THE SMART APPROACH
Now your PC is working smoothly again, create a backup regimen to spare you grief further down the line.
Now your PC is working smoothly again, create a backup regimen to spare you grief further down the line.
The simplest way to resolve boot problems is to effortlessly roll back to a moment before the glitch occurred. No wasted time troubleshooting, no heart-inmouth moments as you wonder if you’ll ever see your data again. Instead, a brief tut-tut followed by the restoration of your latest backup, and on you go.
This approach requires you to have a back-up plan in place, so if you’ve not already done so, download and install Macrium Reflect Free (www.macrium. com/reflectfree.aspx). During setup, be sure to click Options under ‘Download Location & Options’ to select ‘Reflect Installer and PE Components’. This will download the components required to create the all-important recovery media, for which you’ll need a spare CD, DVD or USB flash drive (1GB or larger is recommended, but you may get away with 512MB). We recommend the USB drive route – it’s much quicker to load.
SET UP BACKUP
Once downloaded and installed, insert your flash drive or blank disc, launch Macrium Reflect and choose ‘Other Tasks > Create Rescue Media’. Select your target drive from the menu, then click Build. Wait for the process to
complete, then safely eject your drive. Test it by rebooting your PC and pressing the key prompted to bring up the boot menu. Select your USB drive (choose the UEFI option if more than one entry is present) and it should boot to the main Macrium user interface. Once you’ve verified it works, reboot to Windows proper, then open Macrium again.
You’re now ready to put your backup in place to protect your entire system – or Windows setup if you’ve partitioned your drive to keep data
separate from it. Click the ‘Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows’ button. You’ll see two or three partitions are selected. Click the … next to Folder under Destination to choose your backup drive – typically an external USB hard drive or network storage. Once done, click ‘Advanced Options > Auto Verify Image’ and tick the ‘Verify image…’ box before clicking OK followed by Next.
Here’s the key part of the process: setting a schedule for backing up your system. Macrium offers full and differential backups – differential backups are smaller because they simply record the changes made since the last full backup was taken but require the full backup is present to work. If you have enough drive space, we recommend choosing the ‘Differential Backup Set’ under the Template drop-down menu. This creates one full backup a month, and a differential backup daily (weekdays only), so you’ll never have to roll back more than 24 hours into the past.
To preserve disk space, full backups are kept for six months, and differential backups for 30 days before being deleted, but Macrium offers a handy ‘purge’ setting that deletes the oldest backup sets if your backup drive space falls below a certain level (5GB by default, but you can alter it from here). Alternatively, you can edit the retention rules – which define how many backups are kept. Try setting a specific number – 2 or 4 – for full backups, while holding on to differential backups for up to two weeks only.
Once you’ve configured your backup plan, click Next to review your settings (click Back to make changes).
Once you’re happy, click Finish, verify ‘Run this backup now’ is ticked and then click OK to take your first backup. From now on, Macrium will update your system backup in the background following the schedule you set – you’ll be prompted each time the backup’s about to run in case you want to postpone it for any reason.
RESTORING YOUR BACKUP
With your backups in place, you can now get on with your daily life, knowing that in the event of disaster, you can easily roll back your PC. All changes since the backup was taken are wiped out – including your data, which is why you should check out the box to ensure it’s backed up separately to potentially save hours of work from being lost.
If disaster strikes, restoring your backup is as simple as following the step-by-step guide below. Your corrupt Windows installation will be overwritten by the last working version and you should find you’re able to boot back into Windows again. If problems persist, consider rolling back to an earlier backup, but remember – the further back you go, the more changes (including newly installed programs and drivers) you’ll lose.