Backup query for Windows 7 Home premium.

whs said:

OK, I believe that it can work. But I was not that lucky nor were a few others I have seen report about it.

But those are nerdy people like us with multi-boot systems and different partitions and we want to restore to a different partition when we lay it back down, etc. That''s not the typical home user experience.

whs said:

And system restore from a shadow can be a real pain. In Vista, I once had about 20 shadows. The system presented 4 or 5 to chose from and only one worked. A 20:1 score is not all that good.

For me, I only really want 2 images. 1 right after basic install, hardware good to go and activated. And then 1 that is current with my apps. I'll either jump back to start and reload apps or go back to where I was. I don't have strong feelings of hitting any point in the middle.

whs said:

That is a good strategy when you have a lot of time on your hand. But last time I reinstalled from a "basic" image, it took me 3 days to have everything back in order.

Wow, I'm glad I don't have that many applications to worry about. I only use about 10 apps and they are all pretty small and quickly installed. Plus, all of my data is stored on my file server...so my data is always intact. I just reimaged my work desktop back to plain vanillla the other day and I think I was totally back in business in about 45 minutes with all of my apps installed :)

whs said:

But what do you do when you get a lightning strike in your backyard. I have the floor ful of powerstrips inclusing an APC surge protector with backup battery and a central surge protector where the power comes into the house. But when you get hit that close, nothing helps - only off-line storage. And yes, I have over 22.000 files and 2700 folders in my program folder - and I have deleted a lot of stuff that came with the system (e.g. all games).

Well, I don't get lightning strikes in my backyard. My computers (wife's laptop, my 2 desktops and my server) are all connected to APC UPS's...and they all shut down automatically before the battery dies.

My backup plan consists of 2 physical hard drives in my server which are synchronized a couple of times each day. In addition, I attach 2 different external USB hard drives about once per week and run a robocopy job which keeps my server and my externals the same. Then I keep 1 of those external drives offsite just in case of robbery or fire or other disaster. And my critical data like pictures and documents are burned occasionally to a DVD and kept off site.

The C:\Program Files directory on my work machine has 3,469 files and 414 folders and the C:\Program Files (x86) directory has 14,872 files and 828 folders

whs said:

Nice setup. Stowing the data off-site is not a bad idea. I have never done that but my bank's safe deposit box is just across the street. Maybe I should deposit an occasional copy there.

Absolutely. Having 2 copies of the data is a good idea, but having those 2 copies in 2 different locations is the best plan. You can never be sure that your house won't get broken into or some other type of fire or other catastrophe. With so much of our lives being in digital formats...it's very important to keep backups of this data.