Er... MS Backup has always sucked:
- can obly be read by their own backup app
- backup app is version-bound, i.e. to a particular Windows version
- backup app needs Windows to run
- so you have to "just" re-install Windows to run it
- can't overwrite Windows from Windows
- so can't restore a "full system backup"
- no support for contemporary storage (CDR etc.)
- poor or absent ability to span multiple volumes
- historically, poor or even absent compression
- not included in "home" editions of the OS
The only mystery is why anyone took it seriously in the first place.
Generically, the ways of selecting material to back up include:
- everything; the "full system backup"
- everything since last backup; i.e. incrimental backups
- everything in a certain location, with or without subdirs
- everything of a particular file type, wherever it may be
- a whitelist of particular specified files or wildcards
- a blacklist of particular specified files or wildcards to exclude
These strategies can be combined, e.g. "all files within subtree
Documents that were changed or created since date X, but exclusing any
infectable or code file types".
The challenges are:
- to present this complex logic via an intuitive UI
- to ensure all files can bebacked up
- to store material in a generically usable way
- to secure material against unauthorised access
- to manage media limitations and errors
- to navigate stored data for piecemeal restore
- to restore material without pre-existing material
Further, you have to be mindful of the contingencies one is backing up
to protect against, and tailor backups to these...
- complete system meltdown, restore to same hardware
- new system, restore to different hardware
- restore only data, avoiding any malware
- restore everything except data, e.g. re-deployment of PC
- restore arbitrary individual files, for accidental deletion etc.
The traditional backup app doesn't provide off-the-peg matches for the
above scenarios, i.e. no easy templates of what to scope in (e.g.
data) and out (e.g. version- or hardware-bound code) of the backup.
You have to apply that awareness to a lower level of abstraction that
simply selects dirs, files, etc. as above, possibly with some
date-based or change-tracked management for incrimental backups.
Most folks want a backup of "everything", and there are ways to do
that, though the challenge is a happy point between having to leave
the OS to capture a proper at-rest state of the installation that can
be restored without an OS footprint, and the convenience of doing the
backup within the OS while the OS is in a transient state.
The problems arise on restore; typically, that restoring the backup
kills live data or reverts this to an earlier time, thus losing work
for which no backup exists.
Also, the backup may restore the problem state, i.e. data that was
corrupted before the backup was made, malware that had stayed inactive
to permeate backups before payload date, etc.
NTFS provides an improved form of file access that is less bound to
location - in fact, location is now something of an arbitrary
parameter applied to files in the same way as type or date metadata.
Further, NTFS can be nearly as efficient when selecting files via
non-unique identifying attributes, such as type, date, or an unbounded
set of arbitrary tags.
If this begins to look like a database, with the real file data as a
large binary field attached to the record, well... it is. Vista stops
short of formalizing SQL into the file system, as WinFS was designed
to do, but it does go far to leverage the evolving NTFS design in an
attempt to out-Google Google, if you know what I mean.
Selection by type, rather than by location, fits the above... but
effective backup's a more complex beast than the simplistic "just make
backups" advice would suggest, for reasons outlined above.
I fail to see a reason why a person should not be able to schedule a
complete backup of a folder or drive(s) that includes things like software
programs (EXEs/DLLs etc.)...
Code files are a bad idea to back up with data, because:
- they can act as malware infection vectors
- they will usually be version- or hardware-bound
- they may be useless without related registry settings etc.
My approach is to automate backup of small user-generated data, in a
way that excludes incoming material (malware risk), code, and bloated
non-crucial material such as music, videos and pictures.
I do this by:
- keeping data location free of any of the above unwanted material
- automating a Zip archiver to archive this elsewhere on HD
- retaining the last 5 of such backups
- pulling similar backups from other PCs on the LAN
- interactively dumping these backups to USB or optical disk
The nice thing about .ZIP as a backup format is that anything can read
it, making it accessible and restorable across a massive range of OSs
and hardware platforms. Of course from a security perspective, this
is what is also wrong with this approach ;-)
Now in order to do that I have to upgrade to Vista Ultimate from Home
Premier? I had drive/folder backup functionality under XP, I no longer have
that functionality under Vista...My "UPGRADE" to vista left me unable to do
what I could very easily do under XP/MCE 2005...
You aren't obliged to use MSware; look for a free archiver or backup
utility that meets your needs, or write a batch file to automate such
tools, or do it interactively using Windows Explorer.
You can use the Search if you want to mimic Vista Backup's select by
type, but that will also flatten the location tree and give rise to
same-name collisions, so maybe Vista Backup has a role after all.
The mystery to me is why MS ASSumes home users don't need backups.
I find that really insulting, as in "oh you home people aren't
business, you can't possibly create anything of value that's worth
backing up". I'd have thought home users who have 1 PC used for a
wide range of often-risky activities my multiple users, and who have
no magic pro-admin'd server holding data, would REALLY need backup.
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Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!
