• Q. What separates EASEUS Todo Backup from System Restore (Windows XP) or System Protection (Windows 7)?
• A. Unlike System Restore, EASEUS Todo Backup creates a single file of your entire drive or partition which contains all of the files on that drive or partition. This file can be stored on the harddrive or burned to DVDs. If your computer suffers from degraded performance or viruses, you can simply use EASEUS Todo backup to restore your computer from that file. Your drive containing Windows will be wiped clean and the backup file will be extracted back onto that drive, effectively turning the clock back before anything bad happened. System Restore or System Protection can only do so much to undo damage caused by viruses and malware, and it can't roll the clock back in the event your computer becomes completely unusable.
  
  

• Q. What makes EASEUS Todo Backup different than the Backup and Restore feature of Windows 7?
• A. While the Backup and Restore feature of Windows 7 is great, it tries to backup too much. If you have multiple drives that have files pertaining to Windows, the Backup and Restore will attempt to backup all of the data on all of the drives that have files pertaining to Windows. It's this lack of freedom that separates the Backup and Restore feature of Windows 7 from most commercial System backup utilities. EASEUS Todo Backup is a free alternative that bridges the gap between the limited Backup and Restore and Commercial backup utilities.

• EASEUS Todo Backup
• A second harddrive (or partition) for storing the backup file.
  
  
  Note: If you do not have a second harddrive, you can split your current harddrive into multiple partitions. This guide shows you how to resize and create new partitions: How to create and resize partitions using EASEUS Partition Master

After the backup has been completed, I highly suggest checking (i.e. verifying or validating) the integrity to ensure the backup is not corrupt. Sometimes the backup creation can go sour and the only way to be 100% sure the backup is not a dud is to check it for errors.

Show steps

Retrieving Files from a backup is actually very simple. If you create a backup and you realize there's a file in that backup that you need to retrieve for one reason or another, you can simply mount the backup file. Mounting is like putting a DVD in your DVD-Rom drive, except you are doing this with a file instead. You can then browse the contents of the file using explorer.

In order for you to restore a backup to your system partition, you must first create an EASEUS Todo Backup CD or DVD. Todo Backup allows you to make a backup of your System partition from within Windows, but it does not allow you to restore that backup from within Windows. The reason is, the restoration process involves wiping out the drive or partition that you choose, and this simply isn't possible to do while you are in Windows. The idea is to boot from a CD or DVD (completely outside the realm of Windows) so that Todo Backup can do what it needs to do.

There are 2 ways you can make a bootable CD/DVD. The first method, which is easy, is to create and burn the bootable CD directly from EASEUS Todo Backup. This bootable CD is based on Linux and it serves merely as a rescue CD. This means that you cannot create or mount backup files, you can only restore files. On top of this, because it is based on Linux, your drive letters will not be displayed. You are far better off using the other method of creating a Bootable CD.

The other way is to create a BartPE Bootable CD which contains EASEUS Todo Backup. This bootable CD is based off of Windows, which will allow you to run Todo Backup from the familiar Windows environment. The BartPE Bootable CD allows you to Restore as well as create Backups and Mount backups. This requires some additional files and takes quite a bit more effort to create.

Restoring a backup is relatively painless, however since this guide is aimed specifically towards making a backup of your system drive or partition, the only way the restore can be performed is from a bootable CD or DVD. Thankfully, the restoration process from a bootable disk is similar to the restoration process of the installation version of EASEUS Todo Backup.

If you have not created a bootable disk yet, you need to do so before you can restore your backup. Follow the steps in Step 7: Create a Bootable EASEUS Todo Backup CD/DVD.

Before you can restore from a Bootable Disk, you need to ensure that you can actually boot from a CD or DVD from your DVD drive. To do this, you need to reboot your PC. As soon as your computer shows a black screen with text or a splash image, press "." (del) on your keyboard. (This key may be different depending on your BIOS). This will take you to your BIOS and allow you to choose which boots first. You need to set your DVD drive as the first boot. I cannot provide more specific steps and pictures for this step because everybody's bios is different, but the process of setting the first boot will always take place in the BIOS.

Making backups of Windows can quickly become a time consuming task, especially if Windows is more than 20gigs large. There are some ways that you can improve the time it takes to backup and restore Windows so that it takes less than 15 minutes to create a backup or restore from a backup.

One way to improve the backup / restore process is to add a second harddrive, or split your drive into multiple partitions. If you have a second harddrive, try to use the second drive for storing important data like your documents, music, videos, or pictures. I suggest installing video games on the second drive as well as large programs (i.e. Adobe Photoshop, Sony Vegas, etc.).

If you are very careful about putting large files or lots of unimportant files on your Windows drive, you will be able to keep the backups small and the restore times fast. Not to mention, if you keep your important files on other drives or partitions, you can restore Windows at the drop of a hat. You can rest easy knowing that you will not lose files like music, pictures or videos if you get in the habit of storing those files away from Windows.

Also, if Windows is installed on a very large harddrive (100 gigs or larger), you can use a Partition management program to split your Windows drive into 2 partitions. If you make your Windows drive small (around 60-70gigs), you can devote the remaining gigs on the second partition for storing pictures, videos, music, or games. It's like making 2 harddrives out of 1, and it helps keep backing up and restoring Windows fast. For creating and resizing partitions, EASEUS provides a free program called Partition Master which does a great job. Instructions for how to create and resize partitions using EASEUS Partition Master.