Windows 7 Home Premium Won't Have Backup

[Netherscourge]

I'm confused...

Windows XP Home has System Restore.

But Windows 7 Home won't have System Restore?


Or are we talking about some other type of backup program?

 

[gnesterenko]

Lol. First of all, who in their right mind uses a backup app to backup a harddrive that the app is running from in the first place!?!?!

Backups should ALWAYS be done from outside the windows environment, preferably with the hard-drive you are backing up not in use at ALL at the time of back up. Acronis True Image boot is an excellent, fast, and free app that will boot into a separate shell and will even make untouchable, separate partitions specifically for drive backups. Perfect image, every time. Lowest image corruption rates in the industry.

Point is, this should matter very little to you if you actually care about the quality of your hard-drive backups. If you don't, then all I have to say is that you will reap what you sow.

"The views expressed here are mine and do not reflect the official opinion of my employer or the organization through which the Internet was accessed."

 

[adamovera]

Netherscourge: I believe it doesn't include software to backup over a network, like to say another PC in a closet, or to a networked drive.

I'm more pissed about the XP compatibility not being in Home Premium than anything, but with so many SKUs, the average person will need a 2 page fucking flow chart to figure out what to buy. Don't feel bad, I am confused as well.

It really is a shame, Vista wasn't that bad and 7 is actually pretty good. The developers have been doing there jobs, but the "business-types" are going to fuck it all up like usual. That's what you get when you put business people in charge of tech firms. Just look what happened to Apple without Jobs.

I'm a Coke man, but won't turn my nose up at a Pepsi (it's not THAT bad) - unless of course they're $50 a can, then it's shite.

 

[producepete]

[citation][nom]producepete[/nom]This, and I will also add a link straight from Microsoft's site about Windows 7. Notice the nice "Applies to all editions of Windows 7" text in the top right.[/citation]

Sorry, link didn't come through (what I wouldn't give for an edit button), http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/Back-up-your-files. Anyway, direct from Microsoft, backup is there for all versions.

 

[apmyhr]

@mxyztplk, thank you for pointing this out. If people dont believe you, here it is straight from the horses mouth. Backup will be on ALL editions of Win 7. Professional adds network backup.

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/products/features/backup-and-restore

To bad the damage has been done, there are now a bunch of Toms techies who think they have more ammo to use against M$. Toms, this is a huge mistake, I hope you attempt to rectify it with an update.

 

[Regulas]

Two Words: "Time Machine", Apple does this right, OS X is one flavour, well two if you count the server edition.

 

[Scotteq]

SIMPLE BACKUP IS ON ALL VERSIONS.

Restore is also on all versions.


What's left out is the ability to backup over a network.

Now that that's settled, the knots in carious panties can be untied.

 

[hardwarekid9756]

The reason people don't have backup installed with Win7HP is because of all the OTHER backup programs people install. AKA Norton 360, Live OneCare (now defunct), McAfee, Kaspersky, And the list goes on. HP installs a backup program. So does Dell. And Lenovo/IBM. This exclusion isn't as a differentiator, it's to decrease bloat. It's relevant in a business because they want everything to be 100% QA-friendly, and an integrated Windows backup tool is music to their IT ears, but to a home user, it's just more bloat that they don't need on top of their current solutions.

And for those of you saying "time machine," that's just because apple refuses to let people make a decent backup program for OS X so they had to "do it themselves." All well and good, but with Norton Save and Restore/Ghost, and the volumes of other "backup" programs out there, Microsoft focused on OS and Compatibility and not worthless aesthetic and exclusion.

 

[Netherscourge]

I'm getting Win 7 Home - and I'm going to put my XP Home on another partition - that'll solve my XP-mode problem.

This way I can dual-boot whenever I want to use one of my old XP programs, like Nero 6, that doesn't work on Win 7. At this point, I'm only using XP for work-related stuff. Everything else is going on the Win7 partition.

As for backups, I'll probably install a IDE slave hard drive and use it exclusively for backup images. It's faster and bigger then a DVD-burn and less hassle.

 

[Aerobernardo]

And Microsoft still wonders why people pirate Windows Ultimate so much...

Ima let you know Microsoft: I WILL USE A PIRATE WINDOWS 7 BECAUSE I WANT TO HAVE WHAT I PAID FOR, AND I WANT A FAMILY LICENSE FOR A DECENT PRICE!!!

U$200 FOR AN INCOMPLETE OS? IM STARTING A CAMPAIGN: USE PIRATES! ITS OUR RIGHT!

 

[belardo]

Wh[citation][nom]Netherscourge[/nom]I'll probably install a IDE slave hard drive and use it exclusively for backup images. It's faster and bigger then a DVD-burn and less hassle.[/citation]

Its not such a good backup if its inside the computer and you get hit by a virus or the PC suffers from a severe failure.

The point of Backup Software is to manage your bACkedUP files. Click on a button or two and it starts the process. Backup software (even on XP) allows you to save the file to another Drive.. not just a burner.

An excellent FREE Backup program (better than MS) is Reflect-Image backup. It'll snap-shot a partition to a file. A 12GB partition took about 5~6min to make. Imaging the C parition to a file stored on D: partition on the same drive (Then copy the file out to an EXT drive or backup directory to an external drive)

 

[freak77power]

That's what i was pointing all the time. Windows 7 Home Premium is absolutely useless edition cause it's missing key features found in Professional and again if you need multi language support you have to go to Ultimate. Ultimately you will end up buying pro or ultimate version.

There should be only one version of Windows 7 and that's it.

 

[robertellison]

Marcus, the real problem with Windows 7 Backup is that it's still not treated like firewalls and anti-virus. I blogged about this last month. Your readers are savvy about backup, many users are not and really need a good out of the box experience.

Microsoft needs to alert users in the Action Center if backup is not configured or hasn't run recently. At the moment backup is in there as a "recommended" item rather than a warning. They also need to help users find backup products from a variety of vendors as they do with anti-virus - the built in backup really isn't enough, especially with the network limitation for Home Premium.

Rob Ellison, CEO, Cucku, Inc.

 

[apmyhr]

This is amazing. There have already been 4 or 5 people who posted evidence refuting the claims of this article, yet people keep posting about how much Microsoft sucks for not including backup with home preimium. Toms, please correct your article before this becomes a widespread misconception (or has that been your plan all along! jk)

 

[mxyztplk]

Well, it appears that this site does not monitor its "news" article commentary. If it had, it would have probably retracted this one by now. This delay reflects quite badly on the quality of journalism of Tom's Hardware.

Note that Ed Bott did not merely take Microsoft's word about the differences between the Windows 7 versions. Using the Release Candidate (build 7100), he installed each of the five versions as a multi-boot system, and verified or determined the features on each one from actual trial. Compare that to the actions of the TH author. Shame on you TH and TH author. How long are you going to permit this misinformation to continue to be posted?

Kudos to you, Ed Bott!!!

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1031

Instead of an article criticizing Microsoft regarding Backup/Restore for something Microsoft did NOT do, the TH author should have written an article pointing out the availability of extensive recovery capabilities in ALL versions of Windows 7 previously only available in the more expensive editions. Perhaps he will do so, in an effort to make amends.

Regardless, here is what Ed Bott said about these Windows 7 recovery capabilities. Perhaps this will, in some small way, make up for the misinformation that TH continues to propagate through inaction, inasmuch as few will read the reader comments as compared to the headline.

Security and reliability: Every feature in this category is available in all editions: Action Center, Resource Monitor, Windows Update, Windows Defender, Windows Firewall, and Parental Controls. The significantly less annoying update to User Account Control works the same in Starter as it does in Ultimate. Two huge changes in this category show that Microsoft really was listening to its critics: The Backup program provides full functionality in every edition, allowing you to create a system image and do file backups to an external hard drive or rewritable media (in Vista, system image backups were possible only in Business edition). In addition, the Previous Versions feature now works in all editions. This feature allows you to recover earlier versions of a file from automatic system restore points (Apple has a similar feature, slicker but less powerful, in Time Machine). Oh, and you can make a System Repair Disc any time with any edition.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1031&page=2

 

[belardo]

OUCH OUCH OUCH!

TOM = FAIL

Looking at Microsoft's website on the very sparse "feature comparison", it says "Backup" on only available on Pro and up:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/products/compare-editions

 

[Thanatopsis]

That's pretty gay of MS to do that. At least I don't(never have and never will) pay for operating systems.

 

[Guest]

Windows Vista Home Premium allowed me to backup to a network drive. Windows 7 Home Premium doesn't.

Thanks, Microsoft!