As a matter of course, with any computers that I own every 12 months I always do a complete hard drive reformat and reinstall the operating system. However, on my current computer (an Acer Aspire One D260 net book running Windows XP) I am unsure how to complete this process as it does not have a DVD drive. When the computer was new I did backup everything to a 1 TB external hard drive but I do not know how to restore that backup onto the computer. Can you assist?

It is good that you have recognised the need to periodically complete a format and reinstallation of Windows on the computer. While doing this every 12 months may be a bit frequent, I generally recommend that this is done every two to three years. For readers who are unsure about the rationale behind this recommendation, over time redundant data accumulates in the system which can impede performance. The inevitable performance problems can also be due to having certain software installed that has bugs such as memory leaks, slowing down the system even further. Essentially, doing such a reinstallation is a good opportunity to clean house and get rid of things which you don’t need. Whenever I install a new operating system on my computer (such as the recent upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion, which is similar to upgrading Windows Vista to Windows 7 for example) I always perform a clean reinstallation of the operating system and never do an upgrade. This means that my new system is completely fresh and does not have any of the data and rubbish (for lack of a better term) which has accumulated on my system previously. Additionally, I also create a list of all the software installed on my computer to ensure that I have downloaded the latest version and updates for all these applications, so that they can easily be reinstalled. During this process I often find that I have a lot of software installed which I rarely (if ever) use and elect to not reinstall that software on the computer. This means that I also have a lot less installed which occupies less system resources (such as hard drive space and potentially processing power and memory, particularly if those applications have components which run in the background).

So, let’s get back to your particular question. From the sound of things when the computer was new I am assuming that you copied all of your important data (or perhaps even the contents of the entire hard drive) to the external USB drive. Unfortunately this means that you have just backed-up the data and cannot boot off that drive and then have all that data copied back onto your computer so it is restored back into that exact original state as at the moment of the backup (although we will discuss ways that we can accomplish this goal later). In order to wipe the computer and start fresh you will first need to reinstall Windows and then selectively copy the data from your external drive onto the computer. You mention that your computer does not have a DVD drive, as to be expected since the machine is a net book. Traditionally when you need to restore a brand-name computer with a fresh copy of the operating system you use recovery CDs/DVDs which came with the computer. These recovery discs contain the operating system, together with device drivers, to restore the computer to its factory default state. Obviously this procedure will not work in your situation since the computer does not have a DVD drive and therefore would not have come bundled with any recovery CDs. More recently, PC manufacturers have turned to using a recovery partition on the hard drive to store the recovery data. This is a hidden section on the hard drive which contains all the data needed to recover the system, eliminating the need for using recovery CDs. There are several schools of thought on using a recovery partition instead of CDs, mainly that if the hard drive in the computer fails (or you replace the original hard drive with a new drive) then the recovery partition will be lost. While these situations are not insurmountable (as you can generally request recovery CDs from the manufacturer) it can be inconvenient. That said, arguments to the contrary are that this is more convenient (as you don’t risk losing the recovery discs) and is also much faster since the data is being read off the local hard drive rather than the (much) slower CD/DVD drive.

In any case, looking at the documentation for your computer it seems to have a recovery partition which occupies 15 GB on the drive, so we will use this to reinstall Windows. Before doing so, make sure that you have a recent backup of all data that you wish to keep. In your question you have only mentioned having a backup from when you originally purchased the computer, so you must make sure that you have a most recent backup, otherwise all the data which you have saved between then and now will be lost.

Once you have a good backup of the data we can proceed with the reinstallation process. We first need to ensure that the recovery feature is enabled in the BIOS of the computer. The BIOS is essentially the configuration for the motherboard which specifies how the computer initially boots before handing control over to the operating system (in this case, Windows XP). When the computer initially starts you should see a message appear on screen saying something like “Press to enter setup”. When this message appears, press the nominated key (most likely the F2 key) so that the BIOS setup opens. In the main section of the BIOS setup ensure that the “D2D Recovery” setting is enabled (this is the setting enabling disk-to-disk recovery) then exit the BIOS setup and save the settings. The computer will proceed to restart.

We now need to enter the recovery process. When the computer is restarting and the Acer logo appears on screen, press the ALT + F10 key combination. The recovery utility will open and then present you with the various options as to how you wish to recover the system. Follow the prompts to proceed with the reinstallation of Windows.

Once the reinstallation process has completed you should find that a fresh copy of Windows is installed on the computer, hopefully also with all the required device drivers and other ancillary software that is needed for your particular model of computer. You can now selectively start copying the backup data from your external USB hard drive across to your computer. Note that I have used the term “selectively copy” rather than just doing a complete copy. The reason for this careful choice of words is because if you previously simply copied the entire hard drive contents across to the external USB drive (for backup purposes) then you won’t be able to copy that back wholesale, given that you would be overwriting the new data (as a result of the reinstallation of Windows) with quite a bit of the old data (located on the backup hard drive). Therefore, you should selectively copy across only the data which you need, such as documents, email, etc, to their correct locations.

While we are on the topic of backups it would be worthwhile discussing a few other options to create more automated backups. This is useful for two situations. First, if you just want an automated solution to backup your files and data on the computer. Completely automated backups are much better than manual backups, purely because you don’t need to remember to backup the data yourself. Even though we all have the best intentions it is inevitable that at some point you will forget (or be too busy to do) the backup, whereas completing automated backups will be more reliable and guarantee that they will always run, so long as the backup media (such as a USB drive) is connected to the computer. You can then recover files from backups in the situation where you accidentally delete data, or you reinstall the operating system and need to recover the data (although I would also recommend that you take a manual backup in this situation, so that you are not purely reliant on the integrity of your backup just in case!).

The second situation, possibly more useful, is being able to restore the entire system. This is generally called a full-image backup and will take a complete snapshot of all the data on your computer. Then, should a disaster strike (such as a hard drive failure), instead of having to go through the lengthy process of manually reinstalling the operating system, together with all the applications and data, you can restore the full-image backup of your computer which will restore the computer back to its state as at the most recent backup. Basically, making it seem like nothing ever went wrong. This is obviously a very desirable outcome, since it will allow you to get back to normal operations as soon as possible. Mac OS X has this feature built-in since the 10.5 (Leopard) release of the operating system, called Time Machine, essentially allowing you to restore individual files and folders from the past or alternatively restore an entire system from the Time Machine volume. Unfortunately Windows does not offer such a nice and user-friendly backup experience, but there are third-party products which perform this function.

A good product which I have used in the past is Acronis True Image Home (www.acronis.com.au/homecomputing/products/trueimage/). The latest version of this software, Acronis True Image Home 2012, offers these exact functions and is relatively affordable at $59.99 for one PC. While I have not used the latest version of this software, from previous experience it is quite a user-friendly product which met my requirements. There is a 30 day trial of the software available for free, so I would encourage you to download the software and give it a go to see whether it meets your needs.

On a similar topic, there is plenty of discussion regarding what is the best backup media to use. I always recommend using a USB drive. This is primarily due to convenience, as if you have a sufficient capacity drive connected to the computer (e.g. 1 TB), with automated backup software copying data across to the drive, then it is really set and forget. This is in contrast to using something like DVDs which you need to manually insert, as you are now introducing manual steps into the equation. Some have voiced concerns about the vulnerability of the drive integrity (e.g. to virus infections and the like) should it always be connected. While this is a valid concern, given that the backup software generally stores and encapsulates the backups in discrete individual files for each backup job, rather than simply copying the data directly to the drive, the chance of having the backups themselves infected is relatively small. In any case, if you are running antivirus software the chance of virus infections is relatively slim, so I see that the convenience advantages (of getting consistently reliable backups) far outweigh the disadvantages.