Backing up SSD on PC (cloning)

[skunkwrks]

Hi Guys, i've read if i want to back up my SSD on my PC i can clone the SSD; what i'm trying to do is backup my SSD, programs, files and windows so if this PC crashes i can just switch into the other SSD.

I would have my clone SSD Clone from my PC every 1 week

Would this work ?

Would i have to have 2 OS keys, would windows allow this ?

 

[USAFRet]

1. For backup purposes, you don't really want a full clone.
Images work much better for this. Full + Incremental or Differential gives you much greater flexibility.

2. Read here: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3383768/backup-situation-home.html

 

[Dugimodo]

It's easier to automate an image as well, but if what you are wanting is to have a second SSD ready to go then yes cloning is the way to go.
However is it really necessary to have a whole SSD sitting around "just in case" Seems wasteful and expensive.

A system image can generally be reinstalled and have you back up and running fairly quickly.

At the extreme end of a crash downloading the latest windows 10 image on a good connection and reinstalling from scratch usually takes me less than an hour so I don't worry too much about a system image. Reinstaling all my software takes much longer but generally I just do that as needed over a week or two. I've never actually had to do this because of a crash though, been running windows 10 since release on my gaming rig.

 

[USAFRet]

I can resurrect an Image, of any day in the last 2 weeks, up and running on a new or different drive in about 20 minutes.
To have that much granularity with full clones, I'd need 14 individual drives.

 

[skunkwrks]

Thanks for the link, now imaging makes economical sense, so i can have say 12 images on a remote server and choose which one i want to download, where cloning takes the exact space and 1 clone 1 drive, ok.

If my system crashes, say my PC was water damaged and i buy all new hardware how would this work, i download an image onto my new PC and it work or do i have to download Windows 8, then bring over the iamge ?

My concern is with imaging and backing up to all new hardware that programs like Photoshop will have errors for some reason because it sees a new hardware.

 

[stdragon]

I use "Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows - Free Edition"

https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint-server-backup-free.html

Their Workstation and Server Editions provide addition features that you might be interested in as well. Worth taking a look.

https://www.veeam.com/veeam_agent_windows_2_1_editions_comparison_ds.pdf

It will do full disk image backups, with the ability to do a BMR (Bare Metal Recovery) in the event of a drive failure. It allows for creating USB and bootable ISO recovery media. That way, you boot from it, point to your backups, and restore to a new disk. You can store the snapshot images within a single directory to either another internal drive, an attached USB drive, or an SMB share on the network (the application can login to the share with a separate set of access credentials to it). That last part is important, because it will prevent total data-loss in the event of a ransomware attack. While ransomware will wipe out any volume it has access too, including your backup drives, it can't access a remote share that Windows itself doesn't have access too (because the credentials are encrypted within the Veeam app itself).

Should I just need to restore a single file or directory, I can just as easily restore it through through the program's UI. Way better, and more flexible than the built-in Windows Back up utility.

By default, it has a 14 day retention period, but you can adjust that based on needs.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for the link, now imaging makes economical sense, so i can have say 12 images on a remote server and choose which one i want to download, where cloning takes the exact space and 1 clone 1 drive, ok.

If my system crashes, say my PC was water damaged and i buy all new hardware how would this work, i download an image onto my new PC and it work or do i have to download Windows 8, then bring over the iamge ?

My concern is with imaging and backing up to all new hardware that programs like Photoshop will have errors for some reason because it sees a new hardware.

For a whole new PC, that wouldn't work.
You'd need to do a clean install on the new hardware. Incl photoshop.