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General discussion

backup and restore, restore fails to find location

Jul 4, 2010 2:37PM PDT

I am new to win 7 but not xp. New install of win 7 32 bit on new computer.
I did a backup to my F drive "usb HD" which generated 114 gb as 17 files in 4 folders as "windows image backup" after long over a hour of data transfer.
I then tried to restore just to verify. The restore section informs me files are not being backed up and it doesn't find my F drive. F drive is present and correct in windows explorer.
Help PLEASE.
SG

Discussion is locked

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Windows' backup.
Jul 4, 2010 8:46PM PDT

The message I continuously see in these forums is that Windows' own backup utility fails too often. While the user sees what appears to be successful backups, there seems to be no successful way to 'restore from these'.

Take this scenario. You backup the whole OS using Windows' own backup utility to some internal or external drive. The OS then fails and you wish to restore the whole OS from that other drive onto the original disk. How do you do that? You need to be in Windows to access those backup files and initiate the restore, but Windows has failed, so you cannot do that.

Microsoft hasn't yet solved this, as far as I know.

Much better to do this;

1] Back up your important, cannot afford to lose, personal files to somewhere, eg another hard disk, CD or DVD. Then, do that again, so you have two copies. These files are, documents, photos, music, videos, etc, and settings, like email, passwords, router setup, licenses, and so on.

2] Any software CDs you purchase, keep them safe. Any software you download, copy the setup.exe files somewhere so you can use them again if need be.

3] Keep that Vista CD and Drivers CD safe somewhere. Make sure you have the Product key safely noted. If you can, make complete disk copies of them.

4] Make a plan. Find out how to reinstall Vista onto this computer if you ever need to so that the process, while lengthy and cumbersome, becomes as trouble free as possible.

I hope that helps.

Mark

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Need much more
Jul 5, 2010 2:11AM PDT

Thank you for your input but it was of no help. I realize that only people who have problems post them and you do not hear about the successes. I cannot believe even MS is so dumb as to have a highly touted feature not able to ever function.

For others:: I still need help.
Thank you
SG

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It is (slightly) better than the days of XP.
Jul 5, 2010 2:43AM PDT

It you want bad, look at the NTBACKUP that came with XP!

Historic Prehistoric!

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Here's another example.
Jul 5, 2010 6:14AM PDT

It's for Vista and not Windows 7, but the utility is the same. No improvements were made, as far as I know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1wWrsVcNSY&feature=related

Note at around 2 minutes 30 where the commentator says, if the OS is not accessible, then you need your installation DVD, (Windows 7 installation DVD), to Repair the OS before W7 can access and restore from the full backup file.

Now it looks like that will work, but if you are attempting to create a new install of W7 just from that external source, that process will fail.

Mark

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Yup.
Jul 5, 2010 2:08AM PDT

Lesson? Don't use the image backup option. Backup your files.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BvpOJKSgMA notes at about one minute into the video that problem. In other words, don't backup the entire machine!

Or better yet, use anything else.
Bob