{"id":697,"date":"2009-07-03T00:01:21","date_gmt":"2009-07-03T07:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=697"},"modified":"2013-02-10T21:39:54","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T04:39:54","slug":"less-than-fabulous-restore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=697","title":{"rendered":"Less Than Fabulous Restore"},"content":{"rendered":"

During my recent visit with PC disaster<\/a>, I had the opportunity to put the PC’s Backup program to the test. Well, actually, I had the opportunity to the the PC’s Restore<\/em> program to the test. The results were rather tepid.
\n
\nUsing a Backup program is a must for any PC user. It’s an insurance policy to have that spare copy of your stuff “just in case.” So most people, well most smart<\/em> people backup their computer’s data and never give it a second thought.<\/p>\n

When my PC died, I figured that I had lost maybe one day’s worth of stuff max. That’s because my system backs up all its files every day. Fortunately, I didn’t lose anything, as the system died after the midnight backup.<\/p>\n

When the computer does die, or data is lost, that’s when you rely upon Backup’s ugly stepchild, the Restore program.<\/p>\n

The Restore program is designed to restore files from a backup either to their original location or to another location, say a replacement computer. Ideally, you never lose anything, thanks to the ability of the Restore program to get your stuff back.<\/p>\n

After my PC died, I set up my laptop as its replacement. I then went about restoring my work files from the backup disk (an external My Book drive) to the laptop. That’s when I recognized the shortcomings of the PC Restore program.<\/p>\n

The PC Backup program backs up all your files, but apparently it doesn’t organize them or keep them synchronized. So when I went to restore my files, I got back some old, old files that I had long since deleted or moved from my work folder.<\/p>\n

Now, that’s a minor complaint; I instantly recognized the unneeded files and deleted them after they were restored. Still, I think that the Restore program could be smarter. In fact, upon looking at the backup itself, I noticed that nothing is ever really organized: Windows just keeps backing up files and not really removing anything no longer needed or even deleting very old backups.<\/p>\n

I contrast the approach Windows uses with what I’ve experienced on the Mac with the Time Machine backup.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Windows Backup program, Time Machine works by synchronizing the files it backs up with the way your disk looks at a specific point in time. So when the file Enemies List<\/code> appears in your folder for only three days at the start of June, that file is only shown on the backup for three days in June, not forever.<\/p>\n

The end result of the Time Machine approach is that you restore your files to a condition on a specific date, not all the files as Windows does. I like that better.<\/p>\n

Consider today’s rant but a minor quibble. The bottom line is that having the backup itself is what’s most important. Getting the files back with Restore is awesome<\/em> and beats having to redo all that work. Yet it takes only a bit more programming and some insight for Microsoft to achieve what Apple has done with Time Machine.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the programmers at Microsoft need to restore some files on a PC and a Mac, and then they’ll understand what I’m talking about?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Using a Backup program is a must for any PC user. It’s an insurance policy to have that spare copy of your stuff “just in case.” So most people, well most smart<\/em> people backup their computer’s data and never give it a second thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,17],"class_list":["post-697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main","tag-pc","tag-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=697"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4202,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697\/revisions\/4202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}