How to use Vista "Complete PC Backup and Restore"

If you have Windows Vista Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise, you have a cool feature called "Complete PC Backup and Restore" which allows you to create a full image of your system drive for backup or if you have a hardware failure. Unfortunately, if you have Vista Home Basic or Premium, this feature is not available to you. This is a really cool feature because it allows you to put your full Windows OS, installed programs, and data on another drive without having to do the usual restore and installation of all that software you have added since your first install. The time it will take to do this will be considerable faster than a full reinstall of Windows. You can use this to backup your hard drive or even use it to upgrade your hard disk to a bigger one.

Here is what you need to have if you have a defective disk or want to upgrade: 3 hard drives and your OS disc or 2 hard drives and a heck of a lot of DVD’s and time and your OS disc. (Don’t waste your time trying to backup your computer on 20 DVD’s, it is not worth your time.)

1. The first drive, the drive Vista is installed on has no use other than being the system disk.

2. The second drive will be the backup which you will need to have backed up prior to your OS drive failing. Don’t risk it, make a backup before you have an issue. This is the easy part, go into the Backup and Restore Center via the Control Panel and hit Back up Computer. The rest should be self explanatory.

3. The Scenario: Lets say at this point your OS system hard disk has failed or you want to upgrade your current drive to a bigger one. You will want to take out the failed drive or current working drive out of your computer. You will no longer need your OS drive.

4. Connect the new drive, make sure the drive with the backup on it is connected, and finally boot your computer with your system disc (Windows Vista install DVD). I should make a point that you cannot use any controller cards for this, all drives must be connected directly to the motherboard. You may also have to change the boot settings in your bios to boot from the Rom drive.

5. Windows Vista will now boot into the same screen that you see when you are going to install Vista, don’t worry. The first step is to click next when it asks what language you want, then select REPAIR WINDOWS! Do not select install Windows. Click next on the next step and click Restore Entire computer. Vista will then search for the backup you created on the drive, click next and Vista will install the image on your new drive.

You computer should now be the same as it was. A few more things you should know: If you put a bigger drive to replace the old one, you will have to expand it with Vista’s drive utility. If you have an OEM version of Windows, you technically are not supposed to change the system hard disk and it will say your copy of Vista is already in use. If you ask me, this is a crock and I would follow the steps to activate over the phone and talk the Microsoft about activating your OS. Retail version of Vista should be able to work with a new hard drive. If not, I don’t know why Vista would even have this feature. Really, this feature is amazing but it makes no sense to have available if you have a OEM version. If you build your own computer, you know what OEM means, if you buy your computer with Vista on it, you have OEM. Non OEM is when you buy Vista by itself in retail packaging in a retail store. I had an OEM version and was unable to activate my OS just after changing the hard drive. I promptly called Microsoft while following the steps to activate over the phone and answer all the questions they ask you honestly. I did this and they activated my copy.