Windows XP Backup Tool - Is It Any Good?

Windows XP Backup Tool - Is It Any Good? Considering the increased amounts of data that you save to your computer each day, more and more users embark on a quest for the most effective and reliable backup solution. However, very few know that Windows XP has its own backup utility. You may sigh with relief because this means you don t have to buy special backup software, though you should know that such software gives you a number of important advantages above those that the operating system offers. In this article we will compare a standard functionality backup program with the Windows XP backup tool (WXBT). The WXBT allows backing up all user files in just one task. If you select the option of the My Documents backup, it will copy the entire contents of the Documents and Settings folder including MS Outlook/Outlook Express messages and settings as well as your profile settings. However, in most situations full backup is not necessary. In all likelihood the My Documents folder of your computer will be large in size and contain a lot of irrelevant information. If this is the case, WXBT suggests that you manually specify files that you want to include or exclude from the backup set. A standard backup program has the option of file filtering so you don t have to manually specify each file, but rather specify file extensions of the needed files. For example, if you want to back up only the MS Word documents, you only have to specify the doc. file extension and the program will automatically find and copy all Word files. Besides, it allows doing target backup of data from specific applications such as Adobe Photoshop, Windows Media Player, ICQ etc. This means that you only have to specify the program whose data you are going to back up. When you do a backup, it is extremely important where you keep the resulting files. It is recommended to keep such files as far as possible from the local computer. The farthest location WXBT suggests is a network drive or an external drive. By default, it will even offer you to back up to a floppy drive, and that s the only removable storage it has in store for you. Now think how many floppy diskettes it will require to back up 30GB of critical information! A standard program allows backing up your data to virtually any known type of removable media including CD, DVD, HD-DVD, Blu-ray, USB flash and external drives, as well as remote locations such as LAN, FTP, SFTP, remote online server. WXBT offers five types of backup: normal, copy, daily, differential, and incremental. To be honest, this abundance of backup types causes nothing, but confusion especially if this is your first time backup. Most backup programs offer two most common types of backup: full and incremental. These two types should be enough to meet all your requirements and cause no user confusion as the definition of the two types is very clearly stated in the program. WXBT allows backing up the System state data that include Registry, Boot files, COM + Class Registration database. However, you cannot include or exclude specific components. A professional backup program allows creating a hard drive image including the operating system and all system settings. It also has the option of copying Windows Registry and even allows backing up specific Registry components such as user keys, configuration keys etc. Conclusions Having considered the pros and cons of Windows XP backup tool, as compared to a standard backup program, we can say that WXBT is a viable solution for home computers, however the major fault with it is that it cannot back up to optical disks and allows recording your data only to a floppy disk which is outdated and does not meet today storage requirements. The main advantage of a professional backup program is that it can record your data to any type of optical disk, even the new generation disks such as Blu-ray and HD-DVD. Besides that such a program offers flexible file filters to simplify the process of data files selection. For more information on a standard functionality backup program, refer here. Alexander Golishev is a a copywriter for Novosoft LLC , software developer, with a great deal of expertise in data backup and recovery matters.