Steve Riley said:
The Backup and Restore Center in Windows Vista only allows you to select
the types of files you want or to perform a complete backup. It consults >
a database of thousands of types and extensions to match whatever
categories you select. We made this functionality decision because very
few
people actually backed up their computers. In our testing, we found that
this approach actually encouraged more backups more often among more
users.
This attitude amazes me no end. I know you are correct that most users,
corporate or home, do not backup but the point is that they should. Sure,
you can copy the things you cant afford to lose to something else and if
your "C" drive dies and cannot be retrieved, then you can buy another,
install it and start again. However, when you start again, you have to
install Windows, install drivers, set up your internet connection, set up
printers, scanners and whatever peripheral you have, set up any networking
you have and so on. Hours later, you have everything back to where you want
it with obvious loss of a lot of data for you. The alternative that you
COULD have been doing is a complete image backup. In the case of "C" drive
being unable to be unused again, you put another drive in and restore from
the image. The setup of Windows with everything as it was at that backup
takes less than an hour in most cases and when finished, it is instantly on
the network, all settings, favourites, email addresses and such saved.
See the difference here? I cannot understand why MS isnt pushing this with
users. Sure, they may wish to make a program for the purpose that people
have to buy but it is a NEEDED program. All your "cannot be lost" digital
camera memories are not safe on one hard drive only. They arent safe on that
hard drive and a burned CD either because self burned CDs dont have a long
shelf life at all. MS should really be making people aware of all this.
Given all that, we realize that advanced users still want the flexibility
to indicate specific locations to include in a backup. The plan is to add
that
functionality in Service Pack 1.
In other words, throw a sandbag into a flooding river and hope for the best.
Sorry, not enough. Not nearly enough. Windows setup should ASK which backup
program you wish to use and if no 3rd party one then it should default to a
Windows one which then needs something to which to back up. If the user
doesnt have any device to which that can be done then the user should be
reminded, without a chance to turn it off, every 30 days.
Not sure why the complete backup failed for you...I haven't tried it
myself (I'm one of those bad people who never backs anything up!).
Even in XPSP2 the Windows backup wasn't reliable. You could have a backup
that went fine, looked fine and when needed, didn't work.
