I would like to backup my entire system (running Windows XP) to an external drive in case of a major crash. I have purchased a 500 GB USB hard drive, which is twice the size of my internal hard drive, to store the backups. I recall that last year you provided some advice on appropriate procedures for completing a full system backup, but I cannot remember your suggestions. Could you recap these again?

The backup methods available for Windows XP have changed a bit since last year, so this is a good opportunity to provide an updated overview of the options available for people who wish to backup the data on their computer (which should be everyone). Before starting on the software-side of backup, you need to decide where you wish to store the backup. Assuming that you wish to backup your computer’s internal hard drive, storing the backup on that same internal hard drive is obviously a bad idea because if your backup rationale is to protect you from hardware (drive) failure, if the internal hard drive fails it will take both your data and backups along. So, you need to backup to a different destination. My recommendation is backing up to an external hard drive connected to the computer. You have chosen a USB hard drive, which is an excellent choice given the price of these drives (you can get a 500 GB drive for around $150 and a 1 TB drive for around $250). While such external drives are not perfect, as they are just as prone to failure as any other hard drive, they are really the only affordable and convenient option for a home user to backup large amounts of data.

Once you have got your backup medium sorted, our attention turns to the backup software on the computer. The first software package you can explore is Windows Backup, the backup utility included with Windows XP. This can be found in the “Start” menu > “All Programs” > “Accessories” > “System Tools” > “Backup”. When you start this utility for the first time you will be presented with a wizard interface allowing you to setup the backup process. Click the “Next” button to commence the backup setup. You will be asked whether you wish to backup or restore. At this stage we are setting-up the backup, so select “Back up files and settings” then click the “Next” button. This next screen allows us to select what should be backed-up. From your original question, it seems that you wish to backup your entire system so it can be restored in the event of a crash. As such, I suggest that you select “All information on this computer”. This also creates a system recovery disk which can be used to start the Windows restoration process should your computer suffer a catastrophic failure and cannot start Windows to use the Backup utility to restore the data. Be aware, this backup option will be the largest as you are backing up everything on the hard drive. Should you only wish to backup certain files and folders, rather than the entire Windows system and all programs, select one of the other options (“My documents and settings” or “Everyone’s documents and settings”). Note that the rest of this procedure will assume that you have selected the “All information on this computer” option. The next screen will ask where you wish to save the backup. Make sure that your external hard drive is connected to the computer and then select the external drive. You will notice that you also need a floppy drive and disk to create the system recovery disk. If your computer does have a floppy drive then you are set, but many new computers do not. If you do not have a floppy drive in the computer then you should install one to gain the full benefit from this backup method, otherwise you will be unable to restore the system in the event of a full system crash (since you will not be able to boot into Windows to commence the restoration). However, before forking out for a floppy drive, have a read of the other backup options in this column, as some do not require the use of a floppy drive. After you have selected the backup location click “Next” and a summary will appear with your backup configuration. If you are happy with this configuration click “Finish” to close the wizard and start the initial backup. Because you are backing-up your entire computer, this will probably take a very long time, so you may wish to run the backup overnight.

Once the backup has completed and the system restore floppy disk has been created, the Backup utility will exit. The end result of the backup will be a single .BKF file on your external hard drive that contains the entire backup of your system. Obviously this file will be rather large, as it contains your entire system. You will also have a system restore floppy disk which you should keep in a safe place, as you cannot do your restoration without the floppy disk.

Now that you have an initial backup complete you need to consider how to keep this backup up-to-date. If you do not, and the computer fails in six months time, you have a perfectly good backup of your computer six months ago, which may not be particularly useful if you have changed a lot of data in the interim. Therefore, you should schedule a regular backup of your system. Depending on how often you change your data, and the potential size of the backups since you are backing up the entire system, once a week should be an appropriate timeframe. However, the exact timeframe is your choice. To schedule the regular backup, open the Backup utility and click the “Advanced Mode” link on the first screen. Click the “Schedule Jobs” button and double-click on the day you wish to start the first scheduled backup (using our timings, this would be one week from the original backup run day). Double-click on the day to open the backup wizard. Click “Next” and select “Back up everything on this computer” then click “Next” again. Select the destination drive for the backup (your external USB hard drive) and give the backup a name (this can be the same as the name of the original backup which you ran) then click “Next”. The next screen will be asking you what type of backup you wish to run, and you are presented with five options:

Normal: Backs-up all data and marks the files as backed-up (i.e. sets the backup flag as true on each file which has been backed-up).
Copy: Backs-up all data but does not mark any files as being backed-up (i.e. does not set the backup flag on any files).
Incremental: Backs-up all files which have changed since the last backup (of any time) and marks the files as being backed-up. In other words, this backs-up all files which do not have their backup flag set and then sets the backup flag on those files.
Differential: Backs-up all files which have changed since the last backup (of any time) but does NOT mark the files as being backed-up. In other words, this backs-up all files which do not have their backup flag set and does NOT set the backup flag on those files.
Daily: Backs-up all files which were created or modified on that day.

At this point you may be a bit confused between the definition of an incremental and differential backup. The major distinction is that the incremental backup sets the backup flag on each file it backs-up, whereas the differential backup does not. This is best illustrated by example. If you complete a full backup initially, all the files are backed-up and their backup flags are set. Then, if you subsequently do an incremental backup each week then the files that changed each week are backed-up and their backup flags are set, so the backup in the following weeks does not backup those files unless they have been changed again. As such, the incremental will only backup the files which have changed since the last incremental.

In contrast, if you do a differential backup each week then this will backup all files which have changed since the last full backup and does not set the backup flag on those files. As such, every differential backup which runs will backup those files which have changed since the last full backup, as their backup flag is never set once the files have been changed.

So you may be asking which is the best method? Well, each has their own pros and cons. The big advantage of the incremental approach is disk space, as you are only backing up the changes since the last incremental. However, the disadvantage is that to restore the backup you need the full backup plus every incremental backup set (as this encapsulates the changes which occurred during each week). By contrast, the advantage of the differential is that to restore you only need the full backup plus the latest differential, as that one differential encapsulates all the changes since the last full backup. However, the big disadvantage is that the differential can be very large if you do not do a full backup at a regular interval (e.g. every month).

For your situation, I would recommend using an incremental backup approach as it should be no problem storing each incremental on your external hard drive. So, select “Incremental” as your backup type and click “Next”. You will be presented with various options on the next screen. There is an option to “Verify data after backup”. I suggest that you enable this option to ensure the backup data is valid. This can add an inordinate amount of time to a large backup, but since you are doing incremental backups it should complete in an acceptable timeframe. The next screen will ask how you want to handle the backup storage. You should select “Append this backup to the existing backups” as this will ensure the incremental backup is added onto the Backup.BKF file, created by the full backup job, on the external hard drive. Click “Next” and you will next be prompted to schedule the backup job. Click the “Set Schedule” button and configure the schedule. I suggest that you run the backup weekly. When you click OK a window will appear asking for a username and password to run the backup job. As the backup will be run in the background it requires an administrative user account to complete the backup. Type in your username and password (if applicable) and click OK. Click “Next” to display a summary of the backup job. Click “Finish” to close. The backup job will now run at the specified time.

As you can see, the inbuilt Windows XP Backup utility is a good tool if you are looking for a simple method to complete a backup of your computer. There are other products on the market which can also perform similar functions with additional features. One of my favourite products is Acronis TrueImage Home (www.acronis.com.au/homecomputing/products/trueimage/) which is a fantastic product and at AU$69.99 you really can’t go wrong. On my previous computers I used TrueImage for backup and found it to be much quicker to backup the data and it also does not require a floppy drive to recover the system from a backup. It is very easy to setup (perhaps easier for a novice user than the Windows Backup tool) and incorporates some other great features such as advanced scheduling of backup jobs (I have found that ease of backup is one of the most important aspects of backup software, because if it is not easy to run the backup I can guarantee you will forget to run the backup, negating the entire purpose of the exercise). Between Windows Backup and Acronis I would recommend that you download the trial version of Acronis TrueImage Home from their website and give it a go.

By the way, in case you are wondering, the reason I don’t use Acronis at the moment is because I now use a Mac Pro (with Windows running within a VMware Fusion virtual machine) and use the Time Machine feature built into Leopard to do my backups.

No matter what backup system you use, I strongly recommend that you do a test restoration at some stage to verify the backup works. There is nothing worse than thinking you are backing-up, only to find that the backup does not work on restoration!