You're absolutely right that I should advise making a pre drivers / updates backup. I just don't know how to integrate that into my guide without further complicating things for a newbie who is trying to follow it word for word step by step. I will go ahead and put a message there.

I have a very similar checklist for doing complete reinstalls for people.

I would suggest adding

Spyware Terminator, free real time anti-spyware protection

Moving the Favorites, Desktop Folder and Firefox Profile Folders

And disabling system restore, which is redundant when you are doing complete backups.

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I am against installing any software anywhere other than C: and also against moving the page file.

I backup before making changes and restore if anything goes wrong. And I want a restore to fix 100% of the problems 100% of the time.

Problems can and do occur when you restore you OS to a previous state, without restoring all installed programs (including games) along with it.

What if a new game update causes more problems than it fixes, what if it breaks compatibility with old saved games, what if the update uses registry files no present in your last backup.

This may not happen all of the time, but it happens some of the time.

Obviously I then use a larger C: partition.

When I restore from a damaged OS, I backup before restoring so I can pull any files that were updated since the last backup. (Saved Games comes to mind).

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I also integrate the latest Driver Packs into my Windows XP CD and use an unattended install file.

At first I was suspicious that adding Drivers would lead to driver problems, but I have had no such problems. For a gaming system I usually then install the latest drivers for the graphics card and sound card.

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Obviously preferences and needs differ, and I am not suggesting anything you are doing is incorrect or less optimal.

I agree whole heartedly my friend! Some things do conflict when you install them on another partition, but there is a great deal that is bad about installing those programs on the C: partition.

Say for instance you install a program on the C: partition, then you make a backup. After using your computer for some time, that program either auto-updates itself or you manually update it with a downloadable patch or something. Now you need to rollback your PC to your latest backup for some unknown performance related issues (computer is running slugishly or you have viruses etc.) The rollback is going to wipe clean your C: partition, including any updates made to those programs. Now you have 2 options: update the program again only for you to have to do it multiple times in the future, or update and immediately make a backup of your system again.

This can become tedious and extremely annoying. One example of such a program is X-Fire. This program can safely be installed on another partition and continue to be used regardless of whether or not your rollback your PC. X-fire will stay intact no matter what. An example of a program that does not stay intact after a rollback is Skype. Skype will ALWAYS revert no matter what partition it is stored on. Firefox also will revert your profile if you do not manually store the profile on the D: partition.

It's simply a matter of knowing which programs behave weirdly.


I have restored and backed up my PC for years. I have never encountered any issues related to moving the page file.


I agree 10,000% here. I should add that to my guide. I'm just afraid someone will try to do a system restore and because they decided to turn it off they won't be able to.


We're speakin the same language here. That's exactly what I do. What program do you use to make backups?

I think that maintaining coherence between the OS and all installed programs if far more important than reducing the backup size at any cost. Hard drive space is about $.20 per Gig, you are not saving that much money when you try to save space.

Right now I have 120 GB of backups and I estimate it cost $24-$36 in HD real estate. Less than the cost of the backup software.

What I do believe in is keeping data and software as separate as possible.

Also whenever I install software I perform a backup before and after. Before in case something goes wrong, after so if everything goes right I never have to do the same work twice.

And I always do a backup of the damaged OS before restoring just in case there are important information that might be overwritten.

System restore should only be disabled by those who own backup software and can be trusted to use it.

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Anyway your procedures are probably right for your needs and your goals. Maybe you should have used "My" instead of "Perfect" and there would be more discussion and less debate.

You probably need about 4-5 guides based on people's priorities, how often they are willing to backup, how much space they are comfortable using for backups, how often they make software changes .....

Any in any case the perfect setup had D: as a large two drive RAID 1 array.

This guide is not perfect. What caught my eye as being flat out wrong is the section on the page file. It is not recommened to have the page file on the same physical drive as your OS. This is because it takes too much time and resources to resize the page file when need be. Even if you have it as a fixed size, it still is best practice to put it on a seperate physical drive. Your hard drive can only do one thing at a time, so no matter where you put the page on the same hard drive, you can still only access either system files or the page at one time. And setting it as a fixed size is not the best practice for performance. All that a fixed size does is prevent fragmenting of the page file. Just think. The more information, you can keep in extremely fast RAM the better, right? When you set the page file to system managed, Windows will do just that. It will keep as much information in the physical memory - RAM, and only use the page when necessary. Of course, when you have one hard drive, having a fixed page file size is beneficial because it sucks when the size of the page needs to be changed and it is noticable when it is on the same drive as the OS.

Partitioning is not practical either, the only good that comes out of partitioning is some sort of organization. I guess if having all user files on a seperate partition is useful for you, than that's good for you.

Most of these tweaks and such can be done easily and seamlessly with nLite. Service Pack 2 can be slipstreamed into the XP disc as can IE7 and even drivers and Windows Updates. All with more tweaks than you can imagine!

disk space maybe cheap but, time is money the quicker your restores and backups take the more you get to play with your computer, i have alwasy installed apps on drives other than the system drive, and NEVER had any problems, except for apps that insist on installing themsleves to the system drive which isn't a great problem, if an app stops workgin after you re-image, just re-insatll the app.

why the hell woudl you care about raid 1 on d: i woudl rather have raid 0 on c: speed is my priority drives are cheap geta NAS and backup to that, most NAS's come with the softwrae needed.

You took the words right out of my mouth.

@Lord Xenos
The purpose of my guide is to make backing up and restoring Windows as painless and easy as possible. I stated that multiple times in my guide. You guys are right, this is probably not the "Perfect" installation of windows, but for the average user, this guide is a gem. I insist on putting the page file on another partition because not everybody has 2 or more harddrives at their disposal.

I absolutely agree that moving the page file to another physical harddrive is the best option and should probably be stated somewhere in my guide. I will make changes to better explain this in my guide, but as of right now... the page file is only being moved to make the C: partition smaller, thus easier to backup and restore.

@Codesmith

Jesus freaking christ man. You and I both know that is bloat more than efficiency. My first backup is 800 MB. My second backup is 1200 MB and my third backup is usually around 1200 MB. I am extremely efficient when it comes to making my backups.

Nobody should ever and I really mean this, EVER install windows on an unpartitioned harddrive. After about 1 or 2 months, your harddrive becomes extremely huge and making backups becomes extremely unpractical in terms of space required and time spent backing up and restoring. By making the backups as small as possible, you ensure that restoring is quick and painless. But I already said that like a hundred times.


When I build computers for my friends and I do all of the installing of OS drivers updates programs etc, I make sure I follow the same pattern of backing up before and after stuff is installed.

hey really we have pretty much been on the same page all along, there just a few words on the page that are differnt

Why is 120 GB Bloat? Each backup is about 24 GB.

I manually backup when I make major changes and have an automatic backup every two weeks.

Plus I always keep a backup of a clean install.

I only delete the old backups when I run low on disc space.

Backups take about 7-14 minutes and I can continue using the computer while they run.

It never takes me more than 15 minutes to recover from a software problem. I never have to install the same program twice.

I got a 74 GB Raptor, 2 400GB RE2 in a RAID 1 config for important data, and a 750 GB for less important data. And 5 120 GB for external use.

Even my VMWare virtual machines use at least 20 GB, because they are a pain to enlarge latter.

I also use EMC retrospect to backup important folders, then copy the backup from the RAID 1 to an external in case my PC gets fried.

Not a lot of work, and it give me a lot of protection.

Just junction C:\Program Files to another drive/partition:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTFS_junction_point

Extremely inefficient.

I regret to inform that InfraRecorder has proven extremely unreliable. This has been the final verdict based on using it on 3 different computers with terrible results. CDs fail, CDs succeed but are not entirely 100% stable. Yes I have tried different brands of CDs. This is my final verdict. Sorry, InfraRecorder is just not a suitable free alternative to Nero.

Personally after a restore I want all my 100% of my software to work 100% of the time exactly like it did when the backup was taken.

The easiest way to do that is keep on the software on one partition.

If some of your software is out of sync with your OS you can't be sure everything will work properly.

Also True Image only backup up the physical partition. The Boot CD would 100% ignore the link you are suggesting, which means its something you need to avoid if you are using backup software.

If I were to write a guide on running a good system, it'd be a lot like this.

Very good job.

there is redundancy and there is just plain waste of space, yours my friend, i hate to say is waste of space, really how many backups of the backups do you need

The search tips are brilliant. that will reduce my annoyance with search. ten stars for you!

Great guide!!

I'd recommend adding Deepburner it's the best free burner I have found.

Also GomPlayer is a fantastic video player, I prefer it over VLC.

I have an AMD 6000 3ghz 2 gigs of ram and an 8600 GT and Gomplayer actually lags while watching high def x264 files. VLC doesn't lag.

What about the registry? Don't most programs save settings in there? Those get lost when you restore an old backup.

Wierd I've never had lag with gomplayer, and your PCs much better than mine. The only annoance I have with VLC are slow responses with the controls, such as pause.

I need one backup of a clean install.
A backup from last month.
A Backup from last week.
A Backup from yesterday.

The backups happen automatically.

This has costs me maybe $25 in hard drive capacity on an old 120 GB drive I converted to external use.

This backup strategy has saved me at least 100 hours of unnecessary work in the past 4 years.

It all depends on how often you make major system changes.

Mind you this is the system where I am constantly installing and uninstalling new software, games, drivers .....

I probably install/uninstall something 2-3 times a week.

My other PCs and the ones of my family and friends only have one backup.

Those computers only have familiar, trusted software installed, and other than updates, don't see much change.

Also the PC I tinker with is also the one I use for work, so I can afford zero unexpected downtime

If you really want to accuse me of overkill, then consider that I run my web programming server and development environment inside a virtual machine, stored on a RAID 1 array.

When I upgraded to vista all I had to do is install some VMWare software and fire up the virtual machine and I was ready to get to work.

I think... It is very useful. Thanks once again

Not a big problem.
(I recommend you create 2 directories on your D: drive, 1)Program Files &
2)(inside your new D:\program files)Common Files ,, then Just open regedit and goto this key,,
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
Here you will see 2 entries for 1)"ProgramFilesDir" & 2)"CommonFilesDir",,,
Just change the drive letter to "D" in both cases by double clicking on the "Name" entry in the
right pane, and changing the drive letter in the popup. After this any installer will offer the
new directory as the default install directory,,,

Thanks for the guide but i have 1 question.

I start using windows and got hit by a deadly virus. now i restore my system with this will i loose the files i had in "My Documents" folder which were created after i took the backup and before i got hit my the virus ?

my guide:
install xp
install updates
install programs I use FREQUENTLY
install any games I may play FREQUENTLY
optimize xp
burn image to cd

if I need to restore then plop cd into drive and restore image.

simple. no need for a user guide and no need to worry about my hard drive crashing and having no backup.

Yes, any file created After the backup will be gone.

You might add that this trick is irrelevant if you are using the classic start menu. You simply don't get these options.