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  #16  
Old July 17th, 2011, 09:23 PM
cdave cdave is offline
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Thank you again.
  #17  
Old July 17th, 2011, 09:28 PM
cdave cdave is offline
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Actually I believe I've come from there. The advice given ended with the person simply directing me to a Windows "how to do it" site which in fact I'd already been to and which doesn't answer my query. I did a survey for them later and I had to say I wasn't that impressed. Seems like they were short on ideas and in my experience, that's when they shunt off people to this sort of stuff, thus ignoring the specifics of the request. Seen this before ...
  #18  
Old July 18th, 2011, 01:54 AM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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Hi Annie,

I hope you don't mind if I add here. I was actually repartitioning and making a system image before installing Win7 64 bit SP1 today. Then I saw this thread. Clear as mud!! So when I finished my updates etc. I played with it myself. cdave's right to be confused.


cdave,

After backing up just the user folders, and not creating a second system image, I edited one of the files in a folder on my own desktop, and then ran some tests. The new backup was not visible on the drive. Try this. In Backup and restore, Click Restore files. But don't Browse for files yet. First, click the Choose a different date link

You'll see a listbox with the various dates and times backups were performed. Highlight one of those and click the OK button. Now click the Browse for files link.
Find your profile's backup on the left and highlight it. The right side will show all the folders inside your profile.
Double click on Desktop to open it. Then find the folder you have questions about.


Open it and find a file to test. You can either hover over it and it will show you the date modified, or you can restore it to a new location and have a look at its contents.
To do the latter:
Right click on the file and click select. Or just double click on the file. A new dialog will open with the fiile name you chose listed. Click the next button. When the Restore files dialog appears, under where do you want to restore files, click tthe radio button labeled
In the following location
and then click the browse button. Save it someplace convenient.. You do not want to restore it to iits original location.

Then open it up.

To compare it to an older or newer backup, repeat the above with another backup selected and restore to a different location than the first.


The point really is this:
When you browse the files, they are going to have different modified dates. So to check that a particualr file was copied to a given backup, you have to know when it was last modified in order to judge if the latest version was actually backed up.


This is a tedious process. On windows 2008 server edition, you can save all the files from a backup to a new location using the command line. But not in Windows 7.

At any rate, when I compared the edited file from 2 different backups, it showed the older version in the older backup and the newer version in the newer backup. Snd the Modifieddates were different too. So it all fit together nicely.

Hope it helps,

Mo

Last edited by Mosaic1; July 18th, 2011 at 02:01 AM.
  #19  
Old July 18th, 2011, 02:03 AM
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AnnMarie AnnMarie is offline
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Thanks Mo, I really appreciate you helping cdave.
  #20  
Old July 18th, 2011, 02:58 AM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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You're welcome, AnneMarie. Good seeing you!
  #21  
Old July 18th, 2011, 11:08 AM
cdave cdave is offline
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Thank you so much. This is to see whether the folders and files are correctly saved, I assume?

Okay. It went through the process fine. But on the stage where it shows the folders inside my profile, I had to click several times. When I highlighted the H (destination) drive, I had to then click on the folders labelled as "Backup of C", "Users" and "Desktop" which was the last one I clicked on.

Here's something that MIGHT explain why I was unable to view the saved files on the H drive on my desktop. After clicking on "In the Following Location" and I selected the H drive on desktop for saving a saved image on, it came up with the error message:

the drive is not formatted with the NTFS file system. It could not restore the selected file there. So I chose somewhere on my C drive (the "My Documents" folder on the desktop) and it was fine. It shows up there as an image.

In other words, it looks (PLEASE CORRECT ME) that the backed up folders and files will not show on the H drive on my desktop because of this technical issue. That might explain it.

If it's not there, then, where will be backed up folders and files be? I mainly need to know that they are safe in case my C drive collapses or gets a virus, which has happened more than once to me and isn't very pleasant.

Last edited by cdave; July 18th, 2011 at 11:11 AM.
  #22  
Old July 18th, 2011, 04:39 PM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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Quote:
In other words, it looks (PLEASE CORRECT ME) that the backed up folders and files will not show on the H drive on my desktop because of this technical issue. That might explain it.
I don't think so. It just says you have to restore the files back to an ntfs formattted drive.

In Windows 7 file and folder permissions are extremely important. All programs are run with only the rights of a regular User unless you run that program as administrator. This includes Explorer.exe. Regular Users have no viewing rights for the various backup folders.


EDIT: But if the H: driive is not NTFS, then permissions are not the issue.

Windows Backup has saved your files. But there's a lot to it. It saves them and a data structure which looks complex to us. And that's why yoiu should use Backup and Restore to view the files.


First to reassure yourself, let's run a command with admin privileges.

Right click on cmd.exe and click Run as Administrator.

When the command window opens, copy the following command and then right click in the command window and click paste. Then press enter.

Code:
dir /a /s H: >backup.txt && start notepad backup.txt   && exit
A file named backup.txt will open. It will list all the folder and their contents present on the drive. Let mw know how that goes.

Of course, you could activate the Powerful Master Administrator profile and sign into that and then view the drive's folder contents directly, but I never advise people do that. That account is disabled by default in Win7 for good reason. It's a great way to cook your system.

Let me know if backup.txt reassures you or if you need more. Also, when you created the backup, you had no erors? If that's the case, that's another good sign.

Last edited by Mosaic1; July 18th, 2011 at 05:26 PM.
  #23  
Old July 18th, 2011, 04:45 PM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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If you're really extremely concerned and just simply don't trust Backup and restore you could just right click on the folder you want to bacukp and Send to> Compressed. Then store the zip file that woud create on your external drive. But only one file with tthe same name can exist on the drive, so the zip file's name would have to be changed to reflect either the date, or could be stored in its own folder on the external hard drive.


There's always more than one way to do things in Windows.
  #24  
Old July 18th, 2011, 07:26 PM
cdave cdave is offline
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I'm not that technically informed so I don't feel that confident about some of this. The procedure I followed earlier today (see above) is about all I feel happy with doing. Really, all I need to know is if I followed the procedure, will the system have saved my files? I expect so, but your comments would be welcome. I can't imagine that most people who use Backup and Restore will have sleepless nights wondering, since they will assume what's labelled as saved is in fact saved. Otherwise, the whole point of Backup and Restore is destroyed. I'm not paranoid over this, but I want assurance that all's in order if I followed the onscreen instructions ...

The other point. In non-technical language, I'm still baffled where these saved items are, if I can't see them on the H drive on my desktop.

Last edited by cdave; July 18th, 2011 at 07:30 PM.
  #25  
Old July 18th, 2011, 10:33 PM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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I understand that. Honestly, some of these programs can be very confusing. \

If you run the command according to the directions in this post:

http://www.cybertechhelp.com/forums/...5&postcount=22

You'll have a file named backup.txt

That will list everything on your H: drive.

If there are no errors, your files should have been saved. But even MS says the only way to be 1000% sure is to try to restore one of the files. You did that already.

How often are you creating these backups? Do you know the date of the last backup? That would help you navigate the backuos.txt file.

Last edited by Mosaic1; July 18th, 2011 at 10:38 PM.
  #26  
Old July 18th, 2011, 10:56 PM
cdave cdave is offline
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Will look tomorrow. I've been going through this forum and another Windows forum for what seems like quite a long time over this one matter, so I like to take a "break" from it sometimes. I backup daily at the moment.
  #27  
Old July 18th, 2011, 11:01 PM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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You should open the computer icon and check the properties of your H: drive. See how much free space is left. You may be filling up the drive rapidly.

Also, backuo.txt is not going to tell you exactly what files were backed up. Backup and Restore keeps its records so it can read them, not the Users.
  #28  
Old July 19th, 2011, 09:19 AM
cdave cdave is offline
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There is plenty on the H drive, so that's no problem. It seems to me that we have the stage where I have verified that files are saved, following the post beginning with:


"Hi Annie,

I hope you don't mind if I add here."



I managed to "retrieve" one of the saved files that way, so that one worked. What's still to be resolved is exactly where the saved files are. Anyhow, I'll get round to following the instructions starting with

"I understand that ..."
  #29  
Old July 19th, 2011, 01:11 PM
cdave cdave is offline
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Where do I do this:

Right click on cmd.exe and click Run as Administrator.

When the command window opens, copy the following command and then right click in the command window and click paste. Then press enter.
  #30  
Old July 19th, 2011, 02:45 PM
Mosaic1 Mosaic1 is offline
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The easiest way to do that is to type cmd.exe in the Search for programs and files box on the start menu. cmd.exe will be in the results list. Right click on it, and then click Run as Administrator on the menu which will slide out.


The first backup you performed saved every file. However, the subsequent backups only saved either new or changed files. Files are saved in Zip files, The way Windows Backup keeps track of the information as to the state of the files and folders for each date and time a backup occirs, is in its catalog files. So unless those files are changed, they will not be backed up each time. But the record of where the file has been previously saved, is.


Also, the dir command I gave you will tell you there are zip files, but it is not capable of looking inside those zips to see what they contain. And looking inside them might upset you, leading you to thnk all your fiiles were not backed up on a particular date.

So, the best way for you to go about this is to verify that there were no errors. Event viewer will show those. Then there's a command to verify te catalog is not corrupt. And finally, the procedure to restore a file to be sure it is ok.

And that's why using the Control Panel > Backup and Restore interface to look at yiour backups is best.

I hope this helps.

Do run that command I gave you to reassure yourself that the information is on the drive.

Last edited by Mosaic1; July 19th, 2011 at 03:04 PM.
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