More Windows 10 – The Back-Up: even more by: GF Willmetts
If I add an appendix to the article of last week, chances are you won’t be doing a re-read just yet, hence a quick new piece.
In the second or third month of using W10, there was an automated request to make a back-up finally came up, giving the choice of where to save it, on DVD or in a Cloud, oddly not a USB memory stick. After 9 DVDs, with no end in sight, I finally decided to wait until I got another auxiliary hard drive and glad I did.
After the major update of W10 last week, I thought it was about time that I did the back-up. Although the size of the System Repair files will vary from computer to computer, after I initiated mine, it took some three and a half hours to create and took 165.64gB of space. If you are choosing the DVD option, then it’s in excess of 40 disks!!
If you’re going to do this on a regular basis, that’s a lot of DVDs and more economical to use a an auxiliary hard drive although I would hesitate on making on every week. Monthly perhaps. If it’s the same length of time transferring files to a Cloud base, that’s still a lot of time. A memory stick of this size makes choosing an auxiliary hard drive a cheaper choice. Choose wisely. At least you don’t have to get a massively sized auxiliary hard drive although I found 2tB ones were actually cheaper and 1tB ones. Go figure although I suspect its more to do with fewer people buying them. Whatever, don’t forget to copy off any software that came with it and partition to manageable sizes so you can use other parts of the hard drive.
If you’re wondering where to find the command to do it at a time of your choosing, go into the Control Panel and select ‘Backup And Restore’. Quite why it still has ‘(Windows 7)’ in brackets beats me because even W8 is gone now. Before or after you’ve done the above, at the bottom of the page, there is a ‘File History’ that makes copies of your files, presumably to the same source. It’s a lot faster and just another back-up.
Oh, don’t forget to make a System Repair CD, you don’t have to use a DVD, or no matter where you saved it, you might not be able to get at it.
Whatever, just don’t forget to do this process from time to time. Without an original W10 CD, this is a vital choice for emergencies.
GF Willmetts
07 December 215
