One tool everyone needs for their computer is a backup drive. This is especially important right now with a new operating system being pushed out by Microsoft to create a backup drive for windows. I just bought a tiny Western Digital 2TB My Passport Portable External Hard Drive HDD, USB 3.0, USB 2.0 Compatible one. The drive works well but the price dropped $5 after I bought it from Amazon, which was annoying.
The drive is really nice and tiny. I bought this particular drive just to backup my hard drive on a computer I may be sending back to Amazon anyway. Aside from that, you really should back your hard drive right now, especially if your computer is compatible with Windows 11 and it’s been bugging you to update to Windows 11. I am not that eager to update to Windows 11, but I may just give that a shot. Once you allow your PC to update to Windows 11 Microsoft only gives you 10 days to roll back to Windows 10. And updating an OS could cause problems and the backup could cover you there too. I updated another PC a few years back from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 and that went smooth.
Now the backup software is built into Windows 10 and it’s still there in Windows 11. It’s called Backup and Restore (Windows 7) and is supposed to be quite easy to create a back up drive. It is called a system image. It’s a copy of the main drive as of that date. The Western Digital drive I bought came with a short USB 3.0 cable and it backs up fast. It is small enough to fit in my hand and is very light. Western Digital gave this one a 3-year warranty which is why I chose it.
To find Backup and Restore (Windows 7) just goes to Control Panel then under System and Security you will see it. I did the system image and you can do this periodically. When you recover with a system image it will default to the most recent image but you can use an older one if you are skipping back to a prior OS. Don’t be worried or think it’s hard because it isn’t. Microsoft did a good job here.
When I ran the Backup and Restore (Windows 7) I expected it to run with no problems, but I did have an issue and the backup failed. The error was very common and my solution was to disconnect from the internet and disable the antivirus software. After that was finished, the backup worked. Furthermore, it does this fast. I used the USB 3.0 port and I am sure that helped. It would work with USB 2.0, but it would take much longer.
You really need to do this at this point. And again two or three weeks after your PC updates to Windows 11 to restore the drive via the system image. Moreover, please make a recovery drive since that comes in really handy if you need to restore the system back to what it was. Under advanced options on the recovery drive that you can make you will see the option to restore using a system image. You create a Windows 10 or 11 installation media and when you boot to that USB drive you will see in the bottom corner a link to ‘repair Windows’ so that will also give you an option to restore with the system image. Back and Restore (Windows 7) does prompt you to make a repair disc. But many computers don’t come with a DVD drive. Nevertheless, this shouldn’t give you any trouble when you go to create a system image.
Hopefully you will keep making system images and you never need them. My last computer never did. It just died. Now I could have put the system image onto another drive I have from the old Acer. The drive is several years old and for this purpose to create a system image for a backup drive here isn’t a good idea since I want something more reliable.
