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How to back up your Windows PC with Windows 7 (reader mail)

Janice writes: I have a Windows 7 laptop that I’ve never, ever backup up—yes, I know, I know. I’m ready to take my medicine now; what’s the easiest way to start backing everything up?

Hello Janice! When it comes to backing up your personal data, better late than never, particularly when it comes to ever-vulnerable laptop PCs (which, after all, are dangerously prone to coffee spills, thieves, and careless baggage handlers).

The good news is that Windows 7 boasts an easy-to-use utility that’ll regularly backup your personal documents, media, settings, and other data.

(Several commercial backup utilities are also available, of course; for this how-to, though, I’ll be focusing on Microsoft’s built-in backup tool.)

The Windows backup utility will help you create three key things: a partial backup of your just your personal files, handy for cherry picking individual documents to restore; a total hard drive backup (also known as a “system image”) that you can use to recover your entire system in one fell swoop; and a “system repair” DVD that can boot, diagnose, and restore backup files in case disaster ever befalls your system.

Related: How to back up your Mac with Time Machine

Before we start with any of that, though, you’ll need an external backup drive—ideally, one that’s at least as large as your system’s hard drive. Many roomy and relatively cheap external USB drives are for sale online; Amazon, for example, sells massive one-terabyte (1TB, or about a thousand gigabytes) for as little as $100.

Once you’ve got an external hard drive and a rewritable DVD (also available through Amazon and other retailers, or even your neighborhood drug store), you’ll be ready to begin backing everything up.

So, let’s get started!

Burn a system repair disc

 
The first thing we’ll do is create a so-called “repair” disc—a DVD you can use to boot up your computer in case your system’s hard drive conks out.

Not only will your repair disc start your computer, it also comes loaded with utilities that can find and restore the backups and system images that we’ll be creating in a little bit.

A Windows repair disc will come in handy if your system's hard drive goes on the fritz.

Create a system image

 
Next step: making a complete copy—or a “system image”—of your entire Windows hard drive, which (with a little help from your rescue disc) you can use to completely restore your system in case disaster strikes.

The downside of restoring a system image? It’s an all-or-nothing process: that is, you won’t be able to pluck, say, an older version of a specific Word file out of your system-image backup. Instead, you’ll have to restore everything—quite a headache if all you want to do is restore a single document. (A WIndows backup of your personal files, though, will let you grab a single file—and yes, we’ll be getting to that soon.)

A system image will let you restore your entire system in case of a hard drive failure, but you won't be able to pick and choose files to restore.

Back up your personal files

 
Last but not least, we’ll create a backup of all your personal documents, media, settings and other data—most everything save for the core Windows files your system needs to run.

What’s the point of backing up your personal files again if we already saved them all in a system image? Well, like I said before, you can’t restore individual files from a system image—again, it’s an all-or-nothing deal. With a standard Windows backup, though, you can pick specific documents to restore, handy when all you want is last week’s version of a single Word file.

Restoring a file, or your entire hard drive

 
Let’s say something bad happens—you delete an image file that you really, really needed, or something terrible befalls your entire system. Now what?

To restore one (or a few) files…

To restore your entire hard drive…

Bonus tips

 
A backup is only as goodas how recent it is; if you go for weeks at a time without backing up your system, you’ll be pretty unhappy when your hard drive up and dies and you’re stuck with a backup from last month. Make sure to back up your computer at least weekly—or even daily.

Even a giant 1TB external hard drive will fill up eventually, especially after a few weeks or so of saving large system images. Left to its own devices (sorry for the pun), Windows will start deleting your oldest backup files once your start running out of hard drive space, so keep an eye on your storage if you want to keep a vault of all your old backups.

Phew! A big dose of information, I know. Still have questions? Probably—and if so, feel free to post ’em in the comments below.