Solved question about built in backup/restore in Windows

[HAVOC]

Lets say I make a text file on Friday, my system gets backed up on Sunday, I delete the file on Tuesday, does the file on the backup media get deleted when the new backup is made next Sunday?

 

[whs]

Answer is yes. If you want to keep the older version you should use a backup approach that you can control - e.g. a simple copy/paste.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Lets say I make a text file on Friday, my system gets backed up on Sunday, I delete the file on Tuesday, does the file on the backup media get deleted when the new backup is made next Sunday?

I'm not sure about the nuances of Windows built-in backup, but..................

Any third party traditional "file by file" backup tool will give you direct control over that issue.

Some folks like me want to delete the file from the backup if the original is deleted. That's often called "mirroring"--intended to provide an exact replica of the originals.

Other folks don't. So, they might end up with something like this:

Original: dog.txt

Backup: dog (1).txt, dog (2).txt, dog (3).txt, etc. Dog files are never deleted. Each new backup makes a new dog file with no deletions.

It's a setting in the configuration, on or off.

Likewise, you have to be careful when restoring "system" images. If you make an image on Monday and restore it due to a drive failure on Friday, any files created or modified on C between Monday and Friday will be lost.

If you keep your data on C and did your income taxes on Wednesday, they'd be lost when you restore the Monday image. It's another good reason to keep data separate.

 

[HAVOC]

Answer is yes. If you want to keep the older version you should use a backup approach that you can control - e.g. a simple copy/paste.

Good to hear. I didn't want to keep an older version of a particular file. I read that Backup and Restore just backs up files that have changed from the last scheduled backup. I wasn't sure what happened to the files that I deleted and no longer need. I guess that if they weren't deleted, you would run out of hard drive space.

 

[maxseven]

Good to hear. I didn't want to keep an older version of a particular file.

Just so long as you understand that sometimes there can be a problem with "a particular file" that you don't notice until the "good" version of it is overwritten by the bad.

Some of us, having been bitten by this dog in the past, keep multiple copies of things. In my case Daily, Monthly, and Yearly. I actually did have occasion to use last year's backup of something recently.