Windows 7x64 bit Back-up - CNET How to Forums

Answer Best answer as chosen by user P51MustangD

Difficult to separate it like that

by MarkFlax - 5/4/12 3:44 PM

In Reply to: Windows 7x64 bit Back-up by P51MustangD

How would you do this back up?

You can't separate your own software installations from the OS system files as there is no way to identify all the files concerned, so your chosen method of backing up is going to be relevant here.

If you open Computer, (either from the Start menu or from the shortcut icon on your Desktop if you have one there), you will see how much space is taken up by Windows 7 on the C drive. Pre-installed games are unlikely to take up a lot of drive space and bookmarks certainly will not, they are just small files in the Kb range.

Some of the data may be your personal files and data, like documents, photos, music and videos, so you can back up those separately and count how much hard drive space they have taken, and then the rest is the OS and software. Will that fit on to the 32 GB memory stick, (flash drive)?

Even if it does, what then? How will you reinstall Windows from that?

An example, I recently took a whole image backup of my Win 7 system using the backup utility I got from the drive maker's web site, a version of Acronis TrueImage, and it is 25 GB or so. It is stored on another hard drive, but it would easily have fit onto a memory stick. However, I am not sure a memory stick is a suitable storage medium for reinstalling Windows 7 if I ever have to. It may work OK, but I am guessing that transfer speeds may be slower than from a spare hard drive.

Windows' own backup and restore functions are not considered the best.

Mark

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Back Up

by P51MustangD - 5/5/12 9:33 AM

In Reply to: Difficult to separate it like that by MarkFlax

Thanks Much, I know it would be somewhat of a problem to break up which is which, I guess the best way in to have someone from the Geeks Squad,to "decrapify" it and get down, to just the OS and support files, I can stop windows games via stop windows functions on or off ,but to remove them is something else,This a lap top and with all this "garbage" on it does nothing for me ,and slows reboots, and just gives the PC another place to break. Again Thanks for the info.

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Ahh, if you are talking slow boot up

by MarkFlax - 5/5/12 10:26 AM

In Reply to: Back Up by P51MustangD

then that is something that you can sort out.

How much hard drive spaced used won't cause slow Start up. What I mean is, you can have a nearly empty drive or a drive that is half full, and the startup times can be the same.

However, slow startup is likely caused by installed software and it will be software you yourself have installed which you have set to "Load on startup". That will significantly slow down bootup as all the software fights to be loaded when Windows loads.

To see what you have loading at startup, go to the Start button and type in MSCONFIG and click the first entry in the list. This will start the "System Configuration Utility". Head over to the Startup tab and look down the list at all the startup files there. You can disable those that you don't want, and Google will tell you what they are if you are not sure.

There are other things we can do as well, for example, make sure only one firewall is being used, only one anti-virus is being used.

As for unwanted applications, why not uninstall those that you are not ever going to use?

Mark

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