11. Working With Windows Vista's SDCLT Backup Software

Windows Vista users are treated to a backup utility that is similar to, but also different in some places, than NTBackup. The utility delivers a subset of NTBackup functionality plus a few new options. It's available at the time of this writing for both Vista release candidate versions. Instead of ntbackup.exe, Windows Vista uses an oddly-named utility, sdclt.exe, for backup status and configuration purposes as shown in the next screenshot. The first time it is run sdclt.exe prompts you to enter your own configuration settings. As with XT's NTBackup, when Volume Shadow Copy is enabled sdclt.exe makes a shadow copy (real-time archive) of your data, whether it is in use or not.

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Unfortunately, Windows Vista's backup utility (as of this writing) lacks the crucial functionality that lets you pick and choose which files you want backed up. For whatever reasons, this functionality is present in Windows XP's ntbackup.exe but absent in Windows Vista's sdclt.exe.

If you have a network at home or in the office, there is a configuration option to use a network resource - a disk drive on another computer or network attached storage - within your given workgroup (the name given to a group of windows computers, like MSHOME or WORKGROUP).

Even though two separate USB flash drives were available on our test system none showed up in the drop-down list provided by Vista's backup utility. The list only gave two choices: the primary drive and the DVD drive. You do have the option of storing backup data to external USB hard drives, however. USB flash drive backups would be a particularly nice feature for mobile users. If the absent tape backup option is permanent, it probably will go mostly unnoticed and is unlikely to cause too much heartburn.

Vista's backup utility does offer one direct advantage over XP's NTBackup: it can burn directly to CD or DVD media without invoking a third-party application. There's no need to involve a third-party CD or DVD image burning application such as Nero Burning ROM with Vista. For this newest member of the Windows family, you can just backup and burn in a single step.