Established Facts on backing up your Windows XP: 10 important facts

Every business enterprise that deals with maintaining budgets, programming, data entry, and anything of the like will have a network of computers at their disposal. These machines will most likely all be running under the same operating system in this case, Windows XP, the thing all of these machines will have in common is that occasionally you may need to back up your systems and it can be a hassle around the office.

Or Does it? Many companies and employees either aren’t aware or utilize third party systems when it comes down to backing up but you already have a reliable tool from day one of acquiring your XP machine. This tool is the simple, yet underrated, Windows XP backup program integrated into your XP system. Maybe you’ll soon learn to understand that this “clunky” program could actually be your saving grace in a tight moment.

#1 Sophistication is overrated

Developers and business entrepreneurs would normally choose to opt out of the Windows XP backup tool because of its lack of “Sophistication” as they’d call it. And sure, the program isn’t necessarily the first thing that’ll come to your mind but considering it’s actually one of the easiest to use it’s astonishing how it’s so underrated. This is most likely because businesses usually store all of their date online but with Windows backup that is not the case, it lets you store data offsite and technically off the record as most companies prefer to stay on but its simplicity cannot be denied.

#2 Sometimes a wizard is best

As with other programs and other options within the Windows Backup system you can choose to manually back up your machine but this is not only a lengthy process but also very cumbersome. Why waste your time doing it all yourself when you can set up a wizard to do the job for you? When you manually work on something the odds of missing a step increases dramatically but with a wizard you are almost guaranteed to not miss a beat.

All you have to do is set up the pre-conditions of the wizard, what to save, what not to save and then let it loose on its own to finagle all the details into backing up and resorting all your important files and data.

#3 Remember the name!

When you utilize the Windows Backup system you need to establish its working name. “What do you mean by that?” it’s simple, you just need to create a name based on what the backup system will be doing (What will it’s job be) and then you have to create a name for the actual backup file of which will be storing all the data you designated. Now, this is the tricky part, be sure you name something you’d remember for each one because they can be easily confused between each other if you’re not paying close enough attention.

If you make the mistake of processing the wrong file you could potentially end up overwriting it losing important data you might not be able to get back. So, it is imperative you remember the names of each and what their functions are. Once the proper names have been chosen your computer will “schedule” a backup based on how you program the name into the tool, so never confuse the two.

#4 Sometimes Manual Is Good Too

Now, in order for a lot of the above to even work you need to put forth the effort to manually set up a few operational paths for your machine to take once the backup process commences. Once you’ve opened the backup program’s configuration screen there will be a tab called “Advanced Options”, this location is what’s going to prompt the machine to act in a certain way once the process of backing up or restoration begins.

You have will have many choices such as whether you want to replace an old backup file with a new one, and when a backup should be scheduled to occur this includes the amount of hours spent backing up and when it will end the process, all of these hours are scheduled by you, the user and it works in both minutes, to hours, to even days.

#5 No Unnecessary Overthinking

When you’re thinking it’s time to back up a certain system it makes perfectly logical sense to discuss with your peers, co-workers, whoever and decide on what should be saved. But that being said, you need to also think about what can be thrown out, thus the problems begin, it can be difficult to decide the value of certain files and data and huge chunks of people will be unsure if something is worth getting rid of or not.

This is the time where you need to be completely serious when you speak with your employees, bosses, super visors, what have you, because it’s really up to them to decide the value of certain programs that you don’t necessarily want to keep around anymore. The reason some files should be thrown out is because maybe that set of data isn’t relevant to that week’s workload or maybe the program is no longer used as much as it used to be, there are a slew of factors in choosing to delete certain files but all decisions should be left open to the administration, they can decide what is best.

#6 Fixing… sometimes… isn’t the answer

Small businesses and other companies will often times only need to store at least two weeks of work/data before it eventually is no longer useful to them. For this reason people will choose to append their backup file and essentially replace it with new data but to fix or append one of these files requires a bit more work than you need to do.

This is why it is recommended to just replace a backup file completely because you are bound to lose a lot of needed space on your machines if you lobby to the alternative route. Starting fresh is not only good for the machine but good for you because you don’t need to navigate around just to find all of these different backup files when you’re done with them.

#7 A downside…

Going into this you obviously figured we’d be saying nothing but good things about the Windows XP backup tool but that, just isn’t the case. If you own a relatively small business this tool works miracles for keeping track of your company’s data efficiently but at the same time, third party tools will outperform this tool on the ground of compressing that data, which is why a lot of bigger company’s choose not to utilize this XP software.

A program like this requires heavy pre-planning before consistently enacting its uses and devices because if you have to backup over 12 gigs of data each week but and your partner company consistently pours about 500 megs worth of material you’re going to be looking at a scorcher of lost space, so it’s highly recommended to use a 20 gig tape or disk to help out your backup needs.

#8 Move faster!

A data verification feature is implemented into the Windows Backup tool; this nifty little thing will confirm to you the completion of a backup and whether or not it finished to specifications. Most that use this tool have and will make use of this awesome feature, however, when it comes down to larger more complex backups it becomes a lot more difficult for the confirmation to complete in a timely fashion.

So you need to schedule your backup times wisely because there is a chance the verification will fail if the backup ends at its specifically targeted hour but the confirmation verification has not, this will result in a potential failed backup. It is more so suggested to only use the verification for smaller backups as it moves a lot faster and gets a lot more done, the largest don’t always need confirmation, sometimes you just have to do a few things yourself.

#9 Watch out for that default

You have no idea how easy it is to schedule a backup to take place, what hour, what month, what day, but the thing most people forget to realize is that, by default, the program will only do one backup, and one backup only. Unless of course you choose the correct paths to change that by setting up a weekly, monthly, yearly option as opposed to a one time affair because if you ignore these options, it’s only going to do it once. After you choose the correct paths for the backup to commence than and only than should you scheduled a backup to begin at an allotted time.

#10 Know your limits

Don’t assume that the machines you’re running at your office are always going to be working to their efficient capacity when it comes down to scheduled backup sessions. Most small businesses choose to back up their systems during off-hours and will often times set a timeframe for a backup of, let’s say, 72 hours. It is entirely possible that during those 72 hours something bad could happen, you may not even know about it until it’s too late, to just leave it hanging like that could potentially freeze up the process all together.

This is why companies need to check up on their progress and fix any problems that may occur if a freeze does happen, the best way to fix the problem would be to reduce the timeframe, sometimes you just need to wait a little while longer, don’t risk the whole network for a few bites of data.