Backing up the Vista operating system

Put: 07.11.2006 | Rev 07.11.2006 | Contributed by Andrew Mallett

When I first found out that Windows Vista is currently not supported by Norton Ghost, I was somewhat disappointed. I have been using Ghost as an OS archiver for many years, with great success..

The good news is that Windows Vista ships with a very efficient backup system of its own, which is actually quite capable of backing up the whole operating system itself. And while the system is still running.

Before starting the backup process, Windows will look for a place with enough free space to back up the files to. This can include another partition, another drive (i.e. external USB) or burnable DVD. Windows will automatically span across multiple DVD volumes.

To create a backup of the whole primary partition which Windows is sitting on, go to Start | All Programs | Maintenance | Backup and Restore Centre. Click on the 'Back up computer' button. Windows will look for appropriate devices for backing up to. Select the appropriate location and click the Next button. Under 'Which disks..?', tick the C: drive and click the 'Next' button. Finally click on the 'Start backup' button.

As an example on a Pentium IV 3GHz workstation with 1GB RAM, the backup took 7 minutes to an external USB2 hard disk. This was a basic install of RC2 which was 11GB on the hard disk, archived and compressed to 8.5GB on the external disk

The same system backed up and burned to two single sided DVD discs in 50 minutes at 2X. A much higher compression was noticed here as most of the archived files were on disc1, with only around 300MB spanned across to disc2.

The files are archived in proprietary format, requiring Vista to restore them again. All in all, this is a pretty good way to keep the OS backup up in case the unthinkable happens. And at no extra cost of any third party apps.

Restoring the Vista operating system

Restoring a backed up Vista install is almost as easy as the original archiving. Have the backup media ready and boot to the Vista installation DVD.

After selecting Language/Input Locale/Keyboard type from the usual first screen, select 'Repair your computer' from the next screen. Click Next on the System Recovery Options screen and then insert the restore media, i.e. DVD disc. On the next screen, choose 'Windows complete PC restore'.

Note that any data which was added to the C: drive after the original backup will get lost, so make sure you have made copies elsewhere. Even better is to keep any user data on a separate partition.

After following the screen prompts the system will search for any usable backup volumes in the expected places (DVD, USB drive, etc.). Once the correct backup volume is selected, click OK and confirm you want to go through with this traumatic procedure. Windows will restore the whole operating system from the backup. At the end, reboot the system to see the changes.

On the reference system I was able to get a complete restore from two DVDs in around 15 minutes. The whole backup/restore feature worked smoothly without a hitch. Well done Microsoft, looks like we have a bit of a winner here.

- A.