Difference between System Restore and NTBackup

[Stiltzkin]

Maybe this is an obvious question, but I can't get any solid answers with Google. I just want to know the best way to backup my system information. Does System Restore backup anything that NTBackup doesn't? What about vice-versa? Would I be better of just exporting my whole registry every now and then with RegEdit, or does that not backup as much as the above two methods? Thanks for any info!

 

[Deodar]

In XP there's a back up Wizard which can backup your complete sysem to whatever
medium you use-even floppy disks.Or it will put the backup in storage,on the drive,
which may not be secure or sensible if you lose access to drive.Backup is in system tools,I'm not sure what you mean by NT backup(unless you refer to NT o/s?).As to
system restore,very useful complete backup of everything,stored internally,not sure
if it can be exported.You can create registry backups any time,for the system to
access or export to storage medium.For a complete drive backup you need another
drive to copy data to,using software like Norton Ghost or drive image.Is this what
you are asking;hope it's what you want to know,but not complete by far!

 

[AvvY]

AFAIK System Restore backups system related info such as your registry and system settings. NTBackup is for file backups of specific directories such as My Documents or similar.

So if you want to backup system related guff regularly make system restore points (always a good idea if changing anything major or doing registry hax).

And use NTBackup for data backups to another HDD or to another directory.

Late,

 

[JohnWill]

The best way to backup your system information, and everything else, is an image backup utility. I use Acronis True Image, 100% backed up.

 

[AvvY]

I currently use Nero BackItUp, but am going to try Acronis, as I hope it is faster than Nero which can take hours upon hours.

Late,

 

[JohnWill]

My boot partition is around 8gigs, and Acronis True Image 8 takes less than 7 minutes to create an image backup to a separate hard disk in the system.

 

[AvvY]

I just installed Acronis and was impressed from the start when it asked me to create a bootable cd with all my drivers and stuff on it. I set it up and it backed up about 40GB of data in about 20mins.

Thanx for the tip

Late,

 

[4plus2]

One thing to note. System restore does not uninstall any software but does muck up the installation so that it can not run as it only restores the registry and settings as mentioned above. So if using it to recover from a bad installation add/remove programs must first be used then restore to before the installation.

 

[Bert Kinney]

Hi,

Description of System Restore:
http://bertk.mvps.org/html/description.html

How to use Backup to restore files and folders on your computer in Windows XP
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/309340/EN-US/

Maybe this is an obvious question, but I can't get any solid answers with Google. I just want to know the best way to backup my system information. Does System Restore backup anything that NTBackup doesn't? What about vice-versa? Would I be better of just exporting my whole registry every now and then with RegEdit, or does that not backup as much as the above two methods? Thanks for any info!