discussed elsewhere in this chapter, there is one key piece of the puzzle missing, and that’s cloud-based backup. That is, in addition to backing up key data locally to another drive attached to your PC or, better still, to a completely different PC or device on your home network, you should consider having an off-site data recovery solution in place. This will provide that final measure of safety should a real-world disaster occur, such as a fire or theft.
To better understand the scope of this issue, consider how Windows 8’s various backup and recovery tools work together to keep your PC and its contained data safe. At the most basic level, you can use the Push Button Reset functionality to quickly recover the operating system and, optionally, your data, settings, and Metro-style apps. So even in the worst-case scenario, software-wise, all you’ll lose are your traditional Windows applications, which will need to be reinstalled.
Of course, recovering the operating system is only one layer of safety and this won’t help with your precious data—documents, photos, and so on—if the PC’s hard drive fails. So Windows 8 also offers a nice File History feature, which backs up not just your data, but the various revisions of your data as well. And it does so to secondary storage—another hard drive attached to your PC—or to a network location, further enhancing resiliency with physical separation.
You can enhance data storage in general, or File History specifically, with Storage Spaces as well. This amazing feature lets you mirror data across two or three disks, again providing protection in the event of hardware failure.
Old-timers, or those who simply can’t let go of the previous ways of doing things, can take advantage of Windows 7-era backup and recovery features too, including various troubleshooting tools, System Restore for repairing bad driver installs and other issues, and even Windows Backup, for complete end-to-end PC image backups.
But none of these solutions will help if your home is destroyed, or the PC and its hard disks are stolen. What you need to complete this end-to-end backup and recovery picture is off-site storage. You need cloud backup.
Sadly, this is the one backup and recovery solution that Microsoft doesn’t explicitly provide in Windows 8. You could, of course, pay for SkyDrive additional storage, use the SkyDrive application or a third-party solution to provide Explorer-based access to Microsoft’s cloud service, and then back up data in that fashion. We happen to like using SkyDrive for this purpose, since it keeps valuable documents, photos, and other files synced between PCs and the cloud. The SkyDrive app’s folder structure can be seen in Figure 11-25.
Figure 11-25: Using SkyDrive instead of regular folders to keep content synced with the cloud.
Or you could use a third-party service such as CrashPlan—which we’re both using because of its low cost and excellent performance—Carbonite, or similar.
While we wish that Windows 8 completed the picture, there are certainly enough cloud backup services out there to satisfy anyone’s needs. Just be sure to use one of these services, as ultimately, the responsibility to protect your data is yours alone.
Summary
On the face of things, a topic like storage, backup, and recovery doesn’t seem very exciting. But here’s an amazing fact: Of all the new features and functionality in Windows 8, our two favorite, by far—Storage Spaces and Push Button Reset—are covered in this chapter. What a turn of events.
It all starts with the new storage features in Windows 8, the key of which is Storage Spaces, a way to elegantly and easily mirror multiple disks of multiple types and sizes, creating redundant pools of storage you can use as you see fit. Building on this is File History, an improved take on the Previous Versions feature from Windows 7 that automatically backs up multiple versions of your most important data files so you can always find the one you want.
Windows 8 also improves on the Windows recovery toolset and in a dramatic fashion. There are new and improved versions of legacy recovery tools, of course, but also brand-new tools like PC Reset and PC Refresh, components of a Push Button Reset functionality that lets you very quickly take a balky Windows install and make it new again.
Put this all together and you see a version of Windows that is safe and reliable and easily and quickly made right should something go wrong. This alone is an amazing achievement. That it is but a small part of the list in improvements in Windows 8 suggests that this is a mighty new OS release indeed.
• Understanding accounts and account types in Windows 8
• Managing accounts with PC Settings
• Using advanced account management with Control Panel
• Using Microsoft Account features with other account types
• Understanding the new security features in Windows 8
• Protecting your PC from malware and viruses with Windows Defender
• Protecting your PC when Windows isn’t running
• Preventing malware downloads with Windows SmartScreen
• Understanding the Windows 8 improvements to Action Center and other security features
Everyone who uses Windows knows that you typically sign in, or “log in” as we used to say, to the PC using an account with which unique settings, documents and files, and even applications are associated. The types of accounts we’ve used in Windows have certainly evolved over the years, but for the most part, there have been two basic kinds of sign-ins: domain accounts, which are used exclusively by corporations, and local accounts, which are specific only to the PC on which they are used; home users and most individuals have always used this latter account type.
In Windows 8, Microsoft is introducing a new type of sign-in that is tied to a Microsoft account, or what used to be called a Windows Live ID. (With Windows 8, Microsoft is eliminating Windows Live as a brand, but is continuing its most popular products and services, often with new names.) As you’ll discover, this new account type is really just a formalization of a capability that debuted in Windows 7, but it takes on new prominence in Windows 8 thanks to this system’s pervasive PC-to-PC sync capabilities.
Windows 8 also provides interesting new choices for signing in, augmenting the long-lived password system with some new choices that may make more sense on today’s modern Windows devices and PCs. As always, securing your PC against electronic and human attack is job one for Windows 8, and in this version of Windows, you have more tools than ever to help ensure that your PC and its valuable data are safe.
But it all begins with your user account. So let’s look at that first.
User Accounts
