Backup tools work with a restore tool to help save your data in the event of a computer failure, data loss, or other incident. Backup tools can backup files and folders, as well as disk images. Restore tools can restore files and folders, as well as disk images. This combination of backup and restore helps protect your data and eliminates the need to restore data multiple times.
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| Backup Tools Work With A Restore Tool |
Backup tools are essential for keeping your data safe, but you can also use them to restore data if something goes wrong. There are different types of restore tools, so be sure to find the one that's right for your needs. Backup tools work with a restore tool to help you keep your data safe in the event of a system failure.
There is one Windows feature that we're gonna focus on today that you are probably going to hate yourself for not knowing about and using up until now. And this is actually not a feature I've really talked about before, so it's probably going to be new to most of you.
And it's called Backup using File History. Now, you might be thinking, well, I already know that Windows as an automatic backup feature. But wait, because this feature does way more than simply backing up files in case your hard drive dies or in a disaster.
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Backup Tools Work With A Restore Tool
It actually is an extremely useful feature that you can use every single day. Let me explain. This feature, which is built right into Windows Ten, makes it so you're not just backing up the files, but it also backs up multiple versions of each file.
For example, maybe you're working on a Microsoft Word document or an Excel spreadsheet and you make a mistake. You accidentally delete a bunch of the data without realizing it, and then you go and save the data and then close out of the program.
So the next time you run it and realize you messed it all up because you closed out of the program, you can't undo it and bring it all back. But with this feature enabled, you can actually go into file properties and you'll see that there are older versions of the file that are accessible.
So you can either restore the old version completely or open it and just access the lost part and bring it into the new, updated version that you've been working on since then. So obviously, I am going to show you how to set this up. And it's dead simple.
It's way easier than you're probably thinking. Before we continue, though, I want to thank the sponsors of this Article Privacy.com and One Password, who just teamed up to do something really cool I want to tell you about.
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So to enable this feature, all you have to do is go into the settings for Windows, then update and security back up, and then go to where it says backup using file history. You're going to have to Add a Drive an external Drive It doesn't have to be anything fancy. You could literally use a basic external USB drive like I did here. It's an old drive. It doesn't have to be fast.
back up back up
back up back up of course, faster is better if you have a lot of files, and theoretically you could even just use a basic thumb drive. But obviously I would recommend a full size drive that's designed for doing things like backup.
If you do want to get fancy though, you can also add network drives, such as if you have a Nas connected to your network, or even some routers allow you to hook up a USB external drive to the router and then access that drive from all computers on your network. So basically a network drive that way. So you can do all sorts of things just have some kind of drive you can back these files up onto.
So anyway, after you choose a drive to back up to, you can go in and see which folders are being backed up. And it looks like by default it's going to back up all your library folders so that's your documents, Article, pictures, music folders, and any other folders that are in your user directory.
Now, if you're an average typical user, these defaults are probably fine. I wouldn't think you're going to be storing any files outside of the user's folders. But do keep in mind if you have created directories outside of the user folder that you use to store things, just know that you might want to add those folders as additional folders to be backed up.
There's also an option to add excluded folders, which is pretty self explanatory. I don't know, maybe you have a folder within the user folder that has a bunch of huge files that you don't really care about.
You can just exclude those if you want. So just to keep it simple, for demonstration purposes, I'll add an example folder that I created, and we can look at that. Some other important options you can choose or how frequently to do the backup of each file, and also how long to keep backed up files.
And this is going to depend on several things. For example, how big the hard drive is. If you have a multi terabyte hard drive, you probably don't have to worry about it getting filled up. Also, if you're dealing mostly with just text documents and stuff, not a bunch of big Article, again, you could probably just store as many versions and frequently as you want. Also keep in mind it's only going to back up a new version of each file if it's changed.
Disk backup
Disk backup do if you're keeping all the files exactly the same, then it's not like every single hour it's going to be making a copy of those it's going to see okay, since the previous hour this file has changed, it will make a copy and update it that way. So if you don't update the files very frequently, it doesn't really matter.
So I would think for most people just keeping it on the hourly frequency for backup is probably fine. But also keep in mind you can always manually initiate a backup at any time, even more frequently if you want. So to demonstrate how all this works, I'll just create a basic text file as an example and I'll just make it empty.
And then rather than wait again, I can just initiate a backup now and then I'll make a few changes and back up each change. But otherwise keep in mind this would just be automatic over time. And then if I do realize that I need to access a backup copy, there are several options for how to do so. In any case, you're going to have to right click on the file and then go to Properties and then look at the tab that says Previous versions. So here are a few options.
You can see all the different previous versions. So you click on one and if I click Open, it will simply open up that file in whatever program is default, but this won't necessarily overwrite or restore that file. I can also click the dropdown arrow next to Open and hit Open in File History, which this is a really cool feature.
Basically it opens up this window and you can click the arrows at the bottom on the left or right to sort through the different versions of the file and it'll actually show you what's in each version, assuming it's like a text file here. And then if you find the one you want to restore, you can click that big green button at the middle and it will ask you if you want to replace the latest file with this old one.
Also, back in the Properties window you can just click Restore right away, which will basically do the same thing. It will ask you if you want to replace the latest version with this restored version you've selected, or if you click the drop down next to Restore, you can Select Restore To which lets you restore it to a different folder without overwriting the latest version.
So this is obviously useful if you maybe want to access part of the old file without getting rid of and overriding the latest one. Now keep in mind, even if you do restore and overwrite the latest version, it will still keep that version in the file backup history. So if you realize, oh, I didn't mean to restore that, oh, I overwrote it, you can still go back into the file history and find that previous later version and just restore it back again.
Data backup and recovery
data backup and recovery So if you accidentally restore something and you realize you didn't want to, it's no big deal. Now if you go and look in the drive you're using to backup, you can actually see all the backups and folders in there and how it's organizing them.
For example, if I navigate through my drive, you can see it basically keeps the same directory structure and then you can see all the different versions of the files of that text file that I created. And then you can see that it has basically the name of the file and then the date it was modified and all that. And that's basically where it's getting it all from.
Also, if you notice that all the different versions of the files are starting to take up too much space, you can clean out older versions through another feature. So basically in the Backup Settings window you go to see Advanced Settings, and then on the left side this will bring up the old Control panel thing.
You click Advanced Settings in here and then click where it says Clean up versions. And this will let you delete file versions older than whatever time frame you pick. So if you don't really care about having versions that are older than a year or whatever else timeframe, you can just delete those.
There another cool thing you can do is explore different versions of different files using the File History tool. So in the Backup options, if you go to restore files from a current backup or just search in the Start menu for restore your files with File History, you'll see basically the same program we saw before.
But this actually lets you navigate through all the different backed up folders and files, and then if you click into one, it will show you the versions like before. But if you want to back up out of that, you can click the up or back arrows at the top and basically navigate through all the different versions of all the different files, not just one that we were looking at before. So yeah, needless to say, this is an extremely useful feature.
Even though I already use a cloud backup service for most of my stuff, I'm going to start using it for certain select folders that I want to have really easy access to multiple versions. So at this point, if you had still not been backing up all your files like I've been telling you for years, you now have even less of an excuse because this is even more useful on a day to day basis.
So thanks again to Privacy.com and one password for sponsoring this Article. Again check out the links in the description to get $5 if you're new to either of them and start taking advantage of this new integration.
FAQs
What is the difference between a backup and a restore?
A backup is a duplicate of the data on the computer
A restore is a process of restoring the data from the backup
How do I create a backup?
What does a backup tool do?
How does a backup tool work?
What are some other backup tools that are available?
A backup tool is a program or device that helps you save your computer's data
Conclusion
backup tools work with a restore tool to help you keep your data safe. Make sure you keep your software up-to-date so you can use the latest features and find new ways to protect your data.