What Files to Backup? Articles | Computer Security

People invest a great deal of personal and business time into their work on a computer. If by chance the computer crashes or a virus attacks then all the efforts might be lost. To minimize the impact of this, backing up files helps the user to recover when a crash occurs. There are two main types of files to take backups of, one is user data and the other one is system data.

Let’s see what files need to be backed up for safety and the ways to restore them.

User Data Includes

• Bank records and other financial information
• Digital photographs
• Software you purchased and downloaded from the Internet
• Music you purchased and downloaded from the Internet
• Personal projects
• Your e-mail address book
• Your Microsoft Outlook calendar
• Your Internet Explorer bookmarks

• System files
• Boot records
• My Documents
• Start Menu
• Desktop Items
• Favorites
• Send To Locations
• Internet History
• Windows System Components
• Application Data
• User Profiles

Windows incorporate a build-in backup utility which is useful to backup user data. It can be launched by clicking Start -> All Programs -> Accessories -> system tools -> Backup.

This launches a wizard which gives two choices of creating backup files and settings and also to restore files and settings. From here you can select options such as what kind of files to backup and selecting next takes the backup of the selected files. We can restore it whenever necessary by selecting the restore option in the wizard.

Ways to backup system settings:

Sometimes during booting the system shows error report like these:

[Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWSSYSTEM32CONFIGSYSTEM ]

[Windows XP could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: WINDOWSSYSTEM32CONFIGSOFTWARE ]

[Stop: c0000218 {Registry File Failure} The registry cannot load the hive (file): SystemRootSystem32ConfigSOFTWARE or its log or alternate

System error: Lsass.exe]

These are due to corrupted registry and system settings files in the system directory.

<Root Drive>windowssystem32configsystem

<Root Drive>windowssystem32configsoftware

<Root Drive>windowssystem32configsam

<Root Drive>windowssystem32configsecurity

<Root Drive>windowssystem32configdefault

Where <Root Drive> is the drive where the windows operating system is installed.

These files are not easy to copy to take backup. Because these files are locked by the operating system for security reasons.

Using windows backup systems settings can be easily take as backup. Other than this there are many utilities to backup the system files and system settings.

VistaBootPRO:

VistaBootPRO is the utility to manage and modify boot settings and also used to backup boot data. It is a third party tool capable of changing boot options for older versions of windows and latest versions.

For schools and other educational institutions they take backup of the whole drive and they restore these images periodically. The backup is taken in CDs or other secondary storage devices and can be restored when needed. Some utilities are available to take such backup. Norton Ghost is the very famous backup tool helps us to take the whole drive image backup. This gives up a bootable CD with backup image. On booting the system with the backup disc give some options to restore the whole drive.

Restore IT is another backup utility where the whole drive backup is stored in a separate partition called recovery partition. We can restore it without any separate backup media. The recovery mode is very simple like single click recovery. These types of recovery are used only when the data is the root drive is not important one.