Backup Personal Documents in Windows 7

Windows 7 comes with better backup and Restore options. You can easily select your personal documents for backup on different partitions, hard drives, external drives or Network locations.

Backup and Restore can be accessed in Windows 7 in control panel, or Maintenance in All Programs through start button.

If this is the first time you are running backup and restore in windows 7, you will get a fresh screen in Backup and Restore home page. To backup your personal documents in Windows 7 first time, select ‘Set up Backup’

Microsoft recommends you to take backup on different partition than system partition, preferably different hard drives, external drives and network locations.

All available external hard drives (including USB Drives) and partitions will be appeared in the next screen as backup destination.

 

You can select the ‘Save on a network’ to browse network location and save the back up. Any external drives can be connected now and click Refresh, they will be listed here. Click one of the Backup destinations and press Next.

Better to select the ‘Let me choose’, so additional files and folders of personal documents can be selected.

Select the files and folders you want to take backup in left side. First ‘Data Files’ option included all personal documents in the logged in user profile. Remove the Tick of ‘System Image Backup’ at bottom. This will take the full system backup to recover system in case of crash. But now we are taking backup of personal documents only in Windows 7.

Click ‘Save settings and Run Backup’ to run backup immediately and as a  schedule on windows default time.

You can change the schedule time by clicking ‘Change schedule’. Schedule settings are very easy and clear in next screen.

These are easy steps to backup your personal documents in Windows 7. Once first backup is set, you can view the status of backup and destination in the Backup and Restore home page which was empty earlier.

 

Backup settings and schedule settings can be changed by pressing ‘ Change Settings’ link as shown in above screen. You can manage the backup destination for add or delete drives by clicking ‘Manage space’ also.