There are times when you might need to restore a backup, either to a new computer or for disaster recovery after a crash. Assuming you’ve followed our advice and have used Windows 7’s built in Backup and Restore, this guide will show you how to restore a backup from your external hard drive.
This assumed you used an external hard disk as your storage device. Other options might be CD/DVD re-writable although if you have a large backup and stored them on optical disks, you will need prepare to do a lot of disc swapping.
First thing, connect your external hard disk (I am using a USB external hard disk), then turn it on.
Click Start, type: backup
Hit Enter on your keyboard
Under Restore click Select another backup to restore files from
If you have multiple backups stored on your external hard disk from different periods. select the one you want and click Next. In my case, I will use the latest one, in this case I will choose the latest one titled WIN7X64SP1-ACER
You have the option of restoring specific files and settings, in this case, I want to restore everything. Click Next
You have the option restoring your files to their original locations or you can choose an alternative. I found this particularly handy when a particular file refused to restore, what I did was restore it to a different location in the system, then copied it to the appropriate location. Click Restore to begin
Depending on the size the backup, restoration might take some time. Make sure you are connected power and also have your backup connected to a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS), in fact Backup and Restore will not work on battery power for laptops.
When the restoration is complete, click Finish. If certain files were not restored, you will have the option view a log of the results. The best recommendation is to restore the files somewhere else temporarily, then cop the files to their respective locations.