9 ms·

Windows 8.1’s user-hostile backup story

94 points by edandersen 13y ago

twiceaday 13y ago
I am staying on 7 as long as I can. I get the impression that 7 is the new XP.
- edandersen 13y ago
  The problem is that they are actively removing excellent features from 7. Not sprucing them up or adapting them to their cloud strategy - just outright removing them.
  - swinglock 13y ago
    What has been removed from Windows 7?
    - edandersen 13y ago
      A decent backup system that rivaled Time Machine (replaced with "File History" nonsense). Loads more listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...
      - din-9 13y ago
        The point being made is that those features have been removed from 8 and not from 7. > The problem is that they are actively removing excellent features from 7. ... is a little ambiguous in reply to a comment saying they will stay on 7.
      - gebe 13y ago
        To be honest I am not seeing a lot of "excellent features" there. Except for the UI changes the rest seem to be mostly small miscellaneous stuff and some of them for the better.
      - UVB-76 13y ago
        That list reads more like a changelog than a list of removed features. For example: > The Aero Glass theme is replaced by a new theme with a flatter visual appearance in line with the Metro design language. Aside from the taskbar, the new theme uses fewer transparency effects than the previous Glass theme. In other words, unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging transparency effects are out and simple, efficient, usable flat design is in.
        Karunamon 13y ago
        >unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging Subjective, compared to what, subjective > simple, efficient, usable flat design is in. subjective, subjective, subjective. I don't know where this utterly moronic "flatten ALL THE THINGS" design meme comes from, but I wish it would die in a fire. Flat UI, at least Microsoft's implementation of it, has a great deal of fail about it. It's hard to tell what's clickable and what's not, things are not organized in a logical or easy to reach manner, and on and on. Have a look at this if you have about 20 minutes to spare. Someone goes into a great deal of depth on the 8 UX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYet-qf1jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYet-qf1jo
        chinpokomon 13y ago
        The biggest obstacle that tech journalist faced was his own perceptions on how Windows should work. I'll admit that when I started using Windows 8 during the CTP, I had concerns about the UX for most of the same reasons he mentioned, but I took the time to learn how the designers intended me to use the system before I took the plunge. What is interesting to me, is that most of the complaints he talked about were introduced in Windows 7 and even Vista - press the Windows keyboard button and type to search. That was the recommended way to start applications in Vista since the Start menu could be rearranged simply by installing applications. Want to open the Control Panel, [Win] + "control panel". This of course is a problem for everyone who has learned how to use a Windows computer since the Windows 95 era, and can't be bothered to learn new tricks, but as a tech journalist, was this really outside his abilities to learn? Windows 8 and 8.1 (I haven't tried the RTM release yet) are designed to favor a new class of touch enabled devices. Swipe down from the top of the screen to close Windows 8 applications. Swipe in from the right to show the Charms bar. Swipe in from the left to bring up the task switcher. These metaphors have a much more strict design language than previous versions of Windows. Printing is always* in the Charms bar under devices. It has a consistency beyond what Windows has offered in the past. The only problem I have with Windows 8 and 8.1 is the Desktop mode. *Printing in Desktop applications doesn't follow the same convention as the Windows 8 applications use; you don't use the Charms bar, you fall back to legacy patterns such as File -> Print, or [Ctrl]-p. Ripping the band-aid off quickly would have worked better because then everyone would have adopted the new interface out of necessity. Instead, users are forced to compare them side by side on a daily basis, doing little to wean users off the legacy interface. Coming from legacy Windows to Windows 8 presents some challenges, but approaching Windows 8 with new eyes, on a device designed to use this OS from the start, like a Surface RT, there is so much they got right. It is a shame that Windows 8 is holding users back more than it is ushering in a new era of computing. Microsoft would have been better off if Windows 8 was simply about touch... maybe call it something other than Windows, like Microsoft Touch, and then had left Windows 7 to run legacy apps only. Even something like Windows 7's XP compatibility mode that launched from a card would have been better than making users think that the Desktop was a shipping part of the OS. I can certainly appreciate that Microsoft's management didn't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but that goose is dying and we'd be better off if it went quickly.
      - m_mueller 13y ago
        If you think that Win7 backup rivals TM, did you ever try to restore from it? - The interface is lying. Last time I had 'system image' checkbox enabled and it only kept the totally useless image of the last backup, probably only a few hours back in the backup itself. All the other images were just stored locally. - The pre installation environment used for restoring has barely any network drivers - you need to somehow come up with your own CD or USB drive for providing your network drivers, often needing to extract the right ones out of some subfolders that you draw from an unzipped setup.exe, since manufacturers nowadays often don't offer them separately anymore. - The interface for logging in to your network drive is totally bugged. If you get a network error you will only recognize after you've hand-typed the location, user account and password (on different windows). It's a total mess.
        harrytuttle 13y ago
        Yay someone else who had actually used it. This is the same experience i had which is why I'm glad they removed it and promote that fact in other posts.
        m_mueller 13y ago
        On the other hand I have to say it's still better to have some sort of backup system, rather than bundling a synch and miscalling it a backup. One thing I don't get in this whole ordeal though: Doesn't Skydrive store previous versions and deleted items like Dropbox (I've never used it)? From experiences with Dropbox it's still not what I'd call a backup (too much can go wrong when synching), but I at least expect it to preserve versions and deleted items, such that in normal operation one can undo everything. If MS has omitted that I really don't understand what they're thinking.
        edandersen 13y ago
        SkyDrive's Recycle Bin stores files until you run out of space or until 30 days is up. So you might randomly be able to recover a deleted file.
- grandpoobah 13y ago
  Me too, and I never thought I'd be one of those people.
- devx 13y ago
  Windows 7 will be the last good "desktop OS" from Microsoft. They're going to completely kill the desktop mode in future versions, slowly but surely. They will turn it into DOS, where the desktop is but a fading "app", and will bury it deep inside the Metro mode. I'm almost certain they will do this. There are rumors that with Windows 10 and beyond they will also try to turn Windows's license model into a subscription model, which will completely kill Windows for just about any "regular consumer", and will turn it into a mostly enterprise OS, because only the enterprise customers will (probably) agree to that kind of model. Consumers already believe Windows is "free" with their laptop purchase, and that they don't have to pay anything else after that. A subscription model will be a huge turn off for consumers, not matter how little it costs (even $1 per month). We can only hope that before Windows 7 gets too long in the tooth, Ubuntu or some other multi-OEM OS (Android? Chrome OS?) will become popular enough in the mainstream, and mature enough, to make it a viable alternative five years down the road (I think they will be).
  - wintersFright 13y ago
    They really do seem to have jumped the shark and it makes me wonder whether I'll still be using Windows at home and coding in the Windows stack in a few years.
  - bcoates 13y ago
    Unlikely. Metro software is extremely thin on the ground, and there's no indication that this is changing in the near term. Microsoft has a long, long history of goofball widget UIs (Active Desktop, Sidebar Gadgets, Metro, various Shell plugin technologies, and to a lesser extent MMC and control panel applets). Each in turn has had its moment in the sun before being marginalized or removed outright.
  - devcpp 13y ago
    And by that time, if you're right and people actually jump ship, they'll be using something else (either Windows 7 or Linux IMO) and will demand that at their company. So, Microsoft is taking enormous risks in all the markets: mobile, desktop, consoles... Well, they still have Office going well I suppose. For now.
- nolok 13y ago
  I've been a happy windows users for a long time, but 7 will probably be my last windows OS - and not because I want to go elsewhere, they are actively pushing me away. It really hurts to see that after so many years of searching itself microsoft finally got things right again with 7 and made a great OS, only for them to throw it all away in the hopes of trying to do a OSX-like thing which ended up being subpar, unsurprisingly, and on top of it most of their regular desktop lovers such as me hate them for it.
  - nly 13y ago
    There were people who shared your opinion about XP->Vista. Then 7 came out many of those people were happy to go from XP->7. So, I doubt 7 will be your final Windows OS... If they haven't pissed you off enough to move yet, you'll likely end up using Windows 9.
    - etfb 13y ago
      I saw an early review of Windows 8 that described it as an excellent advertisement for Windows 9. Every one of my customers (I do IT support in a rural area) has told me they hate Windows 8. One of my biggest jobs is getting hold of legal Win 7 installation disks for them. Me, I don't hate it as much as I did at first, but I'm still happier using Ubuntu.
    - nolok 13y ago
      There is a big difference though in my opinion: vista was disliked because it lacked polish on pretty much every single thing (the uac spamming you all the time, features that were outright broken, etc ... it wasn't that I disliked the features, but rather that they didn't work and acted against me), and 7 was in a lot of a way a great polish on top of vista. Call it going the last 10 percent. My dislike of windows 8 however is not on broken features but on the paradigm changes they made. I don't want to focus on one app fullscreen at a time, or be always connected and sync'ed, or use my computer as a tablet, that sort of things. But let's be honest, if microsoft can pull a 7 with windows 9, I'm all for it and will eat my own words.
harrytuttle 13y ago
This article is idiotic: Cloud synchronisation is not backup. If you think that, you are a wally, despite the vendor's promises. This is a new feature they have added that allows sync between devices. It doesn't stop any of the old ways of doing stuff from working other than windows backup which was a piece of shit that didn't work properly anyway. Sync is always notoriously problematic at the best of times so YMMV always with that approach. Realistically, most people just drag stuff to a USB stick periodically and that's good enough for backup. That's how it really works.
- aristidb 13y ago
  The point is that the author agrees with you, except for the part where they disabled the old built-in backup functionality...
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    The problem is that the old backup solution was crappy anyway so I'm glad they removed it. The basic options were: 1. System image backup. Backs up your fucked system with fucked files. Oh that's it. Not very helpful. As before, everyone just buys 3rd party backup software, sticks it on a USB stick or doesn't bother.
    - w0utert 13y ago
      So the SkyDrive setup screen declares that it will 'back up files to the cloud' while it doesn't, and there is no reliable default back-up solution that ships with Windows 8.1. I'd say it isn't so much the article that's 'idiotic', but how little Microsoft seems to care about providing ways to keep your files safe if you're using Windows...
      - harrytuttle 13y ago
        Yes there is. You can copy files to another disk. Third time I've said that. you don't need an app for that. It's also the simplest solution that fits in the head space of a user. Linux doesn't come with a backup app either. You have some tools (dump/tar/dd) from which you can build one or you buy one in (bacula, Amanda etc). Same with windows (powershell, vhd cmdlets etc).
frank_boyd 13y ago
For those who've missed it: http://prism-break.org/ http://prism-break.org/ has a few alternative OSes. Personally, I've been on Ubuntu for about 8 years. I have never regretted it. But the more time passes, the less I regret it, if you know what I mean.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  Yes, download a new OS and Tor. That'll surely protect the network layer between X and Y!!!
  - frank_boyd 13y ago
    What? What I'm talking about is getting your freedom back.
  - northwest 13y ago
    Are you smoking again?
- MichaelGG 13y ago
  Your trolling on every thread, injecting random 'ooh NSA' comments, is just not constructive. Practically everyone here is more aware of the situation than you are.
MichaelApproved 13y ago
How do they get away with including SkyDrive in the OS without having companies like Dropbox up in arms? Maybe that's why they're calling it backup, since backup is arguably part of an operating system and has existed (albeit in other forms) on previous versions of Windows.
- halfninety 13y ago
  How do Apple get away with including iCloud in the OS without having companies like Dropbox up in arms? And they do call it "sync".
  - frank_boyd 13y ago
    How do any of those companies always get away?
    - ethana 13y ago
      Europe, we're counting on you!
      - frank_boyd 13y ago
        Just did a little research: Anyone who feels competition is being killed can actually let the EU commission know about is so they can correct any problems: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/contacts_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/contacts_en.html
  - manojlds 13y ago
    Bigger thing is how iOS has only one browser that can be default and how other browsers can never be as powerful as Apple's. how is apple getting away with it, despite MS being punished for just installing a browser in their OS. Yeah MS is more of a monopoly in desktops, but Apple monopolizes iOS if we see it that way.
    - easyfrag 13y ago
drivebyacct2 13y ago
This is an extremely, extremely, extremely confused post. I hope people give 8.1 a genuine shot. I run Linux every day, I have a history of whiny comments about Windows and the .NET community and I haven't ever been so excited about the MS ecosystem as i am now. I really hope people give the RTM/GA releases a real shot. All of this makes perfect sense. SkyDrive is a sync tool, not a backup tool. This is obvious and it works like other tools in its field. I don't get the tone of this article. The whole "I'll stay on 7" is just sad. It's pure ignorance. Win8 is 7 with a bunch of significant improvements and the addition of WinRT apps. Honestly, hand someone a Win8.1 machine, tell them it's Win7 and they will have no idea other than the Start menu is now full screen (or performance is greatly increased, or they have HyperV for free, or they have Storage Pools, etc. Boots straight to the desktop, has their apps pinned on the taskbar... with the start button and all. I'm so tired of these attempts to make it look like Microsoft has "jumped the shark" in some silly sense. I'll join the mob on SecureBoot on ARM, but otherwise, it's really just sad. And I say that as someone who runs Arch on their desktop, Chromebook Pixel, and server.
wintersFright 13y ago
8.1 also heavily pushes logging on with a Microsoft Account. 8.0 had a small print option to use a local account but that is gone now and you have to submit a bad email/password combo 3 times before it gives in and lets you setup a local account. I'll stick to a local account per machine thanks very much. Would rather not have MS holding the keys on whether I can logon to my own machine or not, nor give them free big data for onselling to marketers.
- nwh 13y ago
  > you have to submit a bad email/password combo 3 times before it gives in and lets you setup a local account. Ike. That's horrible. Who in the world thought that hiding a standard user account would be a good idea?
  - venomsnake 13y ago
    Someone who will retire in 12 months.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    That's a lie. It doesn't do that.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago
      I just installed it about 5 minutes ago. On the "setup your account" screen, there is no option for a local account. You must login or create a new account. Now, once you go to create a new account, there's a low-contrast option at the bottom to skip this step. I think I'm fairly computer savvy, but had I not searched on how to bypass this, I probably would have set up an MS account. For "normal" people, I'd say this will be extremely effective at increasing their "conversion" to Microsoft Accounts. It's extremely hostile.
      - AgentConundrum 13y ago
        This is only true of the public beta. It bothered me as well when I tried it out, but after a few searches I found that the RTM will still have local accounts. I assume the decision was made to keep in contact with the beta testers or something, but my hotmail account is a glorified spam catcher at this point, so I've never bothered to check. [1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-8-1-Preview-Won-t-Support-Local-User-Accounts-362922.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-8-1-Preview-Won-t-Sup... (This isn't the article I read back then, but it's the first thing I found when I just searched.)
peterkelly 13y ago
I'm going hold off on Windows 8 for as long as I can. For now I'm sticking with OS X and time machine.
ladzoppelin 13y ago
Yea this blog is wrong because they just removed the backup GUI. You can do a backup and image using powershell commands just like past Windows versions.
- edandersen 13y ago
  Well spotted - http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to-create-and-restore-system-image-backups-on-windows-8.1/ http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to-create-and-restore-sy.... Doesn't cover non-image backups of individual files and folders though.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    Copy-Item
    - edandersen 13y ago
      That doesn't handle versioning.
      - harrytuttle 13y ago
        Shadow copies, archive bit?
- hug 13y ago
  That's still user-hostile. Don't get me wrong, as a Windows sysadmin I love Powershell and use it daily to accomplish various tasks. I have no problem with rolling my own scheduled powershell script to perform a backup, but if if I have to write a script to back up my data I'm not actually using a 'built in system utility' so much as I'm .. y'know, writing a script to back up my files.
  - harrytuttle 13y ago
    That's fine. As per windows since 2.0, you can copy files to another disk then using the GUI.
alexchamberlain 13y ago
Dropbox allows you to recover past versions of files; does SkyDrive allow you to do the same?
- ruqkus 13y ago
  Yes, this post is very misleading. SkyDrive features both a recycle bin for deleted files and a version history option to restore from a previous copy.
  - alexchamberlain 13y ago
    Thanks; in which case, SkyDrive is a backup.
    - nilved 13y ago
      Unless your MS account is shut down.
  - Livven 13y ago
    The version history option is only available for Office files (.docx, .xlsx etc.), plus even if it applied to all files a local backup can still be useful. Forcefully disabling local file history for SkyDrive simply doesn't make any sense... there's no technical reason for it, and it neither benefits the user nor Microsoft or anybody else.
    - jervisfm 13y ago
      Yep, I just tested with a simple txt file and the changes were not versioned. New modifications were made permanently without ability to go back to a prior version of the text file. It does support versioning for office docs as you stated though.
- edandersen 13y ago
  You can only recover past versions of Office documents. The "Recycle Bin" only stores items until it is full or for 30 days. It can't be relied on, basically.
NateDad 13y ago
So.... spend 5 bucks a month and get a real backup service? I get that it's underhanded for Microsoft to call this backup when it's just sync.... but honestly, for 99% of people, that's better than the nothing they have now.
- kmfrk 13y ago
  Seems like plain old upsale, a little similar to Apple's pricing for extra storage on iCloud.
chris_wot 13y ago
I can't believe that Microsoft would be so irresponsible for propagating the myth that file mirroring is the same as file backup! What an absolute recipe for disaster.
mohas 13y ago
I neither use skydrive nor windows backup, but the article had good point, saying skydrive is not a backup option on their terms and conditions to avoid legal problems, but then saying it will backup your files in the user interface, which one do you think people will see most? I like a software when it clearly says its purpose and don't confuse its users
sprior 13y ago
The really sad part is that at least somebody at Microsoft once knew how backup was supposed to work. Windows Home Server backed up every Windows machine in your house over the network to the central server. It was a bare metal recovery type differential backup, the backups were aged rationally, and the machines were woken up in the middle of the night to perform the backup, but laptops would only do this if they were plugged into AC so you wouldn't wake up a laptop in a suitcase and drain the battery and burn up the machine because it had no cooling airspace. It was pretty damn perfect (OK, a couple of minor issues), one of the best products Microsoft has ever produced. So of course they screwed up the next version so bad that all the OEMs dropped their products that were based on it and Microsoft killed the product.
- chinpokomon 13y ago
  I was burned on more than one occasion by the "RAID" disk volume getting corrupted. As much as I liked Windows Home Server, I was really hoping the next release would have improved their drive volume manager, rather than just killing off the product.
- chinpokomon 13y ago
  I was burned on more than one occasion by the "RAID" disk volume getting corrupted. As much as I liked Windows Home Server, I was really hoping the next release would have improved their drive volume manager, rather than just killing off the product.
ygra 13y ago
Random question: What would be a good backup option for Windows? Even Windows 7's backup option was often unusable, failing backups with strange errors or taking two days to complete so I'm not too sad to see it gone completely. I'm just missing a useful alternative. File History is nice for accidentally lost files, but for restoring a working state of the machine there are probably better options.
- david-keepvault 13y ago
  I work for KeepVault Online Backup and we've heard similar feedback from customers regarding Windows built-in backup solution. Our software provides both local and cloud-based backup. If you only need local backup to an external, you can sign up for a free KeepVault trial account and use the local backup forever. KeepVault Pro also provides versioning, so a file corruption or deletion isn't going to wipe your backups. KeepVault backups are also fully encrypted end-to-end and incremental. http://www.keepvault.com http://www.keepvault.com
  - ygra 13y ago
    For a purely local backup (I rsync my NAS to a datacenter myself) KeepVault seems unnecessarily complicated, as I have to get an account and I cannot seem to make a local backup to a network share/drive (I only see local drives in the selection).
- Stratoscope 13y ago
  I've been using ShadowProtect for several years. It's really great; I have it set to run a complete incremental backup every 15 minutes, and those backups usually take less than 30 seconds with no impact on system performance. I wrote about it in some detail previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656597
- Serow225 13y ago
  I went through a number of Windows backup solutions to find one that worked for my Dad, and in the end the one that we were the most happy with was Genie Timeline. It works quite similar to Time Machine on OSX, and includes both system restore and continuous incremental file backup, which were the criteria I was looking for.
Karunamon 13y ago
@drivebyacct I have given 8 a shot. You know what I've decided? That Microsoft's ideas on UI design are about as good as their ideas on advertising (i.e. head-scratching at best and migrane inducing at worst) I'm serious. Whoever the genius was that decided that swipes on a laptop trackpad should behave the same way as on a tablet (in this case, switching applications) should be shot, and the corpse fired. Yes, I know this can be disabled. The fact that it's on, and the default, is the problem. (If you're wondering what the problem is, it's that there's no difference from a "swipe" gesture and just moving your mouse from left to right across the pad) Same with the whole start screen business which has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. Suffice to say, its information density is low, its disruption to whatever you're doing is high. And then there's this Microsoft account malarky that they shove down your throat at every other turn. I 'm already using an OS which more likely than not has backdoors for the TLAs, made by a company that admits they give new vulnerabilities to said TLAs before fixing them. I am sure as HELL not going to make logging onto my system reliant on some random cloud service! Whatever tangible benefits 8 has over 7 do not at this point tilt the cost/benefit ratio enough in that direction for me to shell out the roughly ~$1000 it would cost to up(down?)grade my 7 enterprise infrastructure. *ed I really wish you'd get a real account that isn't dead. It's impossible to respond to you.
- drivebyacct2 13y ago
  So you rage hate the Start screen. Could've spared me the 5 paragraphs. And yeah, there are lots of reasons to pick 8 over 7, not my fault you don't know them. And if you'd even paid half a bit of attention when evaluating 8 for your enterprisey scenario, you'd know that MSA accounts are a complete non-factor in corp setups. AD accounts and group policies and everything else works just like normal.
- AaronFriel 13y ago
  > I'm serious. Whoever the genius was that decided that swipes on a laptop trackpad should behave the same way as on a tablet (in this case, switching applications) should be shot, and the corpse fired. Yes, they should be. Then, you should uninstall the custom trackpad driver that does that, because that's not a built-in gesture. That was probably added by Synaptic, or the OEM of your laptop, and you should disable the gesture and probably let the OEM know that including that gesture was insane. The rest of your complaints are, well, I think they're overstated, but I can't argue with how using the OS "feels" to someone. If you think it feels poorly done, me telling you your feelings are wrong is not going to get us anywhere. But at least factually, you should know that some of your assertions might be rooted in what OEMs have done to add crap to Windows 8.
Aardwolf 13y ago
You want to back up your personal files, not your OS. How can an OS make backup user hostile? Write your files to several external disks that you keep in different places, and maybe some online service, and that's it.
zmmmmm 13y ago
I truly don't understand what MS finds so hard about backup. What people want is so simple and obvious - a separate copy of all their files, preferably their whole system image, somewhere else. And yet every version of Windows seems to screw around with it. I remember Vista came out and I thought a great way to migrate would be to do a full system backup and then I could restore back the personal files I wanted onto Vista. Nope - the backup system totally changed, the utiltity to restore files didn't even ship with Vista! I was left to manually use an old XP computer to extract and copy files across from my backup image. Then Win7 came and I started using the backup option there. But even with the full drive image I didn't quite trust it, so I also made intermittent backups using Macrium Reflect which creates a low level image of each partition. So then came the day when my wife chose the "recover my pc" from the boot menu and wiped everything. "No problem!" I thought, I will just Google how to restore a full system image to bare metal. Imagine my shock to discover that this is not a feature of Windows backup. Unless you make a "recovery disk" using a CD (this computer did not have a CD drive), you cannot reinstall a full system image!? So I installed from the Macrium partition image and it delightfully brought back our system in a matter of minutes. I've never been able to work out if this consistent incompetence is by design (to keep the industry of alternative backup solutions alive and avoid accusations of monoply / antitrust) or if they have some strategic or tactical reason to make sure noboby on windows manages to back up their computers (hey, 20% of all users who corrupt their hard drive just buy a new computer!) Whatever the reason, it is exacty this sort of thing that is driving regular consumers away from Windows and into the arms of Apple. I hope MS figures it out, because I am not fond of Apple either.
WalterBright 13y ago
Really, most Windows apps are bad at backup, and it's not Microsoft's fault. Even Thunderbird is bad at it - what's wrong with a menu item called "backup" and "restore"? Most apps fail because they store crucial data in various undocumented directories, plus the system registry. Even worse, some like to store critical data in hidden directories. Backing up an app and its data, and restoring, on Windows should be as simple as a single xcopy command.
jeromeparadis 13y ago
I don't bother with backups on Windows or Mac since I made the wise decision to backup every computer, Mac or PC using Crashplan to NAS and cloud. I would have once been mad with this Microsoft feature removal. However, I've come to realize than neither Microsoft's or Apple's backup solutions satisfactory for my needs. Time machine is arguably better... until it decides to stop working. Since I've been on CrahPlan, no problems on any computer. I've had one laptop that shorted since then and it was easy enough to recover my files.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
vitd 13y ago
Did anyone else find it disturbing how the dialog box telling you about SkyDrive tries to hide the fact that you don't actually need to use it by make the "Don't Use SkyDrive" button not a button but clickable text? The vast majority of users will not even see the clickable text, and of those who do, they'll think it's not clickable, ensuring that millions of people will sign up for the service, even if they don't want it.

94 points by edandersen 13y ago

twiceaday 13y ago

I am staying on 7 as long as I can. I get the impression that 7 is the new XP.

edandersen 13y ago
The problem is that they are actively removing excellent features from 7. Not sprucing them up or adapting them to their cloud strategy - just outright removing them.
- swinglock 13y ago
  What has been removed from Windows 7?
  - edandersen 13y ago
    A decent backup system that rivaled Time Machine (replaced with "File History" nonsense). Loads more listed here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Windows_8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_features_removed_in_Win...
    - din-9 13y ago
      The point being made is that those features have been removed from 8 and not from 7. > The problem is that they are actively removing excellent features from 7. ... is a little ambiguous in reply to a comment saying they will stay on 7.
    - gebe 13y ago
      To be honest I am not seeing a lot of "excellent features" there. Except for the UI changes the rest seem to be mostly small miscellaneous stuff and some of them for the better.
    - UVB-76 13y ago
      That list reads more like a changelog than a list of removed features. For example: > The Aero Glass theme is replaced by a new theme with a flatter visual appearance in line with the Metro design language. Aside from the taskbar, the new theme uses fewer transparency effects than the previous Glass theme. In other words, unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging transparency effects are out and simple, efficient, usable flat design is in.
      - Karunamon 13y ago
        >unattractive, resource-intensive, usability damaging Subjective, compared to what, subjective > simple, efficient, usable flat design is in. subjective, subjective, subjective. I don't know where this utterly moronic "flatten ALL THE THINGS" design meme comes from, but I wish it would die in a fire. Flat UI, at least Microsoft's implementation of it, has a great deal of fail about it. It's hard to tell what's clickable and what's not, things are not organized in a logical or easy to reach manner, and on and on. Have a look at this if you have about 20 minutes to spare. Someone goes into a great deal of depth on the 8 UX: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYet-qf1jo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTYet-qf1jo
        chinpokomon 13y ago
        The biggest obstacle that tech journalist faced was his own perceptions on how Windows should work. I'll admit that when I started using Windows 8 during the CTP, I had concerns about the UX for most of the same reasons he mentioned, but I took the time to learn how the designers intended me to use the system before I took the plunge. What is interesting to me, is that most of the complaints he talked about were introduced in Windows 7 and even Vista - press the Windows keyboard button and type to search. That was the recommended way to start applications in Vista since the Start menu could be rearranged simply by installing applications. Want to open the Control Panel, [Win] + "control panel". This of course is a problem for everyone who has learned how to use a Windows computer since the Windows 95 era, and can't be bothered to learn new tricks, but as a tech journalist, was this really outside his abilities to learn? Windows 8 and 8.1 (I haven't tried the RTM release yet) are designed to favor a new class of touch enabled devices. Swipe down from the top of the screen to close Windows 8 applications. Swipe in from the right to show the Charms bar. Swipe in from the left to bring up the task switcher. These metaphors have a much more strict design language than previous versions of Windows. Printing is always* in the Charms bar under devices. It has a consistency beyond what Windows has offered in the past. The only problem I have with Windows 8 and 8.1 is the Desktop mode. *Printing in Desktop applications doesn't follow the same convention as the Windows 8 applications use; you don't use the Charms bar, you fall back to legacy patterns such as File -> Print, or [Ctrl]-p. Ripping the band-aid off quickly would have worked better because then everyone would have adopted the new interface out of necessity. Instead, users are forced to compare them side by side on a daily basis, doing little to wean users off the legacy interface. Coming from legacy Windows to Windows 8 presents some challenges, but approaching Windows 8 with new eyes, on a device designed to use this OS from the start, like a Surface RT, there is so much they got right. It is a shame that Windows 8 is holding users back more than it is ushering in a new era of computing. Microsoft would have been better off if Windows 8 was simply about touch... maybe call it something other than Windows, like Microsoft Touch, and then had left Windows 7 to run legacy apps only. Even something like Windows 7's XP compatibility mode that launched from a card would have been better than making users think that the Desktop was a shipping part of the OS. I can certainly appreciate that Microsoft's management didn't want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs, but that goose is dying and we'd be better off if it went quickly.
    - m_mueller 13y ago
      If you think that Win7 backup rivals TM, did you ever try to restore from it? - The interface is lying. Last time I had 'system image' checkbox enabled and it only kept the totally useless image of the last backup, probably only a few hours back in the backup itself. All the other images were just stored locally. - The pre installation environment used for restoring has barely any network drivers - you need to somehow come up with your own CD or USB drive for providing your network drivers, often needing to extract the right ones out of some subfolders that you draw from an unzipped setup.exe, since manufacturers nowadays often don't offer them separately anymore. - The interface for logging in to your network drive is totally bugged. If you get a network error you will only recognize after you've hand-typed the location, user account and password (on different windows). It's a total mess.
      - harrytuttle 13y ago
        Yay someone else who had actually used it. This is the same experience i had which is why I'm glad they removed it and promote that fact in other posts.
        m_mueller 13y ago
        On the other hand I have to say it's still better to have some sort of backup system, rather than bundling a synch and miscalling it a backup. One thing I don't get in this whole ordeal though: Doesn't Skydrive store previous versions and deleted items like Dropbox (I've never used it)? From experiences with Dropbox it's still not what I'd call a backup (too much can go wrong when synching), but I at least expect it to preserve versions and deleted items, such that in normal operation one can undo everything. If MS has omitted that I really don't understand what they're thinking.
        edandersen 13y ago
        SkyDrive's Recycle Bin stores files until you run out of space or until 30 days is up. So you might randomly be able to recover a deleted file.
grandpoobah 13y ago
Me too, and I never thought I'd be one of those people.
devx 13y ago
Windows 7 will be the last good "desktop OS" from Microsoft. They're going to completely kill the desktop mode in future versions, slowly but surely. They will turn it into DOS, where the desktop is but a fading "app", and will bury it deep inside the Metro mode. I'm almost certain they will do this. There are rumors that with Windows 10 and beyond they will also try to turn Windows's license model into a subscription model, which will completely kill Windows for just about any "regular consumer", and will turn it into a mostly enterprise OS, because only the enterprise customers will (probably) agree to that kind of model. Consumers already believe Windows is "free" with their laptop purchase, and that they don't have to pay anything else after that. A subscription model will be a huge turn off for consumers, not matter how little it costs (even $1 per month). We can only hope that before Windows 7 gets too long in the tooth, Ubuntu or some other multi-OEM OS (Android? Chrome OS?) will become popular enough in the mainstream, and mature enough, to make it a viable alternative five years down the road (I think they will be).
- wintersFright 13y ago
  They really do seem to have jumped the shark and it makes me wonder whether I'll still be using Windows at home and coding in the Windows stack in a few years.
- bcoates 13y ago
  Unlikely. Metro software is extremely thin on the ground, and there's no indication that this is changing in the near term. Microsoft has a long, long history of goofball widget UIs (Active Desktop, Sidebar Gadgets, Metro, various Shell plugin technologies, and to a lesser extent MMC and control panel applets). Each in turn has had its moment in the sun before being marginalized or removed outright.
- devcpp 13y ago
  And by that time, if you're right and people actually jump ship, they'll be using something else (either Windows 7 or Linux IMO) and will demand that at their company. So, Microsoft is taking enormous risks in all the markets: mobile, desktop, consoles... Well, they still have Office going well I suppose. For now.
nolok 13y ago
I've been a happy windows users for a long time, but 7 will probably be my last windows OS - and not because I want to go elsewhere, they are actively pushing me away. It really hurts to see that after so many years of searching itself microsoft finally got things right again with 7 and made a great OS, only for them to throw it all away in the hopes of trying to do a OSX-like thing which ended up being subpar, unsurprisingly, and on top of it most of their regular desktop lovers such as me hate them for it.
- nly 13y ago
  There were people who shared your opinion about XP->Vista. Then 7 came out many of those people were happy to go from XP->7. So, I doubt 7 will be your final Windows OS... If they haven't pissed you off enough to move yet, you'll likely end up using Windows 9.
  - etfb 13y ago
    I saw an early review of Windows 8 that described it as an excellent advertisement for Windows 9. Every one of my customers (I do IT support in a rural area) has told me they hate Windows 8. One of my biggest jobs is getting hold of legal Win 7 installation disks for them. Me, I don't hate it as much as I did at first, but I'm still happier using Ubuntu.
  - nolok 13y ago
    There is a big difference though in my opinion: vista was disliked because it lacked polish on pretty much every single thing (the uac spamming you all the time, features that were outright broken, etc ... it wasn't that I disliked the features, but rather that they didn't work and acted against me), and 7 was in a lot of a way a great polish on top of vista. Call it going the last 10 percent. My dislike of windows 8 however is not on broken features but on the paradigm changes they made. I don't want to focus on one app fullscreen at a time, or be always connected and sync'ed, or use my computer as a tablet, that sort of things. But let's be honest, if microsoft can pull a 7 with windows 9, I'm all for it and will eat my own words.

harrytuttle 13y ago

This article is idiotic: Cloud synchronisation is not backup. If you think that, you are a wally, despite the vendor's promises. This is a new feature they have added that allows sync between devices. It doesn't stop any of the old ways of doing stuff from working other than windows backup which was a piece of shit that didn't work properly anyway. Sync is always notoriously problematic at the best of times so YMMV always with that approach. Realistically, most people just drag stuff to a USB stick periodically and that's good enough for backup. That's how it really works.

aristidb 13y ago
The point is that the author agrees with you, except for the part where they disabled the old built-in backup functionality...
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  The problem is that the old backup solution was crappy anyway so I'm glad they removed it. The basic options were: 1. System image backup. Backs up your fucked system with fucked files. Oh that's it. Not very helpful. As before, everyone just buys 3rd party backup software, sticks it on a USB stick or doesn't bother.
  - w0utert 13y ago
    So the SkyDrive setup screen declares that it will 'back up files to the cloud' while it doesn't, and there is no reliable default back-up solution that ships with Windows 8.1. I'd say it isn't so much the article that's 'idiotic', but how little Microsoft seems to care about providing ways to keep your files safe if you're using Windows...
    - harrytuttle 13y ago
      Yes there is. You can copy files to another disk. Third time I've said that. you don't need an app for that. It's also the simplest solution that fits in the head space of a user. Linux doesn't come with a backup app either. You have some tools (dump/tar/dd) from which you can build one or you buy one in (bacula, Amanda etc). Same with windows (powershell, vhd cmdlets etc).

frank_boyd 13y ago

For those who've missed it: http://prism-break.org/ http://prism-break.org/ has a few alternative OSes. Personally, I've been on Ubuntu for about 8 years. I have never regretted it. But the more time passes, the less I regret it, if you know what I mean.

harrytuttle 13y ago
Yes, download a new OS and Tor. That'll surely protect the network layer between X and Y!!!
- frank_boyd 13y ago
  What? What I'm talking about is getting your freedom back.
- northwest 13y ago
  Are you smoking again?
MichaelGG 13y ago
Your trolling on every thread, injecting random 'ooh NSA' comments, is just not constructive. Practically everyone here is more aware of the situation than you are.

MichaelApproved 13y ago

How do they get away with including SkyDrive in the OS without having companies like Dropbox up in arms? Maybe that's why they're calling it backup, since backup is arguably part of an operating system and has existed (albeit in other forms) on previous versions of Windows.

halfninety 13y ago
How do Apple get away with including iCloud in the OS without having companies like Dropbox up in arms? And they do call it "sync".
- frank_boyd 13y ago
  How do any of those companies always get away?
  - ethana 13y ago
    Europe, we're counting on you!
    - frank_boyd 13y ago
      Just did a little research: Anyone who feels competition is being killed can actually let the EU commission know about is so they can correct any problems: http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/contacts_en.html http://ec.europa.eu/competition/consumers/contacts_en.html
- manojlds 13y ago
  Bigger thing is how iOS has only one browser that can be default and how other browsers can never be as powerful as Apple's. how is apple getting away with it, despite MS being punished for just installing a browser in their OS. Yeah MS is more of a monopoly in desktops, but Apple monopolizes iOS if we see it that way.
  - easyfrag 13y ago

drivebyacct2 13y ago

This is an extremely, extremely, extremely confused post. I hope people give 8.1 a genuine shot. I run Linux every day, I have a history of whiny comments about Windows and the .NET community and I haven't ever been so excited about the MS ecosystem as i am now. I really hope people give the RTM/GA releases a real shot. All of this makes perfect sense. SkyDrive is a sync tool, not a backup tool. This is obvious and it works like other tools in its field. I don't get the tone of this article. The whole "I'll stay on 7" is just sad. It's pure ignorance. Win8 is 7 with a bunch of significant improvements and the addition of WinRT apps. Honestly, hand someone a Win8.1 machine, tell them it's Win7 and they will have no idea other than the Start menu is now full screen (or performance is greatly increased, or they have HyperV for free, or they have Storage Pools, etc. Boots straight to the desktop, has their apps pinned on the taskbar... with the start button and all. I'm so tired of these attempts to make it look like Microsoft has "jumped the shark" in some silly sense. I'll join the mob on SecureBoot on ARM, but otherwise, it's really just sad. And I say that as someone who runs Arch on their desktop, Chromebook Pixel, and server.

wintersFright 13y ago

8.1 also heavily pushes logging on with a Microsoft Account. 8.0 had a small print option to use a local account but that is gone now and you have to submit a bad email/password combo 3 times before it gives in and lets you setup a local account. I'll stick to a local account per machine thanks very much. Would rather not have MS holding the keys on whether I can logon to my own machine or not, nor give them free big data for onselling to marketers.

nwh 13y ago
> you have to submit a bad email/password combo 3 times before it gives in and lets you setup a local account. Ike. That's horrible. Who in the world thought that hiding a standard user account would be a good idea?
- venomsnake 13y ago
  Someone who will retire in 12 months.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  That's a lie. It doesn't do that.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    I just installed it about 5 minutes ago. On the "setup your account" screen, there is no option for a local account. You must login or create a new account. Now, once you go to create a new account, there's a low-contrast option at the bottom to skip this step. I think I'm fairly computer savvy, but had I not searched on how to bypass this, I probably would have set up an MS account. For "normal" people, I'd say this will be extremely effective at increasing their "conversion" to Microsoft Accounts. It's extremely hostile.
    - AgentConundrum 13y ago
      This is only true of the public beta. It bothered me as well when I tried it out, but after a few searches I found that the RTM will still have local accounts. I assume the decision was made to keep in contact with the beta testers or something, but my hotmail account is a glorified spam catcher at this point, so I've never bothered to check. [1] http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-8-1-Preview-Won-t-Support-Local-User-Accounts-362922.shtml http://news.softpedia.com/news/Windows-8-1-Preview-Won-t-Sup... (This isn't the article I read back then, but it's the first thing I found when I just searched.)

peterkelly 13y ago

I'm going hold off on Windows 8 for as long as I can. For now I'm sticking with OS X and time machine.

ladzoppelin 13y ago

Yea this blog is wrong because they just removed the backup GUI. You can do a backup and image using powershell commands just like past Windows versions.

edandersen 13y ago
Well spotted - http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to-create-and-restore-system-image-backups-on-windows-8.1/ http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to-create-and-restore-sy.... Doesn't cover non-image backups of individual files and folders though.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  Copy-Item
  - edandersen 13y ago
    That doesn't handle versioning.
    - harrytuttle 13y ago
      Shadow copies, archive bit?
hug 13y ago
That's still user-hostile. Don't get me wrong, as a Windows sysadmin I love Powershell and use it daily to accomplish various tasks. I have no problem with rolling my own scheduled powershell script to perform a backup, but if if I have to write a script to back up my data I'm not actually using a 'built in system utility' so much as I'm .. y'know, writing a script to back up my files.
- harrytuttle 13y ago
  That's fine. As per windows since 2.0, you can copy files to another disk then using the GUI.

alexchamberlain 13y ago

Dropbox allows you to recover past versions of files; does SkyDrive allow you to do the same?

ruqkus 13y ago
Yes, this post is very misleading. SkyDrive features both a recycle bin for deleted files and a version history option to restore from a previous copy.
- alexchamberlain 13y ago
  Thanks; in which case, SkyDrive is a backup.
  - nilved 13y ago
    Unless your MS account is shut down.
- Livven 13y ago
  The version history option is only available for Office files (.docx, .xlsx etc.), plus even if it applied to all files a local backup can still be useful. Forcefully disabling local file history for SkyDrive simply doesn't make any sense... there's no technical reason for it, and it neither benefits the user nor Microsoft or anybody else.
  - jervisfm 13y ago
    Yep, I just tested with a simple txt file and the changes were not versioned. New modifications were made permanently without ability to go back to a prior version of the text file. It does support versioning for office docs as you stated though.
edandersen 13y ago
You can only recover past versions of Office documents. The "Recycle Bin" only stores items until it is full or for 30 days. It can't be relied on, basically.

NateDad 13y ago

So.... spend 5 bucks a month and get a real backup service? I get that it's underhanded for Microsoft to call this backup when it's just sync.... but honestly, for 99% of people, that's better than the nothing they have now.

kmfrk 13y ago
Seems like plain old upsale, a little similar to Apple's pricing for extra storage on iCloud.

chris_wot 13y ago

I can't believe that Microsoft would be so irresponsible for propagating the myth that file mirroring is the same as file backup! What an absolute recipe for disaster.

mohas 13y ago

I neither use skydrive nor windows backup, but the article had good point, saying skydrive is not a backup option on their terms and conditions to avoid legal problems, but then saying it will backup your files in the user interface, which one do you think people will see most? I like a software when it clearly says its purpose and don't confuse its users

sprior 13y ago

The really sad part is that at least somebody at Microsoft once knew how backup was supposed to work. Windows Home Server backed up every Windows machine in your house over the network to the central server. It was a bare metal recovery type differential backup, the backups were aged rationally, and the machines were woken up in the middle of the night to perform the backup, but laptops would only do this if they were plugged into AC so you wouldn't wake up a laptop in a suitcase and drain the battery and burn up the machine because it had no cooling airspace. It was pretty damn perfect (OK, a couple of minor issues), one of the best products Microsoft has ever produced. So of course they screwed up the next version so bad that all the OEMs dropped their products that were based on it and Microsoft killed the product.

chinpokomon 13y ago
I was burned on more than one occasion by the "RAID" disk volume getting corrupted. As much as I liked Windows Home Server, I was really hoping the next release would have improved their drive volume manager, rather than just killing off the product.
chinpokomon 13y ago
I was burned on more than one occasion by the "RAID" disk volume getting corrupted. As much as I liked Windows Home Server, I was really hoping the next release would have improved their drive volume manager, rather than just killing off the product.

ygra 13y ago

Random question: What would be a good backup option for Windows? Even Windows 7's backup option was often unusable, failing backups with strange errors or taking two days to complete so I'm not too sad to see it gone completely. I'm just missing a useful alternative. File History is nice for accidentally lost files, but for restoring a working state of the machine there are probably better options.

david-keepvault 13y ago
I work for KeepVault Online Backup and we've heard similar feedback from customers regarding Windows built-in backup solution. Our software provides both local and cloud-based backup. If you only need local backup to an external, you can sign up for a free KeepVault trial account and use the local backup forever. KeepVault Pro also provides versioning, so a file corruption or deletion isn't going to wipe your backups. KeepVault backups are also fully encrypted end-to-end and incremental. http://www.keepvault.com http://www.keepvault.com
- ygra 13y ago
  For a purely local backup (I rsync my NAS to a datacenter myself) KeepVault seems unnecessarily complicated, as I have to get an account and I cannot seem to make a local backup to a network share/drive (I only see local drives in the selection).
Stratoscope 13y ago
I've been using ShadowProtect for several years. It's really great; I have it set to run a complete incremental backup every 15 minutes, and those backups usually take less than 30 seconds with no impact on system performance. I wrote about it in some detail previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5656597
Serow225 13y ago
I went through a number of Windows backup solutions to find one that worked for my Dad, and in the end the one that we were the most happy with was Genie Timeline. It works quite similar to Time Machine on OSX, and includes both system restore and continuous incremental file backup, which were the criteria I was looking for.

Karunamon 13y ago

@drivebyacct I have given 8 a shot. You know what I've decided? That Microsoft's ideas on UI design are about as good as their ideas on advertising (i.e. head-scratching at best and migrane inducing at worst) I'm serious. Whoever the genius was that decided that swipes on a laptop trackpad should behave the same way as on a tablet (in this case, switching applications) should be shot, and the corpse fired. Yes, I know this can be disabled. The fact that it's on, and the default, is the problem. (If you're wondering what the problem is, it's that there's no difference from a "swipe" gesture and just moving your mouse from left to right across the pad) Same with the whole start screen business which has been discussed ad nauseum elsewhere. Suffice to say, its information density is low, its disruption to whatever you're doing is high. And then there's this Microsoft account malarky that they shove down your throat at every other turn. I 'm already using an OS which more likely than not has backdoors for the TLAs, made by a company that admits they give new vulnerabilities to said TLAs before fixing them. I am sure as HELL not going to make logging onto my system reliant on some random cloud service! Whatever tangible benefits 8 has over 7 do not at this point tilt the cost/benefit ratio enough in that direction for me to shell out the roughly ~$1000 it would cost to up(down?)grade my 7 enterprise infrastructure. *ed I really wish you'd get a real account that isn't dead. It's impossible to respond to you.

drivebyacct2 13y ago
So you rage hate the Start screen. Could've spared me the 5 paragraphs. And yeah, there are lots of reasons to pick 8 over 7, not my fault you don't know them. And if you'd even paid half a bit of attention when evaluating 8 for your enterprisey scenario, you'd know that MSA accounts are a complete non-factor in corp setups. AD accounts and group policies and everything else works just like normal.
AaronFriel 13y ago
> I'm serious. Whoever the genius was that decided that swipes on a laptop trackpad should behave the same way as on a tablet (in this case, switching applications) should be shot, and the corpse fired. Yes, they should be. Then, you should uninstall the custom trackpad driver that does that, because that's not a built-in gesture. That was probably added by Synaptic, or the OEM of your laptop, and you should disable the gesture and probably let the OEM know that including that gesture was insane. The rest of your complaints are, well, I think they're overstated, but I can't argue with how using the OS "feels" to someone. If you think it feels poorly done, me telling you your feelings are wrong is not going to get us anywhere. But at least factually, you should know that some of your assertions might be rooted in what OEMs have done to add crap to Windows 8.

Aardwolf 13y ago

You want to back up your personal files, not your OS. How can an OS make backup user hostile? Write your files to several external disks that you keep in different places, and maybe some online service, and that's it.

zmmmmm 13y ago

I truly don't understand what MS finds so hard about backup. What people want is so simple and obvious - a separate copy of all their files, preferably their whole system image, somewhere else. And yet every version of Windows seems to screw around with it. I remember Vista came out and I thought a great way to migrate would be to do a full system backup and then I could restore back the personal files I wanted onto Vista. Nope - the backup system totally changed, the utiltity to restore files didn't even ship with Vista! I was left to manually use an old XP computer to extract and copy files across from my backup image. Then Win7 came and I started using the backup option there. But even with the full drive image I didn't quite trust it, so I also made intermittent backups using Macrium Reflect which creates a low level image of each partition. So then came the day when my wife chose the "recover my pc" from the boot menu and wiped everything. "No problem!" I thought, I will just Google how to restore a full system image to bare metal. Imagine my shock to discover that this is not a feature of Windows backup. Unless you make a "recovery disk" using a CD (this computer did not have a CD drive), you cannot reinstall a full system image!? So I installed from the Macrium partition image and it delightfully brought back our system in a matter of minutes. I've never been able to work out if this consistent incompetence is by design (to keep the industry of alternative backup solutions alive and avoid accusations of monoply / antitrust) or if they have some strategic or tactical reason to make sure noboby on windows manages to back up their computers (hey, 20% of all users who corrupt their hard drive just buy a new computer!) Whatever the reason, it is exacty this sort of thing that is driving regular consumers away from Windows and into the arms of Apple. I hope MS figures it out, because I am not fond of Apple either.

WalterBright 13y ago

Really, most Windows apps are bad at backup, and it's not Microsoft's fault. Even Thunderbird is bad at it - what's wrong with a menu item called "backup" and "restore"? Most apps fail because they store crucial data in various undocumented directories, plus the system registry. Even worse, some like to store critical data in hidden directories. Backing up an app and its data, and restoring, on Windows should be as simple as a single xcopy command.

jeromeparadis 13y ago

I don't bother with backups on Windows or Mac since I made the wise decision to backup every computer, Mac or PC using Crashplan to NAS and cloud. I would have once been mad with this Microsoft feature removal. However, I've come to realize than neither Microsoft's or Apple's backup solutions satisfactory for my needs. Time machine is arguably better... until it decides to stop working. Since I've been on CrahPlan, no problems on any computer. I've had one laptop that shorted since then and it was easy enough to recover my files.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

vitd 13y ago

Did anyone else find it disturbing how the dialog box telling you about SkyDrive tries to hide the fact that you don't actually need to use it by make the "Don't Use SkyDrive" button not a button but clickable text? The vast majority of users will not even see the clickable text, and of those who do, they'll think it's not clickable, ensuring that millions of people will sign up for the service, even if they don't want it.