Summary. On the face of things, a topic like storage, backup, and recovery doesn’t seem very exciting

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.

Chapter 12

Accounts and Security

In This Chapter