Backup without the Bother

Let's face it, backup is like flossing—everyone knows it's important, but many people simply can't remember to do it. In fact, according to Symantec's recent SMB Protection Gap survey of small business owners, about half don't backup their PCs—and a third don't even have anti-virus protection.

"Most people don't appreciate the risk unless they've had a problem," says Charles Tholen, chief technology officer for Cognoscape, a consulting firm in Addison, Texas. "We worked with one couple who ran an appraisal business. They let their kids play on their computer, and the kids installed some software that infected the machine with malware, so it was unusable, and the couple couldn't respond to customers. If they didn't have backup in a situation like that it could have been catastrophic to their business, because the banks or title companies might go to another appraiser and never come back."

With Windows^® 7 Professional, you can schedule periodic, automatic backups, so you can save your data or an entire system image to a local drive or network. If you accidentally delete a file, or if some malicious software makes your hard drive fail, you can easily restore your information.

You can determine what files Windows should backup or let Windows choose, in which case the system will backup commonly used files, as well as a system image, and continue to do so on a set schedule.

You can back up the information to an internal hard disk, external drive, a writeable CD or DVD, or a network share. "By backing up your data automatically to an external source, Windows 7 Professional really eliminates the Achilles' heel of most small-business networks," says Carl Mazzanti, president of eMazzanti Technologies in Hoboken, New Jersey. "Automatic backup is essential because backup is the last thought on everyone's mind."

Of course, backup is only useful if you can retrieve the information. Windows 7 Professional adds other elements that help in this regard, including System Restore, which creates a file that contains the entire contents of your PC. System Restore can get your entire computer up and running quickly in the case of a major mishap without your needing to reinstall drivers and applications, reload your data, or put the configurations back to the way you like.

"The ability of Windows 7 Professional to give you a full system restore is invaluable," Tholen says. "I've run into situations with clients where their software goes haywire and messes up their entire PC. The Windows 7 Professional backup tools can let you get right back to work even if the worst happens."