XMAS BACKUP – Free Windows Backup Software – Veeam

As its Christmas, it’s time to do a back up of your laptop.  Lets get this sorted into steps that will protect you from hardware failure and ransomware.

Step 1 – Create a restore point.

1. Type in “restore” into the windows search box.

CREATE BUTTON

Windows will then create a restore point of software and applications installed as at today’s date.

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Step 2 – Download VEEAM EndPoint Backup

Veeam believe that all endpoints should have FREE backups.  Luckily Veeam is Windows 10 compatible.

https://www.veeam.com/endpoint-backup-free.html

1. Download the free End Point Application.  You’ll need an email address to register for free products.
2. Make sure you have an External Hard drive big enough to copy over your entire hard drive.

I found the Alt. download link worked, whereas their Download button failed.  It’s almost 200 mb… so put on the kettle.

Step 2.1 – Install Veeam End Point Backup.

You may need to turn off your firewall for 15 mins to allow the downloads to complete.  Next attach the external drive that you wish to back up to.

Step 3 – Configure Veeam

Configure BackupEntire Computer

Local Storage

**Make sure the External USB drive is attached

 

Local Storage – Select External Drive

 

Schedule the Backup

 

Run Now

Click the “Run the job when I click Finish” checkbox

Finish

 

 

Backup Progress indicator

Veeam will compress the data.  The entire computer selected was 47 GB, but Veeam compressed this to 33.5 GB.

Veeam Menu on Windows 10

Volume Restore = Volume File level Recovery

If you want to back up data – then use Volume level backup.

Mode of Backup

At the Backup Mode step of the wizard, select the mode of backup.

1. Entire computer — select this option if you want to create a backup of the entire computer image. When you restore data from such backup, you will be able to recover the entire computer image as well as data on specific computer volumes: files, folders, application data .
2. Volume level backup — select this option if you want to create a backup of specific computer volumes, for example, all volumes except the system one. When you restore data from such backup, you will be able to recover data on these volumes only: files, folders, application data and so on. 
3. File-level backup is typically slower than volume-level backup. If you plan to back up all folders with files on a specific volume, it is recommended that you configure volume-level backup instead of file-level backup.

Once you’ve got a backup of the Entire Computer – take one of the Volume level (data) backups.  That way you can recover to bare metal or recover all your data.  Sweet.