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- Hour 19 -

Back Up and Squeeze Disk Space

This hour is for everybody and for nobody! Here's the reason for the paradox: Everybody wants more disk space, and nobody backs up often enough! This hour attempts to help you get more disk space and back up more often.

Windows 95 also contains a backup program that lets you back up your files. By making regular backups, you help protect your files from accidental erasure later. If a disaster occurs, such as a disk drive failure (often called a disk crash), you can restore the backup by copying the files from the backup to a healthy disk drive.

Windows 95 contains the DriveSpace technology that compresses disk space by as much as 30 to 100 percent. Therefore, if you have a 200-megabyte disk drive, you can run DriveSpace, and you will have up to 400 megabytes of space once DriveSpace finishes compressing the drive. DriveSpace compresses both hard disks and floppy disks.

The highlights of this hour include:

Back Up Often

The Windows 95 Backup program is a comprehensive backup program that you can use to save a copy of your disk files. The backup protects you against data loss. If your hard disk breaks down, once you fix or replace it, you will then be able to restore the backup and resume your work. Without the backup, you would have to try to recreate the entire disk drive, which is often impossible, because you will not have a copy of every transaction and document that you've created.

JUST A MINUTE: The Windows 95 Backup program both creates and restores backups.

Many people back up regularly. Most of these people back up regularly because they once had a disk crash but did not have a backup. (The author is one of those guilty of losing a disk and all the data before learning to back up!) Please don't be one to learn the hard way. Learn to use the Windows 95 Backup program and back up your files regularly.

Windows Minute

Put It in Reverse--Back Up!

The first time you back up you should back up your entire disk drive. Once you back up the entire disk, you then can make subsequent daily or weekly backups and back up only the files that you've added or changed since the most recent backup.

The Windows 95 Backup program often can compress files while backing them up so that you can back up large disk drives to other disks or tapes that would not normally be able to hold all the data. If you turn on the compression option, the backup should take less time and make the backups easier to do.

The Windows 95 Backup program also lets you select which files you want to back up so that you can make a special backup of a few selected files. Windows 95 Backup can create a full backup of your entire disk drive or a differential backup (or incremental backup), which backs up only the files that have changed since the most recent backup. Backup also lets you direct restored files to a different drive or directory from where they originated.

TIME SAVER: Take your home computer's backup files with you to work every day and bring your work's backup files home each night. If a terrible disaster happens at home or at work, such as a fire, you will be able to restore your data, because the backups would not be destroyed.

You must decide which medium you want to store the backup on. The Windows 95 Backup program creates backups on the following types of media:

Windows 95 Backup uses the QIC-113 format, which means that Windows 95 Backup can back up and restore onto tapes and other media that have been used by other backup software. Once you make a full backup, especially the very first time, you may also want to run Windows 95 Backup's comparison option to make sure that the backup matches the original data.

JUST A MINUTE: If you use one of the new popular alternatives to hard disks, such as the large capacity removable disks, never fear. The Windows 95 Backup program can easily back up to those disks. During backup, Windows 95 treats the drives as if they are hard disks. You must make sure the disk has a cartridge inside before starting the backup or Windows 95 Backup will not be able to detect the drive.

Not only can the Backup program back up your files to tape, but the Backup's Tools menu option supplies these common tape drive utilities:


Task 19.1: Backing Up Your Disk Drive

Step 1: Description
This task explains how to use the Windows 95 Backup program and its major features. This task will describe how to back up a hard disk to floppy disks. Although a tape drive or network drive makes backing up easier than backing up to floppy disks, because you don't have to keep switching diskettes in and out of the drive, most people today still back up to floppy disks.

CAUTION: Backing up to diskettes can take a lot of diskettes! Even if you use Windows 95 Backup's compression option, a large hard disk backup consumes many diskettes. If you have a backup tape drive and want to back up to your tape drive (you should do this if you have the hardware) select your tape drive instead of floppy disks as you follow this task.


Step 2: Action

1. Display the Start menu.

2. Select the Programs command to display the next cascaded menu.

3. Display the Accessories menu.

4. Display the System Tools menu.

5. Click the Backup menu item. Windows 95 displays the Backup screen, shown in Figure 19.1.


Figure 19.1. The opening Backup window for backing up a disk drive.


The backup screen that you see is a Backup opening screen that describes the backup process. Read the screen to get an overview of the backup process. If this is the last time you want to see the opening screen, click the option at the bottom of the page.

6. Click the OK command button after you finish reading the screen.

7. After a brief pause, Backup displays yet another descriptive window, shown in Figure 19.2. Backup is informing you of the full system backup file set. A backup file set is a predetermined list of files to back up that you can create. If you back up only a certain group of files on a regular basis, you can create a backup file set that tells Backup to back up only those files. By creating a backup set, you need only to specify the group of files in that set one time. In the future, when you want to back up that same set of files, you will open that backup file set and begin the backup without having to specify all the files again.


Figure 19.2. The full system backup file set should be your first backup.


The Windows 95 Backup program supplies you with one backup file set called the full system backup file set. A backup set is a list of files that describes one backup. You can create backup file sets that tell Backup exactly how you want to back up and then select the appropriate backup file set when you want to back up. The Windows 95 Backup program supplies one starting backup file set, the full system backup file set, that instructs Backup to back up your entire hard disk.

The window is suggesting that you use the full system backup file set the first time you back up. This task will use that backup file set to back up your entire hard disk (including programs, data, the registry, and system files including the system files that are normally hidden from your view) to floppy disks. Later, you can create your own backup file sets that describe certain differential backups or backups that will save only a certain set of files or folders.

JUST A MINUTE: If you want to follow this task but not take the time right now to back up your entire hard disk to floppy disks, you'll be able to cancel the backup process once it starts.
8. If you don't want to see Figure 19.2's reminder window, you can check the option at the bottom of the screen to hide future displays of the window.

Click OK now to continue with the backup process.

CAUTION: At this point, you may or may not get a cautionary window telling you either that you do not have a tape drive or that Windows 95 did not detect a tape drive. Backup assumes that you'll want to back up to a tape drive, even though many people have no tape drives. If you have no tape drive, click OK. If you do have one, close the window and exit Backup. Select the Control Panel's Add New Hardware icon to install the tape drive.
9. The Backup program does not start backing up right away because Backup still does not know the kind of backup you want to perform or the type of media to which you want the backup to go.

Backup displays the window shown in Figure 19.3. The tabs at the top of the window let you select either a backup, restore, or comparison. For this task, you will keep the Backup tab selected. You can look through the two other tabbed windows if you want to learn more about the other tasks Backup can perform. All three tabbed windows work virtually the same, except that the direction of the data flow is reversed using Backup and Restore, and the Compare tabbed dialog box does not back up or restore, but compares a backup to its original set of files to make sure the backup worked.

10. The Backup window contains two panes that work like the Explorer's screen. The window pane on the left describes the storage devices that you may want to back up. The right window pane describes the details of whatever device you select.

Although you are going to perform a full backup in this task, take a moment for a detour so you can learn something about creating a backup file set.

Select drive C by clicking on the square, and wait while Backup collects a list of all files on your drive C. The collection takes a while. Once finished, Backup displays a list of all files and folders from drive C, with a check mark next to each. Backup assumes that you want to back up the entire drive C. If there are folders or files you don't want to back up, uncheck them.


Figure 19.3. The Backup window where you describe the backup details.


11. Press the Next Step command button so that you can tell Backup what medium you want to use for the backup. Backup displays the screen shown in Figure 19.4.


Figure 19.4. Tell Backup the backup's destination medium.


12. Select drive A. Now that Windows 95 Backup knows the files to back up and the destination medium, you can save the backup file set that you've just designed (selected files from drive C backed up to drive A). To do so, select File | Save and enter a name for the backup file set.

Instead of backing up just drive C, select the File | Open File Set command to display the backup file set open dialog box.

13. Select the Full System Backup. Backup then scans your computer and its files, looking for everything to back up, as well as the hardware you can back up to. If you have only one hard disk, the full system backup file set will be the same file selection as you would have if you'd selected all of drive C. If you have several hard disks, the full system backup file set will select every hard disk. Your only job left is to indicate the medium to back up to.

JUST A MINUTE: When you want to make a differential backup, select Settings | Options and click on the Backup tabbed dialog box. Click the option labeled Incremental back up of selected files that have changed since the last full back up.
14. Press the Next Step command button and then select drive A for the destination floppy disk (or your tape drive, if you have one).

15. Press the Start Backup command button. Backup displays the Backup Set Label dialog box, shown in Figure 19.5. The backup set label is a descriptive name that labels this particular backup. For example, you could name this backup My first full backup.

CAUTION:: If you back up sensitive data, you may want to add a password to the backup so that others will not get your backup files and restore the files onto their system. Before restoring a password-protected backup set, Windows 95 Backup asks the user for the password and refuses to restore without the proper password. Be sure to store your password in a safe place so you can find it (but nobody else can) if you forget the password.
Backup displays a dialog box that illustrates the backup procedure. Your entire hard disk will probably not fit on a single diskette. Backup will ask you to insert the next diskette in drive A after Backup fills the first diskette. If you are backing up to a tape, the entire hard disk may fit on the tape without your intervening at all.

TIME SAVER: Select the Settings | Options menu and turn on the option Turn on audible prompts in the General tabbed dialog box, so that Backup beeps when you need to insert the next diskette.
16. When Backup finishes (click Cancel if you want to stop the backup early), select File | Exit. Put the backup disks (or tape) in a safe place and label the backup media so you'll know the backup is there.


Step 3: Review
The Windows 95 Backup program contains a complete set of backup, restore, and comparison features. The backup file sets make backing up regularly easy to do, because you can create backup file sets that describe different backup settings and open whatever backup file set you want to use. (The Windows 95 Backup program supplies a full system backup set for you to use when you want to back up all hard disk drives.)

TIME SAVER: The Microsoft Windows 95 add-on product named Microsoft Plus! lets you preset a time for backing up your files. You can perform a hands-off backup if you back up to another hard disk or to a network disk drive. (When backing up to floppy disks, you have to be there to change the diskettes.)

Running DriveSpace

The DriveSpace program is easy to run. You only need to run DriveSpace once, because after compressing the disk drive, the disk stays compressed. You also can reverse the DriveSpace compression if you want to, as long as you have enough space on the uncompressed disk drive to hold all your files.

JUST A MINUTE: DriveSpace does no disk defragmentation. Whereas Hour 17, "Fine-Tune with Advanced System Tools," explained how to defragment your disk space, DriveSpace takes the extra step and actually compresses your disk storage to give you almost twice as much room as you had previously.

Windows Minute

Accessing Compressed Data

Some people mistakenly believe that compressing the disk drive with a program such as DriveSpace slows down disk access. In the majority of cases, a compressed disk drive is as fast or faster than an uncompressed drive.

Mechanical devices are slower than electronic devices. Memory access is much faster than disk access. When Windows 95 accesses a compressed disk drive, it has to retrieve only half as much physical data; Windows 95 then quickly decompresses that data in fast memory. The overall result is faster disk access.

After you compress a disk drive, Windows 95 and your computer act as if you've got more disk space. The free disk statistics will show the extra drive space, and all programs access the disk as if the disk were originally designed to have the extra space.

JUST A MINUTE: DriveSpace uses the same compression technology previously used by MS-DOS 6. If you've already been working with a DoubleSpace or DriveSpace MS-DOS drive, you do not need to convert the drive to Windows 95 or compress the drive again. Once it is compressed, you can squeeze no additional disk space by trying a subsequent compression.


Task 19.2: Compressing Disks Using DriveSpace

Step 1: Description
This task explains how to compress a disk drive using DriveSpace. The disk will be a floppy disk. Once you've compressed a floppy disk drive, you will more fully understand the process and can then compress a hard disk.

CAUTION: You cannot compress a CD-ROM. DriveSpace must be able to write to a device before compressing that device. CD-ROM drives are read-only. (The term ROM means read-only memory.)

When compressing a disk drive, DriveSpace adds a logical disk drive to your system, called the host drive. DriveSpace will name the new host drive H, or some other name that falls far down anyone's list of disk drives, so that you'll be able to determine which drive is a host drive and which drive is from your list of real disk drives. The host drive will not be compressed, and you will not work with the host drive. DriveSpace and Windows 95 use the host drive to hold descriptive information about the compressed drive. About all you really need to know about the new host drive is that the host is not an actual drive on your system, and Windows 95 uses the host drive to support the DriveSpace compression scheme. All open dialog boxes you see, as well as the My Computer window, will display the host drive now that you've compressed.

Step 2: Action

1. Display the Start menu.

2. Select the Programs command to display the next cascaded menu.

3. Display the Accessories menu.

4. Display the System Tools menu.

5. Click the DriveSpace menu item. Windows 95 displays the DriveSpace window, shown in Figure 19.6.


Figure 19.6. The opening DriveSpace window for compressing a
disk drive.

JUST A MINUTE: If your computer has additional disk drives, your DriveSpace window will display those additional drives in the list of drives.
6. Insert a formatted diskette in the diskette drive. The diskette can have data on it. The diskette, however, should contain about 30 percent free space. Before you can compress a disk, the disk should contain some free space so that DriveSpace can write some temporary files during the compression process. If the drive does not have enough free space, DriveSpace will tell you before starting the actual compression, so that you can free some space.

CAUTION: If, while saving a file from an application during a regular work session, you receive an error message telling you that you are out of disk space, you must remove some files from the disk (using Explorer) before there will be room to save the file. If you then want to compress the disk, you will have to copy or move some of the disk's files to another disk drive to free enough space so that DriveSpace can compress the disk. It is always a good idea, when you think a disk is getting full, to check the amount of free space still available, so that you can compress it before it no longer has enough free space for DriveSpace to work.
Obviously, DriveSpace cannot physically make a disk larger, but DriveSpace does make the disk appear larger to Windows 95 and MS-DOS programs.

7. Select the floppy disk drive from the list of drives.

8. Select Drive | Compress. DriveSpace analyzes the disk and displays the Compress a Drive dialog box, such as the one shown in Figure 19.7.


Figure 19.7. The before and after effect of the disk's compression.


Depending on your disk's contents and original size, you can gain a little or a lot of extra space by the compression. DriveSpace will compress Figure 19.7's diskette only by approximately 310,000 kilobytes, as you can see in the right-hand window, labeled Drive A (after compression).

JUST A MINUTE: If you want to decompress a compressed drive, you would repeat these steps and choose Drive | Uncompress instead of Drive | Compress.
9. Click the Options command button. Windows 95 displays the Compression Options dialog box, shown in Figure 19.8. The Compression Options dialog box describes the host drive's name (you can select a different name if you want to) and free space (usually there will be no free space). Click the OK command button to close the Compression Options dialog box and return to the Compress a Drive dialog box.


Figure 19.8. The Compression Options dialog box explains how the compression will operate.


10. Click the Start command button to initiate the drive compression. Before compressing, DriveSpace gives you one last chance to cancel the compression. DriveSpace also offers the option of backing up your files. Although there rarely will be a problem during the compression, it is possible that a power failure during the compression could interrupt the process and cause DriveSpace to corrupt the disk drive (so that the drive would need reformatting). By backing up the drive, you'll ensure that you can return to an uncompressed drive if needed.

JUST A MINUTE: If you choose to back up before completing the drive's compression, DriveSpace will run the Microsoft Backup program, described in the previous section.

Once the compression begins, DriveSpace checks the diskette for errors and then compresses the diskette. The compression can take a while. After finishing, DriveSpace displays a completion dialog box. Close the dialog box and look at Explorer's status bar to see the increased disk space available on the diskette. Step 3: Review Once you compress a disk drive, Windows 95 recognizes the compressed drive and stores up to 100 percent more data on that drive. There will actually be a second disk added to your drive letters, called the host disk, but you can ignore the host disk, because DriveSpace uses the host disk to store data tables used for accessing the compressed drive.

CAUTION: If you want to format a compressed disk, you must run DriveSpace and select Drive | Format. The Explorer Format command will not format compressed disks. The disk stays compressed during the formatting procedure.

Summary

This hour described the DriveSpace compression program and the Windows 95 Backup pro-gram. Both of these programs are new to Windows 95 and take advantage of the Windows 95 32-bit architecture and multitasking capabilities.

The DriveSpace compression program can almost double your disk drive space. By compressing your files and the free file space, you effectively squeeze more data into the same amount of disk space. You can compress both your hard disk drives and floppy disk drives.

The Windows 95 Backup program lets you back up, restore, and compare backups to their original files. The Backup program is the most full-featured backup program that Microsoft has offered. You can create backup file sets that quickly initiate specific backup descriptions. If you purchase a copy of the new Microsoft Plus! program, you can schedule backups so that Windows 95 backs up files while you are away from the computer.

Workshop

Term Review

backup file set A description that contains a specific list of files that you want to back up. For example, you may have a backup file set that backs up your accounting data files only, as well as a full backup file set that backs up your entire hard disk.

compression The process of squeezing your disk drive so that almost 100 percent more data fits on a disk.

differential backup A backup of only the files that have changed since the most recent backup. Also called an incremental backup.

disk crash A disk drive failure.

DriveSpace The name of the Windows 95 utility program that condenses the disk space so that more data fits on a disk drive.

full backup A complete backup of your entire disk drive.

full system backup file set A backup file set supplied by Backup that performs a full backup.

host drive A logical new drive that DriveSpace creates to hold compression information.

incremental backup See differential backup.

media The types of storage on which you store and back up data. Examples of media would be a diskette, a tape, and paper.

Microsoft Plus! A Windows 95 add-on product that you can purchase that can automate the backup process (as long as you back up to tape, a network drive, or another hard disk) so that you can request a backup at any time of day or night.

ROM Stands for read-only memory and refers to devices or memory that you can read from, but not write to, delete from, or change.

Q&A

Q How often should I defragment and compress my hard disk?
A You should defragment every week or so. Depending on the amount of file accessing you do, you may need to defragment more or less often. If you notice your disk speed slowing down a bit, you'll often find that Defragment speeds the access process somewhat.
Only compress your disk drive (or each floppy disk) once. After the compression, the drive stays compressed. Unless you uncompress the drive, Windows 95 always recognizes the compressed drive.

Q Which kind of backup, a full or differential backup, should I perform?
A The first time you back up you should make a full backup. After you make one full backup, you can make subsequent differential backups of only those files that have changed. Be sure that you save the full backup, however, so that you can restore everything if you need to. If you have a disk failure, you'll restore the entire full backup and then restore each differential backup set of files.

Q Does a full backup take longer than a differential backup?
A Yes. As mentioned in the previous question, first perform one full backup and then, subsequently, you can perform the quicker differential backups.
After you've made several differential backups, you might want to make a full backup once again. By making a full backup every once in a while, you will be able to reuse your differential tapes or disks.

Q Other than full backups which I perform weekly, I want to back up only my three work folders every day. Should I take the time to create a backup file set that describes only those three folders?
A By all means, you should create a backup file set for those three folders. Although you must take a few moments to create the backup file set the first time, specifying exactly which folders you want to back up, subsequent backups will take less of your time. You'll thereafter only have to select the trio-folder backup file set and start the backup.

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