Backup and Restore (formerly Backup and Restore Center) is the primary

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

component of

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, which was released five years before, at the time being the longest time span between successive releases of ...

and

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

. It can create file and folder backups, as well as

system image In computing, a system image is a serialized copy of the entire state of a computer system stored in some non-volatile form such as a file. A system is said to be capable of using system images if it can be shut down and later restored to exactly ...

s backups, to be used for recovery in the event of

data corruption In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpreted. ...

hard disk drive failure A hard disk drive failure occurs when a hard disk drive malfunctions and the stored information cannot be accessed with a properly configured computer. A hard disk failure may occur in the course of normal operation, or due to an external factor ...

, or

malware Malware (a portmanteau for ''malicious software'') is any software intentionally designed to cause disruption to a computer, server, client, or computer network, leak private information, gain unauthorized access to information or systems, depri ...

infection. It replaces

NTBackup NTBackup (or Windows Backup) is the built-in backup application introduced in Windows NT 3.51 and included in Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003. NTBackup comprises a command-line utility and a set of wizard interf ...

, which has been part of Windows since

Windows NT 3.51 Windows NT 3.51 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft and oriented towards businesses. It is the third version of Windows NT and was released on May 30, 1995, eight months following the release of Windows NT ...

. Unlike its predecessor, it supports

CDs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

DVDs The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kin ...

, and Blu-rays discs as backup media. Backup and Restore offers file and folder backup in all editions of Windows. But its full set of features are only available on high-end editions of Windows, i.e., the Professional, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions. Microsoft

deprecated In several fields, especially computing, deprecation is the discouragement of use of some terminology, feature, design, or practice, typically because it has been superseded or is no longer considered efficient or safe, without completely removing ...

Backup and Restore in

Windows 8.0 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for download via MSDN and TechNet on August 15, 2012, and later to r ...

, recommending to use the

File History The transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8 introduced a number of new features across various aspects of the operating system. These include a greater focus on optimizing the operating system for touchscreen-based devices (such as tablet compute ...

app for file-based backup and a third-party solution for system imaging. Despite its deprecation, however, it is part of all versions of Windows released thereafter. The

Windows Server Windows Server (formerly Windows NT Server) is a group of operating systems (OS) for servers that Microsoft has been developing since July 27, 1993. The first OS that was released for this platform was Windows NT 3.1 Advanced Server. With the r ...

counterpart of Backup and Restore is called Windows Server Backup.

Backup types

Backup and Restore supports two different types of backup: File and folder backup, and system image.

File and folder backup

The Backup and Restore app can create backup copies of individual files and folders. These backups are saved to

ZIP Zip, Zips or ZIP may refer to: Common uses * ZIP Code, USPS postal code * Zipper or zip, clothing fastener Science and technology Computing * ZIP (file format), a compressed archive file format ** zip, a command-line program from Info-ZIP * Zi ...

files. Two methods of file backup are supported. The first, normal backup, stores everything selected for backup. The second,

incremental backup An incremental backup is one in which successive copies of the data contain only the portion that has changed since the preceding backup copy was made. When a full recovery is needed, the restoration process would need the last full backup plus al ...

stores only files that are changed after a previous backup. File backup in Windows Vista does not allow users to choose specific files, locations, or users to back up; instead, it backs up content from all users based on categories: audio tracks, compressed files, documents, email, photos, recorded television shows, videos, and additional user files. Users can only choose whether to perform a backup of a certain category. Microsoft hoped that this simplistic approach would prove appealing to users who were easily appalled by "a long tree of checkboxes." File backup in Windows 7 presents two options for operation: ''Let Me Choose'', which allows users to perform backups of specific folders,

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

, and to create a system image; and ''Let Windows Choose'', which creates backups of all personal data in user folders and libraries, and also creates a system image.

System image

The other method of backup, called ''Complete PC Backup'' in Windows Vista or ''system image'' in Windows 7, is a

block Block or blocked may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Block programming, the result of a programming strategy in broadcasting * W242BX, a radio station licensed to Greenville, South Carolina, United States known as ''96.3 ...

-by-block

disk image A disk image, in computing, is a computer file containing the contents and structure of a disk volume or of an entire data storage device, such as a hard disk drive, tape drive, floppy disk, optical disc, or USB flash drive. A disk image is us ...

of the system, saved in a VHD file. The block-based backup is more efficient at performing subsequent differential backups, as only the blocks that have changed need to be backed up. However, Backup and Restore can also only create system images of disks formatted with the

NTFS New Technology File System (NTFS) is a proprietary journaling file system developed by Microsoft. Starting with Windows NT 3.1, it is the default file system of the Windows NT family. It superseded File Allocation Table (FAT) as the preferred fil ...

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

. One could later restore the VHD through the

Windows Recovery Environment Windows Preinstallation Environment (also known as Windows PE and WinPE) is a lightweight version of Windows used for the deployment of PCs, workstations, and servers, or troubleshooting an operating system while it is offline. It is intended t ...

. Beginning with Windows Vista SP1, system images can be restored to a machine with a different

motherboard A motherboard (also called mainboard, main circuit board, mb, mboard, backplane board, base board, system board, logic board (only in Apple computers) or mobo) is the main printed circuit board (PCB) in general-purpose computers and other expand ...

, which may have a different

disk controller {{unreferenced, date=May 2010 The disk controller is the controller circuit which enables the CPU to communicate with a hard disk, floppy disk or other kind of disk drive. It also provides an interface between the disk drive and the bus connect ...

, but the target machine must have the same number of disks. Alternatively, one could mount the VHD image as a virtual disk, allowing extraction of individual files. The mounted virtual disk has all the features of an actual volume, meaning that the Previous Versions feature of Windows 7 is available on it. In Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate, it also possible to boot from the VHD file. Finally,

hypervisors A hypervisor (also known as a virtual machine monitor, VMM, or virtualizer) is a type of computer software, firmware or hardware that creates and runs virtual machines. A computer on which a hypervisor runs one or more virtual machines is called ...

such as

Hyper-V Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian, and briefly known before its release as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Win ...

VMware Workstation VMware Workstation Pro (known as VMware Workstation until release of VMware Workstation 12 in 2015) is a hosted (Type 2) hypervisor that runs on x64 versions of Windows and Linux operating systemshttps://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/searc ...

, and

Oracle VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Innotek VirtualBox) is a type-2 hypervisor for x86 virtualization developed by Oracle Corporation. VirtualBox was originally created by Innotek GmbH, which was acquired by ...

support VHD as their disk format, so it is possible to use these backups in

virtual machines In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized hardw ...

Backup targets

Backups could be stored on the root of any storage device other than the one being backed up or on a

network share In computing, a shared resource, or network share, is a computer resource made available from one host to other hosts on a computer network. It is a device or piece of information on a computer that can be remotely accessed from another comput ...

. However, Backup and Restore does not support backing up to a subfolder of a volume. It also supports CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs as backup destinations, but does not support

tape drive A tape drive is a data storage device that reads and writes data on a magnetic tape. Magnetic tape data storage is typically used for offline, archival data storage. Tape media generally has a favorable unit cost and a long archival stability. ...

s. Windows Server Backup in

Windows Server 2008 Windows Server 2008 is the fourth release of the Windows Server operating system produced by Microsoft as part of the Windows NT family of the operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on February 4, 2008, and generally to retail on Fe ...

does not support hard disk drives with large sector sizes (4096 bytes) unless they support 512 byte emulation.

Operation

Backup and Restore is only a frontend for interfacing with the user. The backend component is a

Windows service In Windows NT operating systems, a Windows service is a computer program that operates in the background. It is similar in concept to a Unix daemon. A Windows service must conform to the interface rules and protocols of the Service Control Manager ...

called Windows Backup. This service runs independent of user sessions and can perform scheduled backups even when no users have logged onto the system. Scheduled backups, by default, run every Sunday at 7 P.M. During a backup, Windows uses the

Volume Shadow Copy Service Shadow Copy (also known as Volume Snapshot Service, Volume Shadow Copy Service or VSS) is a technology included in Microsoft Windows that can create backup copies or snapshots of computer files or volumes, even when they are in use. It is imple ...

(VSS) to ensure that files are not changed while they are being backed up. VSS ensures both file system-level consistency and app-level consistency for apps registered as ''VSS writers''. In Windows Vista and Windows 7, another Windows component called

System Restore System Restore is a feature in Microsoft Windows that allows the user to revert their computer's state (including system files, installed applications, Windows Registry, and system settings) to that of a previous point in time, which can be used ...

also uses VSS. As such, System Restore can use shadow copies that Backup and Restore created during a full system backup. As mentioned above, Backup and Restore is merely a frontend. Windows ships with an alternative frontend for Windows Backup, the

WBAdmin In computing, WBAdmin is a command-line utility built into Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 8, Windows Server 2012, Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. The command is used to perform backups an ...

command-line utility A console application is a computer program designed to be used via a text-only computer interface, such as a text terminal, the command-line interface of some operating systems (Unix, DOS, etc.) or the text-based interface included with most gra ...

. Only a member of the Administrators groups or the Backup Operators group can run WBAdmin.

Edition comparison

The Home Basic edition of Windows can perform manual file backups. The Home Premium and later editions can automate file backups, create file backups on network locations, create backup schedules, and perform incremental backups of files. The Professional, Business, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions support both the system image and Shadow Copy. The user interface of Complete PC Backup in Windows Vista does not support creating a system image to a network location; however, the

command can perform this operation. Unlike Windows Vista Home Premium, however, backing up files to a network share is not available in Windows 7 Home Premium. Windows 7 provides a user interface option to create a system image to a network location.

Deprecation

With the release of

Windows 8 Windows 8 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on August 1, 2012; it was subsequently made available for downl ...

, Microsoft deprecated Backup and Restore in favor the new

feature. Microsoft cited low use as the contributing factor for its deprecation, though the company retained all of its functionality for users who relied on it; the feature was moved to a Windows 7 File Recovery Control Panel applet and all previous points of access were removed. In Windows 8.1, all interface functionality—with the exception of system image creation, which is in a System Image Backup option in File History—were removed. Scheduling system image backups is not supported either. WBAdmin, however, remained available. (As mentioned above, both Backup and Restore, and WBAdmin are merely frontends for the Windows Backup service.) With the release of Windows 10, the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) Control Panel applet was made available again. File History remains the default and preferred method to back up local content in Windows 10. For the system image functionality, Microsoft recommends using third-party software.

References

External links

The Filing Cabinet: Storage Team Blog about file services and storage features in Windows
{{Microsoft Windows components Backup software Windows components Windows Vista Windows 7 Windows 8 Windows 10