Digital Bits Technology Column QnA

…and the title says it all.

This is why I don’t like the “new and improved” backup tool in Microsoft Vista. The old backup from Windows XP and earlier (also known as NTBACKUP.EXE), was ugly, but functional. You just told the program what folders or drives you wanted to backup – or just selected “Everything on this computer” – and you were done. Guaranteed – everything would be backed up.

The Vista backup gives you two options for backing up. You can choose to back up the entire computer, or just selected files. If you choose to back up the whole computer, you can only restore that information by 1) completely overwriting everything on your PC, or 2) doing some very techie tricks to extract individual files from the backup image: it’s possible, but not easy, not for the average user.

The “selective backup” – Vista’s backup method for backing up selected files and folders – adds extra hassle. You can only save this information to an external drive or to a network (and not your local drive). So if you don’t have a second computer or a big enough USB drive, you’re out of luck. But the worst part: the files that you think are getting backed up may not be getting backed up.

Case in point: PREFS.JS is a file used by Mozilla applications like Thunderbird and Firefox. This file stores all critical account and connectivity information. It’s needed to – in my case – make Thunderbird work. And PREFS.JS does not get backed up by the Windows Vista file and folders backup tool. No file with a JS extension will get backed up, presumably because Vista thinks the file is not user-created, and for some reason not important.

Forget about my own example. What if I’m a multimedia developer, and design and write JavaScript files for a living? Will all my JS files not be backed up?

According to the help file for the backup tool:

The Back Up Files wizard backs up the most common file types. The following files are not included:

• Files that have been encrypted using Encrypting File System (EFS)

  Note

  • If you are running Windows Vista Service Pack 1, EFS encrypted files are included in backups. EFS is not included in Windows Vista Starter, Windows Vista Home Basic, and Windows Vista Home Premium. For more information about installing Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1), see Learn how to install Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1).

• System files (the files that Windows needs to run)

• Program files

• Files stored on hard disks that are formatted using the FAT file system

• Web-based e-mail that is not stored on your hard disk

• Files that are in the Recycle Bin

• Temporary files

• User profile settings

Clear enough for you? Me neither.

All my files are important. I want everything backed up, so that when I recover my data, my system is exactly the same as when I backed it up. Microsoft isn’t even nice enough to tell us in detail what files aren’t getting backed up. What constitutes a “program file”? How about telling us what file types (and their extensions) aren’t getting backed up, so we know if our data is protected?

It’s my opinion that the Microsoft Vista Backup tool is poorly designed and unreliable, and seems to have been created by people who don’t use it themselves.

As for my own backups, being burned once is once too much. I’m switching to other methods.

If any of my assumptions above are wrong, let me know. If you have a list of extensions that don’t get backed up, let me know. My job is as a computer and systems consultant, and I get asked about backup methods fairly regularly. If I’m wrong, I’ll happily admit that, but right now I’m recommending against Microsoft Vista’s Backup and Restore tool.

Other articles related to this topic:

• Backup to flash drive or external USB hard drive
• Transferring files from a PC without a monitor
• Problems booting to a system restoration CD
• Retrospect Backup fails with a server crash when using external USB hard drive
• What is the SFC? How does the system file checker work?