Windows 7 backup feature

Windows 7 features a much improved backup center, allowing computer users to easily backup selected data on a schedule or as a one off. It is imperative that regular backups are made, as it is not unreasonable to expect data loss to occur at some point during the lifetime of a PC.

There are plenty of excellent 3rd party backup tools which do an excellent job (such as Acronis True Image), but the Windows 7 backup center is more than adequate for most home users (and doesn't cost a penny!).

To begin, open the Backup Center by typing "Backup" in to the start menu search box, and then click on the "Backup and Restore" application:

Now, click "Set up backup" to begin the backup wizard:

You are now prompted to select a destination to backup your files, which can be a mapped drive or a network location. Once this is done, click Next:

This window will prompt you to choose a backup type, either typical or custom. If you have specific backup requirements you will need to follow the custom procedure. Otherwise, click the "let windows choose" option and then "next":

Now confirm the backup configuration and click "save settings and run backup" when you are satisfied. You have the option to change how often the automatic backup takes place (in this case, every Sunday at 19:00):

Once this is done, Windows will work in the background to create the backup. You can continue working as normal until the backup is completed. If you want to check the backup progress, open the Backup Center again.



Windws Data Recovery


courtesy: www.w7forums.com

AudioShell - A Windows 7 Utility

When I was spring cleaning through my music collection the other day and updating all of my music and ripped CD’s with the appropriate album artwork when it occurred to me that the majority of my video media did not have its own artwork. I use a 32GB Zune HD and like many other PMP’s, it shows a thumbnail of the video clip about 30-45 seconds into the video by default. I was wondering if I would be able to do what I do with audio files to my video files for adding artwork both in Windows 7 and on the Zune HD.

I tried everything I could think to try and inevitably came to what everyone does when they need to do something and doesn’t know how, I googled exactly what I was trying to do, word-for-word. After sifting through the usual amount of articles and posts which offered little to no help, I stumbled on a program called AudioShell.

AudioShell is a great add-on because it doesn’t exactly add a program to your computer, but instead adds a few more tabs in the right-click properties menu of a file. These new tabs allow the user to add and change ID3 metadata tags without the use of a third party program like Mp3tag. Best of all, while it is essentially made for editing information on audio files, it will allow users to edit tag information on certain video formats.

After installation, simply find an accepted video file. In my case, this would be an .mp4 file that I ripped from a Blu-ray disc.

Note: The movies posters were already added to these files.

Right-click on the file and select Properties.

Click on the AudioShell Tag Editor menu tab and select Add Cover.

Navigate to the movie poster file which you saved in advance and click Apply.

Note: After clicking Ok or Apply, it takes a minute for the system to add the picture to the file and show as the thumbnail. The properties window even said “Not Responding”, but eventually worked fine.

These are the supported file types by AudioShell taken from the AudioShell website.

• mp3 (all ID3 tag versions)
• wma, asf and wmv (including DRM protected files)
• Apple iTunes and iPod aac (m4a, m4b, m4v and m4p) and mp4 files
• ogg, flac (vorbis comment tags)
• mpc, mp+ (APE/APEv2 tags)
• monkey’s audio (APE/APEv2 tags)
• wav pack (APE/APEv2 tags)
• optim frog (APE/APEv2 tags)
• wav (ID3v2 tag in ‘tag ‘ RIFF chunk)

As you can see, this is a great way to organize your videos and make them look very nice when viewing through an explorer window. The down side is that the accepted formats do not include .avi and some other prominent file types. Let me know what you think of AudioShell and if anyone has found a similar program to add artwork to .avi files, please let me know in the comments.

Windows data recovery

Courtesy: http://windows7news.com/2010/04/08/windows-7-utilities-audioshell/