By Mark Burnett
Today I watched a terrific TechNet webcast: Improving Desktop Security and Deployment: Backup and Restore in Windows Vista. What I liked about the webcast is that it covers in detail the new backup and restore features of Windows Vista.
File backup and restore in Vista uses Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) as the core technology to facilitate simple backups. The webcast explains how each component works together in the backup and restore process.
Shadow copies are snapshots of files that Windows stores in a special location on the hard drive. Vista stores file changes at the block level so that users can restore any version of their files. Windows uses up to 15% of a disk for shadow copies that it can use in the backup and restore process.
The webcast explains and demos complete PC backup, which is a Windows Vista feature that performs block-level backups that you can store on another hard disk or DVD.
More than half of this webcast consists of actual demos so you can see exactly how the process works. The presenter walks through the process of doing both file-based backups and complete PC backup, then later restoring backup files.
The webcast also goes into great detail on the Windows Recovery Environment and the various repair options available to users.
Finally, the webcast demonstrates how to do a system restore from a system restore point. Restore points, created at the block level, represent daily system configurations, or the state of a system before installing applications or drivers.
TIP: A system restore is reversible so you can undo and return back to where you were before the restore.
This webcast definitely was interesting and shows how much you can do with nothing more than the built-in backup and restore features. Understanding these features could mean the difference between recovering from a problem and having to reinstall the OS from scratch. You can watch the webcast at
Improving Desktop Security and Deployment: Backup and Restore in Windows Vista