What type of backup does Vista perform?

[Sam]

Hi,

I have Vista Busines on my laptop. I'm using the built-in back up tool to
back up my laptop onto my home NAS device. I'm using apporx. 50B of my hard
disk space on my laptop and each back up job seems to be around 1GB.

When I go through the wizard, Vista never asked me whether I wanted to do a
full or incremental back up. Can anyone tell me whether Vista is performing
full or incremental backups? Does each backup job stand alone or do they need
previous back ups in case I want to restore something?

 

[TaurArian]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx

--
====================================
TaurArian [MVP] 2005-2008 - Australia
====================================
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
http://taurarian.mvps.org/index.htm
Emails will not be acknowledged - please post to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
Computer Maintenance: Acronis / Diskeeper / Paragon / Raxco


| Hi,
|
| I have Vista Busines on my laptop. I'm using the built-in back up tool to
| back up my laptop onto my home NAS device. I'm using apporx. 50B of my hard
| disk space on my laptop and each back up job seems to be around 1GB.
|
| When I go through the wizard, Vista never asked me whether I wanted to do a
| full or incremental back up. Can anyone tell me whether Vista is performing
| full or incremental backups? Does each backup job stand alone or do they need
| previous back ups in case I want to restore something?
|
| --
| Thanks,
|
| Sam

 

[AJR]

Sam - Vista Business has two backup utilities 1. Complete PC Backup and 2.
File Backup. Complete PC Backup is a complete image of the computer in VHD
(Virtual Hard Dive) format - the File Backs up files in a Zip format.

From your post "...I'm using apporx. 50B of my hard disk space...." doe not
make sense? You do not state which backup utility your are using and "1GB"
file size does not "compute"!

After the initial full backup backups are incrremental and only the latest
backup is restored.

 

[Ronc]

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx

These two excerpts from the above link are helpful:

"If only a small part of a file changes (such as one slide in a
presentation), only that portion gets tracked and saved."

"A recovery wizard helps you select the files or folders you want to restore
and prompts you for the backup storage medium you used. Then it restores
your files."

I'm curious about the following:

1) Can you see (explore) the backed up files on the back-up medium, in their
most recent state (including all the incremental backups), or do they need
to be restored to see them in that final state?

2) If you can see them on the back-up medium, are they shown as a list of
files
each with a long title to include the folder structure or are they listed in
a folder tree as if using drag-and-drop for the tree?

3) Do deleted files disappear from the back-up after a subsequent back-up is
made without the deleted files present?

4) My "Downloads" folder includes files related to programs I've downloaded,
including those with extensions like exe, msi, zip, txt, and mhtm (a copy of
the web page containing information about the program). I want to back up
all the files in that directory but it sounds like the back up will omit the
exe and msi files because they are "program" files. I that true?

Are you given the option to restore everything to a separate directory or
must all the
files restore to only their original directories, and therefore be mixed in
with new files in that directory?

 

[TaurArian]

Ronc, I've never used the backup in Vista OS. I'm use to using a 3rd party backup program
so I've never experimented with the Vista backup.

--
====================================
TaurArian [MVP] 2005-2008 - Australia
====================================
How to ask a question: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/555375
http://taurarian.mvps.org/index.htm
Emails will not be acknowledged - please post to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
Computer Maintenance: Acronis / Diskeeper / Paragon / Raxco


|
| | > http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx
|
| These two excerpts from the above link are helpful:
|
| "If only a small part of a file changes (such as one slide in a
| presentation), only that portion gets tracked and saved."
|
| "A recovery wizard helps you select the files or folders you want to restore
| and prompts you for the backup storage medium you used. Then it restores
| your files."
|
| I'm curious about the following:
|
| 1) Can you see (explore) the backed up files on the back-up medium, in their
| most recent state (including all the incremental backups), or do they need
| to be restored to see them in that final state?
|
| 2) If you can see them on the back-up medium, are they shown as a list of
| files
| each with a long title to include the folder structure or are they listed in
| a folder tree as if using drag-and-drop for the tree?
|
| 3) Do deleted files disappear from the back-up after a subsequent back-up is
| made without the deleted files present?
|
| 4) My "Downloads" folder includes files related to programs I've downloaded,
| including those with extensions like exe, msi, zip, txt, and mhtm (a copy of
| the web page containing information about the program). I want to back up
| all the files in that directory but it sounds like the back up will omit the
| exe and msi files because they are "program" files. I that true?
|
| Are you given the option to restore everything to a separate directory or
| must all the
| files restore to only their original directories, and therefore be mixed in
| with new files in that directory?
|
|
|
|
|
|
|