Apologies for redundant question here: How do I protect against total shutdown? -- I need the backup, restore process, etc.

["Carl Distefano" cld@xxxxxxxx]

Reply to note from Jay Mcnally  Sat, 13 May 2017
11:02:22 -0400

Jay,

> But is probably only a question of time before the system totally
> breaks down and I have to erase and re-install the system.

Maybe, maybe not. But at least you've take the first step by creating a
recovery disk. HP recommends doing a complete system restore annually
-- reinstalling the operating system from scratch, with factory
defaults -- but that strikes me as overkill. Personally, I've never had
to do a complete reinstall on a 32-bit or 64-bit Windows system, but
maybe I've been lucky. Obviously, it's a last resort.

One thing you should do periodically, when everything is working
normally, is to create a system restore point. That way, if system
files get trashed, you can revert to the last good setup. To create a
restore point (Windows 7), go to Control Panel, System, System
Protection, then click the Create button. Restore points have saved my
bacon on more than one occasion in the past, usually when
malfunctioning drivers screwed things up.

As for backups, needless to say you've got to do them. I continuously
back up my essential program and data files to an external hard drive
as well as to the cloud (Dropbox). I don't do complete disk images --
in the event of a catastrophe, I'm willing to manually reinstall other
programs (or not, since so many installed programs go unused). You may
well get different backup advice from the Windows mavens here.

My single most important backup tool is Dropbox Pro. It not only saves
your files, it retains previous versions of the files and allows any
previous version to be restored. I can't tell you how many times this
has rescued me when I've inadvertently permanently deleted a file or
overwritten it with garbage.

--
Carl Distefano
cld@xxxxxxxx