Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft Windows XP in 24 Hours

By Greg Perry

• Table of Contents
  • Copyright
  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Tell Us What You Think!
  • Introduction
  • Part I: Wake Up with Windows XP
  • Hour 1. Taking a Bird's-Eye Look at Windows XP
  • Hour 2. Getting Started with Windows XP
  • Hour 3. Managing the Windows XP Interface
  • Part II: Morning Windows Desktop Exploration
  • Hour 4. Working with the My Computer Window
  • Hour 5. Navigating Files with Windows Explorer
  • Hour 6. Calling for Help
  • Hour 7. Improving Your Windows Desktop Experience
  • Part III: Early Afternoon Windows Exploration
  • Hour 8. Installing Programs with Windows XP
  • Hour 9. Finding Files, Folders, and Friends
  • Hour 10. Using the Desktop Accessories
  • Part IV: Late Afternoon Internet Integration
  • Hour 11. Surfing the Web with Internet Explorer
  • Hour 12. Tying Windows into the Web
  • Hour 13. Networking with Windows XP
  • Hour 14. Managing E-mail and Newsgroups with Outlook Express
  • Part V: An Evening with Advanced Windows
  • Hour 15. Exploring Your Hardware Interface
  • Hour 16. Understanding Printing and Fonts
  • Hour 17. Using Windows on the Road
  • Hour 18. Giving Windows XP a Tune-Up
  • Hour 19. Managing Your Hard Drives
    • Fill In the Holes
    • Cleaning Up Your Disk
    • Back Up Often
    • Summary
    • Q&A
    • Workshop
  • Hour 20. Tinkering with the Advanced System Tools
  • Part VI: Having Fun at Nighttime
  • Hour 21. Using Media Player
  • Hour 22. Picturing Windows XP Graphics
  • Hour 23. Making Movies with Windows XP
  • Hour 24. Advanced Windows XP Tips
  • Part VII: Appendixes
  • Appendix A. Differences Between the Windows Home and Professional Edition
  • Appendix B. Glossary
  • Appendix C. Answers to Quizzes

Back Up Often

The Windows XP Backup program is a backup program that you can use to save copies of disk files that protect you against data loss. If your hard disk breaks down, once you fix or replace it, you will be able to restore the backup and resume your work. You may have to install Windows XP first if the disk was your C: drive. Without Backup, you would have to try to recreate the entire disk drive, which is often impossible, because you will not have a copy of every transaction and document that you've created.

The first time you back up, back up your entire disk drive. Once you back up the entire disk, you then can make subsequent daily or weekly backups of only those files that you've added or changed since the most recent backup.

Backup can compress files while backing them up so that you can back up large disk drives to other disks or tapes that would not normally be able to hold all the data. With compression, the backup should take less time and make the backups easier to do.

Backup lets you select which files you want to back up so that you can make a special backup of a few selected files. Backup can create a full backup of your entire disk drive or an incremental backup, which backs up only the files that have changed since the most recent backup. Backup also lets you direct restored files to a different drive or directory from where they originated.

You must decide which medium you want to store the backup to. Backup creates backups on the following medium:

• Network storage, hard disks, and floppy disks
• High-density disks such as Zip drives
• QIC 40, 80, 3010 and other kinds of backup tapes

Today most people will back up regularly to higher-capacity non-diskette devices. The following To Do task explains how to use Windows XP Backup.

To Do: Using Microsoft Backup

1. Select the Start menu's All Programs, Accessories, System Tools, Backup. You'll see Figure 19.8's opening window.

   

   Figure 19.8 Get ready to back up your files.

   The Backup or Restore wizard walks you through the process of backing up or restoring from a backup.

2. Click Next and select the first option, Back up files and settings.
3. Click Next. Select what you want to back up. If you keep all your data files in the My Documents folder, you may want to select the first option to backup only these files and your user account's settings. If, instead, you want to back up multiple disk locations, select the option labeled, Let me choose what to back up. The rest of this task assumes you want to back up just your My Documents folder and system settings for your user account.
4. Select Next. The backup program needs to know where you want to back up to. Select a disk drive, tape drive, or network storage option, and then type a name for the backup.
5. When you click Next, you'll see a window such as the one in Figure 19.9 that reviews the backup you have just specified. To start the backup process, simply click Finish.

Figure 19.9 You have now specified the backup settings.

Backup contains a complete set of backup, restore, and comparison features. The backup jobs make backing up regularly easy to do, because you can create backup jobs that describe different backup settings and open whatever backup job you want to use.

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