Today with cloud computing backups, if your trading computer goes down, it isn’t as disastrous as it once was. But it’s still inconvenient. Starting with a new trading computer can be time-consuming and daunting. You have to install everything from scratch.
An image backup can help. Taking an image backup of your Windows 10 system is relatively easy. It ensures that if you have a problem, you can always use the image to boot up a new instance of your system, including all the files and apps you own.
If you do the image backup regularly, you will always have the latest state of your computer ready for reinstallation should disaster strike.
Reasons You Should Have an Image Backup
Trading computers are heavily used devices. You probably have lots of apps and take lots of updates. Your Windows operating system is probably the biggest contributor to system changes, with its regular updates and service packs.
Any of these updates or changes can cause problems. Often it’s difficult to resolve the underlying issues. You or your support person can end up spending hours or days trying to fix the problems.
On top of that, although today’s hard drives are much more reliable than the earliest versions, they are still one of the weakest components in your system.
But if you have a backup image, you can easily revert to the backed-up state of the machine. You might not have all the data, but you’ll have most of what you need. Suppose you decided to make a backup of your system every Monday. If your Windows operating system crashes on Tuesday, you’ll have only lost one day’s worth of work.
Depending on the importance of the system, you can back up more often to mitigate the risks. But remember that more backups means more space. The backups are relatively large even after compression. So you’ll want to run a cost-benefit analysis before deciding to perform more frequent backups.
Steps to Create Windows 10 Backup
Here’s how to create your image backup.
- In the search box or taskbar, type “control panel” and to go to the Control Panel.
- Click on System and Security.
- Click on Backup and Restore (Windows 7).
- In the left panel, click on Create a system image.
- After choosing the backup destination, click on Start Backup.
Windows will give you 3 options for where to save the image file. You can save it on your hard disk, on an external drive like a CD, DVD or an external hard drive, or you can save it to a network location.
Tip: Saving the backup on your hard disk isn’t a good plan as it can get corrupted when a problem occurs. CDs and DVDs are easy to misplace. A network location or external hard drive are the best options.
Depending on the speed of your computer and the amount of storage required, the backup can take minutes to hours. If you are saving it to a network location, it might take longer due to latency.
Steps to Restore from Backup
Here are the steps for a simple restore.
- Open the Settings menu.
- Go to Update & recovery.
- Under Recovery, click on Advanced startup.
- Click on Restart now.
- The PC should restart.
- Go to Troubleshooting Advanced Options.
- Choose System image recovery.
It will take some time for Windows 10 to recover your trading computer. Sometimes the recovery process can get complicated. You can always ask for the help of a professional to recover your system.
Conclusion
Even if you don’t plan to run the recovery yourself, it’s still a good idea to regularly save a full system backup. And if you bought your computer from EZ Trading Computers, our support staff will be happy to help you with the process.
There are more trading computer tips like this in our buyers guide. Check out our “How To Buy a Trading Computer” e-book.
We hope today’s Quick Tip helped you. If you found this helpful, you’ll want to check out the other computer How-To’s I’ve created on this page. You can always call us if you have questions: 800-387-5250