traditional sense would have saved me this time as I couldn't use explorer

Incidentally.. I'm pretty sure I picked the bug up while trawling through the sales at FSPS though I can't be 100% certain. This is when things started going wrong. Having left the site.. I tried to get into SoH and couldn't then I tried accessing here and couldn't. I ran MSE which found an Adware bug and removed it then ran SpyHunter which reported activity from a 'supposedly' Microsoft signed system file. As the file appeared to be Microsoft, I let SpyHunter allow it. Hindsight is brilliant isn't it SpyHunter removed the tracker cookies but couldn't fix the system file and I was advised to contact the SH helpdesk which I did. An email I received from them later said not to click off the page or do anything else in order for them to be able to find out exactly what was happening but by this time, it was too late. I tried restore and even repair from the Win7 disc but neither worked. Restore was actually trying to restore F: drive in the end so I presume the boot sector had been trashed. All in all.. a painful couple of hours

Your thoughts please
ATB
DaveB

[Chris Sykes]

Dave it always a pita when you have something like that especially when it stops the restore or repair from working! You have a number of ways of doing a backup, the trouble is the storage, either it be local or externally, it needs to be useable and reliable.
As your using windows you can do a windows backup, or you can get 3rd party software. Ideally you would be best backing up to a HDD either network (NAS/Home Server) or external HDD (Esata/USB) that you remove from the PC when not needed but you can backup to a local drive. I have found that using either a external USB/eSata drive or a Windows Home Server better rather than a NAS as they can be unreliable.

Using an ISO would work but that is a single snapshot of your drive in time, so for instance you have this since a year ago you restore back to the image your PC will be a year out in updates and any software installed to that drive, ideally you need create iso's so often you would likely spend more time creating those than actually it would to restore. Your likely option would be to use Windows backup and just allow that to run, once set up you don't need to do hardly anything with it just check it often to make sure it works.

[GHD]

I use Macrium Reflect which can create an OS restorable backup to either a different hard drive on the same computer, a network drive or a DVD.

It also creates a boot menu allowing one to boot to the restore program, or to boot from a CD.

http://www.macrium.com/personal.aspx

[DaveB]

Hiya Chris

Thanks for that.. appreciate it

The trouble with backups is that I've never been 100% sure exactly what to backup.. system files obviously but what else In my particular instance where explorer had been hit, I'm not sure I'd have been able to get at any backup before the page threw up an error and closed. The last 'similar' bug I had (on this machine under Win7 as it happens).. IE was hit but not Windows explorer so I could actually see my drives but couldn't get online using IE. This time.. it took both. As well as selecting 'Allow' in SpyHunter when it reported unexpected activity, I also ticked (left default) 'Remember' so when I ran SH again.. it couldn't stop the suspect file (Win32/tasking). I looked in SH for a way to un-do the remember bit but couldn't find one I also remember win32/explorerframe flagging while attempting a restore. Too late now of course

I'm far from happy that this thing sidestepped MSE but I guess whichever AV software you have.. none are perfect. The safest way to proceed is to leave windows in protected mode and shove your IE settings up to the highest level. That way, you'll not be able to do anything but nothing will attack. Catch22

I'll look at using Windows backup. I've a nice fast USB3 1TB external which could be used and I can thin out some of the rubbish currently residing on there

Pre-submit edit: Thanks for that George.. I'll take a look

ATB
DaveB

[DaveB]

George.. which version do you have.. the 'Standard' or 'Professional'?

ATB
DaveB

[GHD]

I have the Pro vesion on both my XP and W7 machines.

[DaveB]

Cheers George.. thanks

ATB
DaveB

[paulsl]

Hello Dave,

I had something kill my Windoze and had to rebuild from scratch. Not wanting to do it again I looked around for some good backup software. I landed on Acronis True Image and thus far have been very impressed. I thought something unpleasant had managed to get onto the machine again (I also use MSE) and simply restored the last backup. Easy Peasy. Now I take an incremental backup every time I install anything. It's a little expensive but how much was the time worth that you spent rebuilding Windoze? There are quite a few out there to look at, including some open source ones. I nearly picked Paragon but Acronis seemed to have better reviews.

I use a 1Tb USB external dive. The Acronis boot disk had no trouble finding the drive and in a few minutes I was good to go again.

BTW I wouldn't use the Microsoft backup/restore/system restore stuff in a pink fit. My experience is that it just does not work.

HTH, Paul

[DaveB]

Cheers Paul

The last time I used Windows backup was a long time ago.. almost back to the days of black and white and it was fragile to say the least. I'd have hoped it had come on since then but so has the software and so have the hackers

I'll take a look at this.. nowt added to basket just yet.

ATB
DaveB