vista backup: a complete pile of rubbish?

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

"cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)"wrote:

Personal documents, music files, image files, .pst files (and their Windows
Mail equivalents, if applicable) -- anything that you would want to save
over the long-term.

I'd prolly want to separate hi-risk material such as code files,
downloaded stuff and mail stores from the rest, even if I had the time
and space to routinely backup massive collections of pictures, music
and videos. This is especially true with mail storage models that
hide incoming attachments from av etc. as .pst does.

For me, it's mostly for clean installs if I tinker a bit too much and end up
buying the farm.

I seldom if ever need to resort to "just" re-installing Windows; my
approach is get Windows set up to last, and then maintain it.

Also, if I make some dumbass mistake and end up deleting a
file, I can quickly retrieve it from the backup.

I like that too. Some backups don't cater for this, if they create
huge slabs of stuff that can't be browsed and has to be destructively
restored in toto.

None of the things you list here has ever been an issue for me.

I guess it's a YMMV thing. I've never messed up an installation to
the point that it has to be "just" reinstalled, and while I've not
been hit with malware payloads myself, many of my clients have, over
the long term (i.e. over the last 12 years).

Destructive malware payloads arer rarer, now that jobs attract coders
to write money-generating bots etc. What's more likely to apply aere
those who say "it's impossible to clean a PC of malware, so 'just'
format, rebuild... and restore your 'data' backups"

I don't have malware payload issues either.

I haven't, but it can happen. Others certainly have; at one stage it
was as common as failed HDs or corruption due to bad RAM, whereas it's
a lot rarer now. It can happen at any time; one single fast-spreading
destructive malware could tilt everyone's table in a day

It's all connected. Backup up your data files is part of an overall
integrated approach to system maintenance and performance.
You cannot focus on any one thing while ignoring everything else,
especially something as basic and important as sytem security.

Sure, but depth also requires you to assume what you do will fail, and
plan what you do next. I think the current malware state of play
makes it obvious that "Windows is so secure it never gets infected, so
why plan how to manage infected states?" isn't a good bet.

And as you say, other measures can make a difference. For example, my
core data is kept free of incoming junk and media bloat, so backing it
up is as easy as using a midnight Task to zip it to another HD volume
where the last 5 such backups are kept, and from there it's an easy
dump to CDR. Also, this data is on an otherwise-unused FAT16 volume
that's small enough to scoop up for off-system recovery.

--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

Most of the characteristics you describe of Windows backup apply as well to
many enterprise class backup solutions costing thousands of dollars. They
are not limitations at all.

Dedicated backup apps can suck too

It is actually pretty good until Vista. It can backup a portion of your
files, or all of your files including your system state.

You'd expect that, though system state was sometimes a bit tricky.

As is the case with any backup program I have ever used except simple file
copy backup programs.

There are several generic archive formats that break the dependence on
a single "magic" backup/restore app - and a stand-alone backup app is
less likely to be bound to a particular version of Windows.

So what - even if true, and it may not be. We know that Windows XP backup
has been successfully copied and used in Vista.

Because often one wishes to restore backups from older systems, and
there may be practical and licensing reasons why one does not want to
have to isntall a particular OS just to access a backup.

IMO, data should never be chained to code version or hardware, and I
see this as a very significant limitation of Windows Backup, as well
as several MSware email apps, etc.

Windows backup has been included in every version of Windows I have used
since 95 and NT4. If you always have it included with Windows, why do you
care if a version from a different version of Windows works or not?

Because the backup may be from a PC that is dead, and none of your
current PCs may be using that OS version.

As is the case with most enterprise class backup programs even those costing
thousands of dollars. So what?

It depends on what sort of backup you are trying to do (and, related,
what risks you are trying to hedge against). For a data backup, I'd
agree this is no biggie. For a full system backup, it's a mess....
I'd want my "full system backup" to be restorable to bare metal.

I've done full system restores using Windows Backup. So what if it didn't
overwrite loaded DLLs? They were freshly re-installed and mostly didn't
need overwriting anyway.

If you want a full system restore to restore the exact state of the
system, then this isn't it.

Can't say for sure on this one. You may have been right on one point. I
always do my backups when using Windows Backup to a portable drive or a
network drive.

I'm commenting on MS Backup through the years, going back to Backup
from old MS-DOS (no compression) to the "lite" version of PC Tools
backup that appeared in MS-DOS 6, onwards through Win3.yuk, all the
Win9x, to XP. I didn't try it in Win2000 or earlier NT.

I've always found batch-driven archivers to be more useful; automate
backup via CLI, browse and selectively restore vis (say) WinZip.

That's not the fault of the backup program and reflects on it in no way at
all.

I'd say it does... If you are one of the majority who use XP Home,
then it becomes very true to say the Windows backup facility sucks
(because it simply doesn't exist)

Zip, as a backup tool, is a joke. Try restoring your system state from
Windows XP Pro to Windows XP Home from a Zip file backup. Ummmm.. Can't be
done. Get real.

I wouldn't attempt a full system backup with it, agreed. But for data
backups, it's pretty good as long as your data storage practices fit
into what its path, wildcard and date syntaxes can handle.

Full system backups are quite a specialized story, and not all that
useful in that they too often scope in the problems you wanted to
avoid. They also take too much time and storage to do on the fly, or
to keep a depth of backup dates.

Then there's the problem of backing up files that are in use - and
this is where a dedicated backup tool may have an advantage over
archivers, when it comes to data backups.

With a full system backup, the answer is less clear because a running
system is already in an indeterminate state; restoring a backup made
in the middle of an OS session loses in-RAM info and contexts, and is
similar to resuming after a bad exit made at the time of backup.

I'd prefer to do my full system backups outside the OS, but that isn't
as easy to do unattended, and often there's limited support for your
storage devices when outside the OS.

Backup's a big story, and I realize one can't do it full justice in a
single post

--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!

 

[Dale]

I really expected you to bring up Ghost or other disc imaging software -
because those are good (but not great) alternatives to Windows Backup. They
backup such that you can do a bare metal restore. The problem is, they're
quite tricky to use. At least the last version of Ghost I used (something
like version 5, I think - the first XP compatible version) is tricky. It
takes a lot of testing and practice to get good at restoring across changing
partition or disk sizes. The manuals are definitely written for advanced PC
users and not home users. And the last time I tried to restore a Ghost
image, it had been a year since I had restored, and I had to figure things
out all over again.

And many disk imaging applications are OS dependent; you need their reader
to extract a single file restore. Try to install TrueImage on a server OS.
They charge roughly 20 times as much for a server version even though the
file system is the same, NTFS. The program analyzes the disk and won't
create the image if the OS on the disk is Windows 2003. That amounts to a
server tax or more like highway robbery.

So, for complete image backup, Windows Backup is about the only reasonable
tool for many users.

Dale

 

[Ken Gardner]

I'd prolly want to separate hi-risk material such as code files,
downloaded stuff and mail stores from the rest, even if I had the time
and space to routinely backup massive collections of pictures, music
and videos. This is especially true with mail storage models that
hide incoming attachments from av etc. as .pst does.

That too. As I said, essentially anything you want to save long-term.

I seldom if ever need to resort to "just" re-installing Windows; my
approach is get Windows set up to last, and then maintain it.

I used to do that much more often in the past than I do now. That's when I
knew much less about WIndows than I do now. Now I follow your approach.

I like that too. Some backups don't cater for this, if they create
huge slabs of stuff that can't be browsed and has to be destructively
restored in toto.

Fair enough. To be sure, I haven't yet tried restoring a specific file from
the Vista program. So, I can't tell you right now if it has that
capability. Nor can I test right now because I have to leave here in a few
minutes. But I do know that under the XP program, you could back up and
restore specific files or folders. Of course, many third party programs
offer this same capability.

I guess it's a YMMV thing. I've never messed up an installation to
the point that it has to be "just" reinstalled, and while I've not
been hit with malware payloads myself, many of my clients have, over
the long term (i.e. over the last 12 years).

Sure. I agree. I don't have the same problem set as people who allow this
crud to infest their machine.

[...]

Sure, but depth also requires you to assume what you do will fail, and
plan what you do next. I think the current malware state of play
makes it obvious that "Windows is so secure it never gets infected, so
why plan how to manage infected states?" isn't a good bet.

Speaking for myself, if this ever happened to me despite all of my best
precautions, I will simply wipe the hard drive and start over. My
philosophy is that when malware penetrates your computer, it is no longer
yours anyway. I would rather spend a few hours retaking ownership on a
brand new installation than to worry about whether I really wiped off all
vestiges of the malware. Then I would learn what went wrong and do whatever
I could to prevent it from happening again.

Meanwhile, the backup is still there and ready for me to restore whenever I
need it. And at least with Vista, I know that if I made any mistakes at all
in restoring my personal data, it was overinclusion rather than
underinclusion. I can live wiht that -- especially when I am starting over
from a clean installation.

[...]

Ken

 

[Dale]

You know, I keep thinking about this whole Windows Backup question as I read
this thread. And while I still believe that the previous versions were good
programs and the new Vista version sucks, I think Microsoft is probably
justified in taking it out or reducing its functionality. Apparently, not
many people ever knew of or used the old versions. If no one is going to
use it, it sure isn't worth all the effort it used to get but if Microsoft
doesn't include some backup functionality, people will complain about lost
data.

The new version is probably a compromise; limited functionality - and
therefore limited cost to produce, considering very few people ever took the
time to learn or use the older versions - but at least you do have the
opportunity to backup your data.

Dale

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

"cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)" wrote:

That too. As I said, essentially anything you want to save long-term.

No, you're missing my point, slightly.

While I agree I might want to backup everything I'd want to see again,
I do NOT consider incoming material and infectable code as "data".

IOW, I'd want to back up data, and I might want to back up what I
don't consider to be data, but want to keep anyway. I'd want to do
these backups separately (or at least make it very easy to restore
these selectively) to cater for situations where the risk of certain
non-data is simply too high to restore these.

I used to do that much more often in the past than I do now. That's when I
knew much less about WIndows than I do now. Now I follow your approach.

I've been working with WAIK lately, and I can see why pro-IT loves
simply wiping and starting over - the WAIK tools make this incredibly
easy, once you've made the initial investment in skills-building (took
me a bit under a week to get up to speed).

However, the question arises as to how you keep your restorable
installation image current. In the world of pro-IT, you have a far
lower rate of turnover of new software installations and system
settings changes. Typically there's a short list of approved apps,
users are not allowed to add anything else, and it doesn't matter if
users don't like it when you wipe their PCs.

So you can make a definitive installation image that's portable across
hardware, even if you haven't simplified things by committing to a
single hardware spec for the whole organization. This image needs
updating maybe once a year when the company buys a new MS Office
version, changes the av vendor, whatever.


In consumerland, it's different. The tech works for the consumer, not
some user-indifferent corporate boss, and the user wants to see every
little program, setting and icon restored perfectly, just as they had
it yesterday. Imaging can't keep up with that requirement; without a
limited whitelist of approved apps, you'd have to scoop up the entire
installation state, and you'd have to update that image every few
weeks, in some cases.

That makes it impossible to be certain your image is malware-free. In
fact, it's almost certain your image will be just as malware'd as what
you are trying to clean up. Malware has typically been active for an
indeterminate time before discovery, so time is not an effective
baseline to scope wanted changes in, unwanted malware out.

So just as cleaning only catches malware that can be detecetd and
cleaned, a dumb fallback to last week's image will catch only malware
that weren't slick enough to hide for more than a week.

IOW, the two approaches are not as different as it may appear, and
neither is a one-size-fits-all magic bullet.

Fair enough. To be sure, I haven't yet tried restoring a specific file from
the Vista program. So, I can't tell you right now if it has that capability.

The "holy grail" is a partition imager that can:
- be automated to catch the system from within the running OS
- allow backup images to be browsed for loose files
- be legally available free of charge

So far, it's "pick two", if not "pick one and a half"

Sure. I agree. I don't have the same problem set as people who allow this
crud to infest their machine.

There's a difference between never being infested, and not having been
infested yet, just as there is between being immortal and being alive.

In fact, it goes beyond this. Even if you're never infected, you may
still need to consider and exclude the possibility whenever something
odd happens that has to be troubleshot.

Things usually work, and things that break this are rare. When things
are not working, things that break them are a lot less rare. Uncommon
things may be common in uncommon situations, IOW.


Final thought: Bear in mind that what works now while Vista is young
and has a shallow patch history, may work progressively less well
towards the point of uselessness down the line.

For example, if yyour generic approach to suspected malware is...
- back up "data"
- wipe PC
- re-install OS from recovery disk or OS CD
- connect to Internet
- download, install and update av
....and you did that right now with XP SP1 or "Gold" as your baseline,
your system would be malware'd within 30 minutes, long before it could
be patched up and defended.

There's no dumbo magic bullet, and we have to look ahead, far beyond
what may work this month.

--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

The new version is probably a compromise; limited functionality - and
therefore limited cost to produce

The cost is often not in the production, but in the support.

This is why tools that need skills and judgement to use, and can do
irreversible damage when used badly, are often excluded from
entry-level products. Think EFS and XP, for example.


For another example, consider XP's much-criticized firewall.

As it is, this firewall blocks incoming material but makes little
attempt to monitor outgoing traffic. User expectations are based on
this awareness; if someone says "the XP firewall didn't catch
jx6tfvvx.exe calling home", the answers will be "yeah XP firewall
sucks, it doesn't monitor egress".


What would happen if MS "did better" by adding egress awareness to the
firewall? Their support calls would be swamped with "SVCHost wants to
connect to the Internet, what do I do?" calls, and support would have
to be scripted if not skilled to answer questions on a massive and
ever-changing list of possible traffic sources.

Not only that, consumer expectations would be higher; instead of
"well, we know the firewall doesn't monitor egress" it would be "thge
firewall is supposed to monitor egress, but it missed jx6tfvvx.exe
calling home". MS may be doing more, but the perception quickly
becomes that MS is less effective than they were.

Finally, folks would say "I'm sick of all these firewall prompts, how
do I turn off the firewall?" just as they complain about Vista's UAC
today. MS heard us when we complained that Windows was insecure (or
as some may put it more accurately, the XP security model isn't
solving consumerland's most pressing problems), and added UAC to
Vista... IMO it's a good step, but folks just don't "get" it.

--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!

 

[cquirke (MVP Windows shell/user)]

I really expected you to bring up Ghost or other disc imaging software -
because those are good (but not great) alternatives to Windows Backup.

Actually, their mix of pros and cons usually make them fairly
specialized tools, rather than general-purpose backups.

They backup such that you can do a bare metal restore.

That's the plus...

The problem is, they're quite tricky to use.

....and that's the minus. In particular, they may not be suitable for
unattended backup, if they require one to leave Windows.

If they require one to boot off CD instead of HD, then the user has to
either know how to change CMOS boot order, or the PC has to be left to
boot CD etc. before HD.

If you do the latter, you wonder whether the increase in risk from
malware'd CDs etc. balances the benefits of full system backup -
assuming the user actually uses that facility.

So, for complete image backup, Windows Backup is about the only reasonable
tool for many users.

I routinely automate data backups using Tasks, batch files, CLI
archivers and multiple disk volumes.

I episodically back up larger data stores such as Pictures, Music etc.
using either a simple Windows Explorer copy to another HD, or Nero
authoring to optical disks.

I rarely back up the installation, using BING to catpture the C:
partition from outside Windows.

IOW, I don't routinely do "full system backups". I do these before
doing something that may precipitate a crisis, such as installing
something large, deep and nasty, or using BING to resize partitions or
move to a new HD, or before I leave the house for a month away.

By keeping C: small, I also keep the need for raw inpenitrable
partition images small, too. You could almost thing of this as
mimicing pro-IT's "crucial server, disposable desktop" model; the C:
partition is data-free and is imaged, wheras the larger data-rich
volumes do not have to be imaged to work (as the lame-duck OS does)
and are simply copied off as browsable files.

If this was one big doomed C:, it would be far harder.

--------------- ---- --- -- - - - -

Saws are too hard to use.
Be easier to use!

 

[thetruthhurts]

It is junk and failed the first time I tried it. Get Acronis.

 

[markm75]

You know, I keep thinking about this whole WindowsBackupquestion as I read
this thread. And while I still believe that the previous versions were good
programs and the newVistaversion sucks, I think Microsoft is probably
justified in taking it out or reducing its functionality. Apparently, not
many people ever knew of or used the old versions. If no one is going to
use it, it sure isn't worth all the effort it used to get but if Microsoft
doesn't include somebackupfunctionality, people will complain about lost
data.

The new version is probably a compromise; limited functionality - and
therefore limited cost to produce, considering very few people ever took the
time to learn or use the older versions - but at least you do have the
opportunity tobackupyour data.

Dale

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- Show quoted text -

Just adding my vote for the Vista backup tool being junk as well.
Sure it may appeal to the common user, but most power users will find
it useless. There are many times when you may want to backup folders
than have more than those typical categories it provides as
selections. Why MS didnt just offer a more user friendly version IN
ADDITION to this newer style is beyond me. I have been using Acronis
10 (on my x64 Vista) for awhile.. it has had some issues backing up
files on my data drive at at times, perhaps a VSS issue. This is
another reason why simply copying files to your backup media doesnt
always work, locked files.. so VSS is needed.

Finally, the Complete Backup option they have seems nuts.. at least on
my test machine.. when I do the complete backup option, it selects
both my C and D drive.. this is over 350GB of data.. I would have
thought they would have made it possible to just select the OS
partition and specify an output file.

I will continue to use Acronis for now. I'm hoping Retrospect or
Symantec Save and Restore will be x64 capable in the near future.

 

[bp]

I might buy this if the backup option wasn't used to sell me the next
higher version of Vista. Since it was a selling point it should be a
complete full featured product not a worthless POS. There is no reason
it couldn't be on par with Acronis.