Backup and Restore and Recovery

Question

I just recently ran the Backup for my NB255-N245 Notebook with Windows 7 Starter. I did not use the Online Backup but used a USB drive with 128GB of capacity. After doing this I was looking to see what was on the drive because it seemed only 2GB of space was used. I on see 2 items 1 named Notebook and another file MediaID.bin. I am curious what is on this drive and what can be restored or recovered with it? I was originally trying to make a copy of the C drive so I could restore it from the original files, if I am explaining that correctly. This being I think there may be a corrupted file somewhere.  I did find out apparently recovery disks seem to be needed to do what I was going to do but not sure if that is correct?

Answer 1

There is a lot of information around, but I will try to explain it in simple terms from my head (sorry, I won't provide links).
Anyway, here is how it is supposed to work.
You must create a user who will be designated as a Data Recovery Agent (DRA).
Do the following on a domain joined workstation - could be a VM.
Encrypt a file using this account so that EFS certificate is created for the DRA.
Export the certificate and export private key. Delete private key during the export. 
Save the exported certificate into the safe. Delete exported certificate from the workstation. Optionally, if it was a VM, delete a VM too.
This leaves you with account for DRA that only has the public key, but not the private key. This user can encrypt EFS files, but cannot read them. This is your DRA account. You don't use it for anything else but as a DRA.
So, configure Data recovery policy, using your prepared account as DRA.
That's all.
When you need to recover files, get a new (clean) domain joined workstation - could be a VM.
Get certificate from the safe.
Create a new user JohnDoe.
Import a certificate from the safe to JohnDoe.
Now JonhnDoe has both private and public key and can read EFS encrypted data.
Decrypt the data as you like.
When you are finished, destroy JohnDoe and workstation (VM).
HTH