Questions from a soon to be owner of SP3

[maflynn]

I have a few questions regarding the SP3, while the answers may not be fully known, those that have experience with the SP2 may have some good insight.

1. Resetting the SP3 to factory settings. Since there's no optical drive for windows is there any sort of recovery partition?
2. In older versions of windows it was sometimes a good idea to reformat and reinstall to clear out the cruft reset the performance back to what it was and start back with a clean registry. Is this still recommended after a year or two (or 3)?
3. What version of windows is included, win 8 pro or the standard flavor? I'd like to have bitlocker for encryption
4. Backup software availability, I'm coming from a Mac background where TimeMachine backs everything up including apps and its quite easy to restore everything. My windows experience has been that I install windows, apps and restore my data. Has that changed at all, are there apps that can do a full restore?

 

[Racing Snake]

3. is Pro (well, that's what it says in the Microsoft store)

 

[acegamer]

1. Yes there was a recovery partition on the SP2 that let you reset the device to factory settings. I did that before I sold mine to make way for the SP3. I would assume that the SP3 has the same thing.

2. Can't comment on this because I only had the SP2 for about 6 months. Of course it was still purring along like a kitten in that time.

3. Pro

4. Never looked into this personally but I know there are all kinds of backup programs available. Don't forget that you will have access to all of the backup programs ever created for windows, not just apps.

4.

 

[v0lum3]

Hey there
Here is what i know from a SP1 and my S2!

1. Yes there is a recovery partition, and you can even reset without loosing you data, if your machine is running slow, not that I have experienced it!

2. As far as I know, this has been vastly improved in Windows 8, but all systems run slow after 2-3 years. But once again you can do a reset (it is called optimized in the system settings) where windows will do a clean install of the system, without deleting data or apps!

3. its pro!

4. Windows 8 has a file history backup system that functions very well. It will backup the files or folders you choose to a USB, SD-card or even network storage automatically, and you can go back in history for any file. I use skydrive for my stuff mostly tho!

Hope this helps!

 

[maflynn]

4. Windows 8 has a file history backup system that functions very well. It will backup the files or folders you choose to a USB, SD-card or even network storage automatically, and you can go back in history for any file. I use skydrive for my stuff mostly tho!

I'm using skydrive and my most of my data is going there, so now I'm looking for a solution that backs up my system and settings.

Say I need to restore the OS from the recovery partition, I'd like to run a restore from some app that brings back all my installed programs and settings. The data will come across thanks to OneDrive

I have a NAS that I'll be looking to leverage for this tasks.

 

[california86]

4. Several options for backup in Windows 8 Professional. A good resource for backup methods can be found here: http://winsupersite.com/article/windows8/windows-8-tip-picking-backup-strategy-144428

 

[NHUK]

To add my two pence....

I use OneDrive for all docs, so they are covered. File history covers others bits like local pc folders, favourites, desktop files/shortcuts etc. Caution should be taken when using windows 8 repair feature. It will keep all your data but it DELETES all installed applications. It does however create a file on the desktop telling you what apps you will need to install again, and even provides shortcuts to the websites to download them in a lot of cases. If you do a windows refresh or restore, your metro apps will all be listed on your start screen once you log in with your Microsoft account, but will be dimmed until the first time you click them when they will be reinstalled. This is to allow you to get going straight away after a refresh rather than wait for all your apps to reload.

All in all the restore feature works well and you can get back to a useable environment pretty quickly.

 

[Cleavitt76]

1) There is a recovery partition. It takes up around 10GB of the SSD if I remember correctly. It can be moved to an external drive if you want to free up that space. Tutorials are available on the Interwebs, but I haven't needed the space so I haven't bothered.

2) The Windows slow down thing really hasn't existed since XP. It is a non issue on Windows 8. The only thing that will slow down your Windows computer these days is installing lots of programs that run at startup or by allowing malware to infect the system. Windows 8 has anti-malware built in (Windows Defender) and it tends to work well for most people. If you are one of those people that is extremely prone to getting malware then you can always install a third party one, but I would try the built in one first as it is very light weight. Windows Task Manager has a "Startup" tab as of Windows 8 that allows you to disable programs that you don't want to run automatically at startup. Most programs should be disabled from starting automatically in my opinion.

3) Windows 8.1 Pro. Bitlocker works great.

4) I use Acronis TrueImage for backups of all my Windows PCs including my SP2. It does complete backups and it has an option to install recovery tools on a USB drive and make it bootable so you can even boot from it to recover a system from a "bare metal" state. You can recover an entire system or individual files as needed. It has a scheduler, although for my SP2 I just kick it off manually from time to time (I don't want it running a backup in the middle of the night when it's not plugged in). Things like OneDrive are also helpful, but technically that is not considered a true "backup". Yes, there is a copy of the file in another place, but in the case of file corruption the corrupted file would get synched out to OneDrive and all your other devices. A true backup is a copy that is "offline" and stand alone.

EDIT:

One thing I should add is that Windows 8 has the option to sync a lot of settings to the cloud. If you log in with your Microsoft account instead of a local Windows account your system settings will be synched. I mention this because in the event of a system restore or migration you will be given the option to copy settings from one of your Windows 8 devices. Windows settings, IE settings, Windows Store apps and their data will all show up automatically on the first login. For the most part, the only thing you would have to install and reconfigure is any traditional desktop programs that you had installed. Still takes some time if you had some big desktop programs installed, but much faster than it used to be when you would be starting with a generic Windows install.

 

[coolqf]

I second Acronis TrueImage. It is a true complete solution. I like the software because it automatically backs up to an external device whenever it recognizes that it is connected.

Sent from my SM-T320 using Tapatalk

 

[badMojo69]

For recovery synch it to the cloud I do and can reset my PC in a snap!