Windows System State backup vs Windows System backup

There are two types of backup that you can perform to back up a Windows machine (i.e. Active Directory Domain Services on a Domain Controller):

• a System State backup, and;
• a critical-volumes System backup.

A System State backup should be run before you make changes to your system (i.e. Windows Update). A System backup should be made if you also need to preserve the installed applications and data, when you may need to do a full system recovery.

MS Windows System State backup (wbadmin start systemstatebackup):

When performing a System State backup, the system components that are included in the System State data depend on the server roles that are installed on the computer. A System State backup includes at least the following data, plus additional data, depending on the server roles that are installed:

• Registry
• COM+ Class Registration database
• Boot files
• Active Directory Certificate Services (AD CS) database
• Active Directory database (Ntds.dit)
• SYSVOL directory
• Cluster service information
• Microsoft Internet Services (IIS) metadirectory
• System files that are under Windows Resource Protection

You can restore System State to the same server, or another server with identical hardware. Microsoft does not, however, support restoring System State to different hardware.

MS Windows System backup (wbadmin start backup):

With the MS Windows System backup module, you can backup all critical volumes, rather than only backing up System State data, this module backs up the selected volumes entirely.

When you backup the critical volumes on a Domain Controller with the MS Windows System backup module, the backup includes all data that resides on the volumes that include the following:

• The volume that hosts the boot files, which consist of the Bootmgr file and the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store
• The volume that hosts the Windows operating system and the registry
• The volume that hosts the SYSVOL tree
• The volume that hosts the Active Directory database (Ntds.dit)
• The volume that hosts the Active Directory database log files