Let's say you are tasked with backing up a Windows installation. You could back up everything, but that's inefficient. One can make a backup more compact by considering these directories:     (1) Much of what can be found in C:/WINDOWS is also replaceable by just reinstalling the system from scratch (and although you may not get back the exact binaries you had on the system due to updates, there is seldom a logical reason to hold onto old versions of Windows system files).      (2) Most of the things in C:/Program Files is replaceable; for instance if you want to get FireFox up and running again, just re-download the binaries from their website. Even large pieces of software such as Adobe's over-priced Creative Suite is reconstructible provided you back up the easy to store key.      (3) The data that is irreplaceable is pretty much everything in C:/Users (especially in the oft-forgotten subdirectories related to AppData). This obviously needs to be backed up.   Aside from those three obvious locations, what other parts of a Windows can or cannot be replaced, and should be considered when backing up a Windows system?  For instance, from what I understand, the registry (which will have unique data in) is actually stored physically somewhere on the harddrive as well.
123860
A couple years ago, my father made a backup of one of our computers using Windows Backup and Restore. It was either Windows Vista or Windows 7, not sure which. He backed up the entire computer, including Program Files, AppData, My Documents, everything, and now it is on .zip files on a WD Passport with 300GB, I'm not sure exactly what it is called. Now I am trying to decide which files to keep and which to delete. Most of what we would keep are files, as we would need CD's to use the programs, and I'm pretty sure they would install everything all over again. That pretty much leaves out Program Files, however, I'm not sure about AppData. For example, my mother used Greetings Workshop and wants some files from there, and she may want to keep some default settings she used. I am talking generally here, as I'm sure some programs have different ways of saving things in AppData.  What, if anything, should I keep from AppData, and what should I delete?
26609
I'm a new Linux user and a Windows convert. I tried Ubuntu (Dapper Drake) a few years ago and liked it quite a bit, and I'm in the process of installing Xubuntu 13.10 along side Windows7 on my brand new SSD! At this point, Windows is still being installed because I need it to be, but Linux is getting installed because I want to use it! I've done quite a bit of research and I've toyed around with Linux before, but I'm still a newbie and I have a few questions concerning partitions and program installations..  My new SSD isn't huge (120GB Samsung 840 EVO), and I'll be using my old 800GB HDD as a secondary drive. The thing is, I plan on using Linux as much as possible; only switching over to Windows7 when I absolutely need to. Because of this, I'll be doing a 50:50 split of my SSD for each OS (60GB for Linux, 60GB for Windows). I'm also planning on splitting my old, 800GB HDD into 3 partitions: some space for extra linux programs, some space for extra windows programs, and then a shared NTFS partition for all of my data (music, videos, documents, etc.).  So to sum up my space situation:   ~60gb SSD + 200gb HDD for Linux..  ~60gb SSD + 200gb HDD for Windows.. ~400gb shared NTFS..   This leads me to my questions.. While I have a fairly good idea of how my Windows setup will work (60gb C: drive, 200gb D: drive, etc.), the Unix/Linux directory structure is still very new to me and is making this process a little bit confusing. I know that it's possible (and common) to partition your "/" directory and "home" directory separately, and - as I understand it - the "/" partition is meant to contain system specific programs and data, while the "home" partition contains the programs and data of the various users.  However, I've also heard that most (if not all) of the programs that you install from repositories using APT are installed into the "/" directory. As someone who works with music/art programs and plays games (which can take up a LOT of space), this leads me to believe that I'll need a large "/" partition!  I've also read (from here: ) that the "home" directory is "the place where all the user-specific files, your data in other words, are stored. It is roughly equivalent to the “My Documents” folder on a MS Windows desktop". But, as I mentioned above, I intend to keep all of my non-OS-specific data (music, documents, videos, etc.) on my ~400gb shared partition, anyway. This really leads me to believe that I don't need a big home partition at all and that I should focus on partitioning as much space as possible for "/". And still, I've heard other people claim that you only need around 10gb of space for your root partition!?   Edit: Also, I just found out that programs like Steam and Wine take up space inside the "home" directory.  So, what should I do? I basically have 60gb SSD and 200gb HDD space for holding nothing but Linux programs. All of my data will be going onto my 400gb shared NTFS partition, so is it even worth making separate partitions for "/" and "home"? If I install both root and home on my 60gb SSD, how can I also use the extra 200gb of HDD space for more Linux programs? Can I expand root across multiple drives somehow, or maybe have a symlink or something that connects the two drives together?  As I said before, I'm still a major Linux newbie, so there may be something that I've completely misunderstood or overlooked. As someone who does a lot of art/music creation and gaming on my PC, I tend to use up a lot of program space quite quickly, especially since games and music libraries just keep getting bigger and bigger every year! Thanks for the help, I'm looking forward to learning more about Linux! :]
8213
I have data and files on my system, running Windows, and want to make sure that I don't lose all the data or information when it gets toasted, either by a power surge or corrupted medium.  I've heard that I should look into some kind of archive tool.  What should I be looking into here in a backup program?
11772
I'm quite new to Ubuntu and want to create a backup. I'm really not sure what files and folders to include so that if I restore my system it will be as it is now. I can't seem to find good details of this anywhere. Hopefully someone could help me with this. Is it possible to backup everything as it is now so in the event of a system restore I don't have to reinstall programs and settings?
29270
I have two laptops, a Dell XPS running 64-bit and HP Pavilion 32-bit and I want to replace the Dell hard drive with the hard drive in the HP temporarily because my Dell laptop became very slow and I want to test if the problem is with the hard drive or something else. The question is: Can I do that without losing data in the two hard drives? I know that maybe data on C partitions will be deleted and that's OK, but will the rest of the data will be lost or not?
71744
In typical PCs the Size of Windows Folder is 6 to 8 GB but in my Case its 25GB. How can I delete the unwanted files from the Windows Folder (which, in turn, will optimize my C Drive size).  My system is Windows 7 with 60 GB in C Drive with 59 GB occupied.
4727
In Windows there’re perhaps only a couple of important folders (by important I mean important in my logical picture of the Windows file system) in the installation drive (in my case C:\). Namely Program Files and Windows. I simply stay away from Windows folder and the “add remove program files” is good enough to handle the program files folder of Windows. Of course there’s a folder named Users where the users (who are not admins) can access only their folders.  Thus there’s a clear picture at some level in my mind of the Windows file system. In Ubuntu, when I reach the location /, there’s a huge list of folders, most of which I have no clue as to what they contain. The /bin folder seems to be the equivalent of the Windows folder in windows. The /usr folder seems like it’s the equivalent of the Users folder in Windows. But even the /home folder looks like it can fit the bill.  Please understand that I do understand, that Ubuntu (Linux) has a different character than that of Windows, i.e., there need not be exact equivalent of Windows functions, in Ubuntu. All I am looking for is a bit more clearer picture of the Ubuntu file system.   This question is a part of a bigger question which I am splitting up to make it more answerable. The original question can be found here:
117074
The article  mentions exactly what happens during the refresh and reset operations in Windows 8:  Refresh     The PC boots into Windows RE. Windows RE scans the hard drive for your data, settings, and apps, and puts them aside (on the same drive). Windows RE installs a fresh copy of Windows. Windows RE restores the data, settings, and apps it has set aside into the newly installed copy of Windows. The PC restarts into the newly installed copy of Windows.   Reset     The PC boots into the Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE). Windows RE erases and formats the hard drive partitions on which Windows and personal data reside. Windows RE installs a fresh copy of Windows. The PC restarts into the newly installed copy of Windows.   It is my understanding that Windows RE (Recovery Environment) is included as part of the System Reserved partition created by default on the first hard disk. The size of this partition has gone up to 350 MB from the 100 MB it used to be in Vista/Windows 7, no doubt as a result of adding these features.  Now we have  how to skip the creation of this System Reserved partition during Setup. Basically, the same techniques that used to work with Windows 7 work with Windows 8 as well. What I want to know is, what will be the exact repercussions of not having the System Reserved partition in place?  I assume Troubleshoot / Advanced options should still be available as before:    But what about the Troubleshoot menu itself?    Will the Refresh and Reset options disappear? Will they remain but be unavailable? Or possibly they will throw an error if selected? Also, will it be possible to access and successfully execute these options if installation media is available? Anything else that might be affected?
85932
In Windows 7 you could create a system image that you restore later on in the Backup and Restore options:    However Backup and Restore options have changed in Windows 8. They look like this now:    Is it still possible to create a system image so that I can restore it later on or has this  feature been removed?
48574
I'm planning a backup strategy based on .  I want to do a full system backup excluding files and directories that would be useless for the restore to have a working system again. I already excluded:  # System: exclude /dev/* exclude /proc/* exclude /sys/* exclude /tmp/* exclude /run/* exclude /mnt/* exclude /media/* exclude /lost+found  # Application: exclude /*.pyc exclude /*.pyo   I wonder which other entries I can add to the exclude list without compromising the restored system. Talking about a "generic" Linux system, can you suggest further glob extensions, temporary directories, caches, etc. I can exclude safely?
123720
I'm new to SVN and I'd like to know what methods are available for backing up repositories in a Windows environment?
73813
Is there any software for cleaning Windows' local settings / temp folder?   With no installing, not many options, just a simple, nice interface with buttons to do what's needed and which wouldn't scare the younger users. Explicitly made for clearing the temp folder? Or maybe there is some command which can be run in  (cmd.exe)?  It's just that  has some weird bug. It stores the files in this folder and now I and few other users are experiencing problems with files being used, not found and lot of mess generally which I guess is caused by the files being stored in this folder and not overwriting.  So it's kind of a hard situation here..  does not help in clearing this folder and  is very confusing for young users and people not into the OS.
71798
I've been using the 64-bit version of Windows 7 since the CTP and have run into a few problems with applications that get installed in the C:\Program Files (x86) folder. What's the purpose of having 2 separate Program Files directories anyway?  Every program I've installed has gone into the C:\Program Files (x86) folder. It doesn't seem to matter if the app is 32 or 64 bit. Why don't 64-bit apps get placed in C:\Program Files?  Is there a way to change the default to be C:\Program Files instead? Would it mess anything up if I just put everything into C:\Program Files?   If indeed there is some benefit to having a separate folder for 64 bit apps, it seems like the more sensible default would have been to use C:\Program Files for x86 apps and create a new C:\Program Files (x64) folder for the new 64-bit apps. This would help maintain backwards compatibility. I work as a software developer and some of my projects contain path references to libraries under C:\Program Files. Now those references are broken on the Windows 7 machine that has placed them in C:\Program Files (x86). I even tried to change the target location in the installer to be C:\Program Files, but that was ignored and the app went into C:\Program Files (x86) anyway.  This is very frustrating because I need to share source code between 32 and 64 bit machines and I don't want to have to mess with some configuration file that sets the path to these libraries differently on different machines.  Edit regarding environment variables: (Using only default English values of variables for simplicity.) On a 64-bit machine %ProgramFiles% will be C:\Program Files while the brand new variable %ProgramFiles(x86)% will be C:\Program Files (x86). So, if you have a 32-bit program that needs to find the folder path that it would be installed under, it would need to check to see if it was running on a 32-bit or a 64-bit version of Windows in order to know which environment variable to use. Any 32-bit apps that were written without this consideration would need to be updated in order to work correctly on a 64-bit machine. So even using environment variables, the backwards compatibility is broken.  Also, %ProgramFiles(x86)% doesn't exist on 32-bit versions of Windows. If it did, then 32-bit apps could just always use that environment variable and wouldn't need any conditional logic based on which OS they're running on.
2256
The example below is simplified to show the core of the problem, not the problem itself(my file tree is more complicated than that).  Let's say that I have two files I want to back up; one in ~/somedir/otherdir, the other in ~/otherdir/somedir/. I want to backup files from both directories in one git repository. How can I do this? Soft links only carry information about where file is stored, not the actual file, whereas hard links are somewhat foreign to me. Is this a case where hard links should be used?  Clarification: I want to use git because of four reasons: I want to store dotfiles/scripts/configurations that are text files and keep track of changes over time, I know git, I have a private git repository I could use to store them, and I want to be able to share these files across multiple PCs.
103902
Check out the screenshot below, I want to extend my C partition (where Windows is installed) into the unallocated free space shown. This space was cleared up by shrinking the D partition. I can extend the D partition if I want to, but not the C.  Why not?
5008
I want to reinstall Windows on a machine which has some very obscure drivers. I don't much fancy having to hunt round for them (that's if I'm able to locate them at all). Is it possible to save or backup already installed drivers? If so, how do I do this? How do I then go about installing these 'saved' drivers?
80352
Possible Duplicates:             I thought that all operating systems would merge folder content when being moved to the same location. Imagine my surprise when that didn't happen and I have hundreds, if not thousands of files that have gone missing and are nowhere to be found.  Because they were not "deleted" they are not in the trash bin.  I've tried to do some recovery using a program called stellarPheonix but after about a 24hour scan, it didn't recognize any of the raw files (.dng,.arw) as image files and so I couldn't see if they could be recovered. It also didn't show the directory structure, which would be handy.  I tried a quick scan, but all it showed was files that were still on the HD, not sure what the point of that is.  I've used recover 2000 on Win and it does a good job, does anyone know of anything that works quickly and reliably for this kind of file recovery. (I don't think I should have to do a sector-by=sector for this kind of file loss)