[SOLVED] Best cloud backup software for manual backups?

Theminecraftaddict555

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So I haven't been looking into much for manual backup software free and paid since I've been doing simple copy and pastes to my external hard drive. What is the recommended cloud backup software that I can use to backup my whole windows image?
 
Solution
So if I were to buy another external, should I buy an external ssd or hdd?
HDD.

This is my backup routine.

Instead of the NAS box I have, an external drive or two would suffice in your situation.
Macrium Reflect Free would work just fine.

USAFRet

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So I haven't been looking into much for manual backup software free and paid since I've been doing simple copy and pastes to my external hard drive. What is the recommended cloud backup software that I can use to backup my whole windows image?
Define "whole windows image".
That can be quite large.

Ideally, you do whole drive images locally, and specific personal files to the cloud.
 

USAFRet

Titan
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By whole image, I mean my whole windows OS drive...Unfortunately I do not have access to an offsite local drive I can use for whole the whole image as my external drive is too small for the image I have.
"whole windows OS drive"
Again, huge. And that 'image' changes every day.

How big is your current C partition?
What upload bandwidth do you have?

I am unaware of any backup tool that will do the whole C drive to online somewhere, without an intermediary drive to store that image.
 

Theminecraftaddict555

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I'd like to try to back it up once in a while regardless of the changes...And when anything goes wrong I can copy that working image back to my current SSD.

My C drive partition is about 930gb (with 470gb used). Upload bandwidth is 9-10 mbps via ethernet[
 

USAFRet

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I'd like to try to back it up once in a while regardless of the changes...And when anything goes wrong I can copy that working image back to my current SSD.

My C drive partition is about 930gb (with 470gb used). Upload bandwidth is 9-10 mbps via ethernet[
And that is not going to happen 'in the cloud'.

500GB, at 10megabits/sec, will take 5 days, running constantly.
And how would you "copy it back"?

You cannot do this cloud only.
 

Theminecraftaddict555

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And that is not going to happen 'in the cloud'.

500GB, at 10megabits/sec, will take 5 days, running constantly.
And how would you "copy it back"?

You cannot do this cloud only.
So it is recommended to just backup individual files to the cloud and system images to an external drive? And this is due to how long it would take for the "system image" to be copied to the cloud backup?

Also don't many cloud backup softwares allow you to restore images or your entire windows backup?
 

USAFRet

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So it is recommended to just backup individual files to the cloud and system images to an external drive? And this is due to how long it would take for the "system image" to be copied to the cloud backup?

Also don't many cloud backup softwares allow you to restore images or your entire windows backup?
Full drive images locally, specific files in the cloud.

But, the basic concept is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite.

But a trimmed down concept, one or two external drives will do this easily.
 

USAFRet

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So if I were to buy another external, should I buy an external ssd or hdd?
HDD.

This is my backup routine.

Instead of the NAS box I have, an external drive or two would suffice in your situation.
Macrium Reflect Free would work just fine.
 
Solution

Theminecraftaddict555

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Oct 25, 2014
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HDD.

This is my backup routine.

Instead of the NAS box I have, an external drive or two would suffice in your situation.
Macrium Reflect Free would work just fine.
So any reasons why SSD wouldn't work besides the cost?

BTW may i ask how macrium reflect would help in this situation?
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
So how important is macrium reflect free in this situation?
That is the software that does the backup thing. And recovery, if needed.

It will take a snapshot of your C drive, and create an Image off on the external drive. A single file, encapsulating the entirety of your whole physical drive.

Later, if you need to recover, you boot up from a Macrium RescueUSB, tell it where the Image is, and what drive you wish to recover to.
Click Go, and it does its thing.

It also has the functionality for Incremental and Differential images. My procedure does an Incremental every single night. Each drive gets its own set of images.
 

Theminecraftaddict555

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That is the software that does the backup thing. And recovery, if needed.

It will take a snapshot of your C drive, and create an Image off on the external drive. A single file, encapsulating the entirety of your whole physical drive.

Later, if you need to recover, you boot up from a Macrium RescueUSB, tell it where the Image is, and what drive you wish to recover to.
Click Go, and it does its thing.

It also has the functionality for Incremental and Differential images. My procedure does an Incremental every single night. Each drive gets its own set of images.

So I do have a couple of flash drives lying around, will creating the rescueusb require the flash drive to be wiped?
 

Theminecraftaddict555

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Multiples.
On my NAS, it stores images from 6 systems, 13 drives, all in one folder tree.

Macrium will let you set up an automated schedule, and automatically delete the oldest when the drive gets too full.
So if I want to store my main OS image to my 2tb external that i might buy and I want to store another drive image from a non-os drive, it would work? BTW when it comes to images sizes, are they the same size as the physical drive that is being imaged?
 

USAFRet

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So if I want to store my main OS image to my 2tb external that i might buy and I want to store another drive image from a non-os drive, it would work? BTW when it comes to images sizes, are they the same size as the physical drive that is being imaged?
  1. Yes. I have an individual folder for each drive, so I know which is which.
  2. A bit smaller than the actual consumed space. It leaves off things like the pagefile, and does a teeny bit of compression.

One of my 1TB drives: 743GB consumed space, the Full image (last night) is 708GB.
 
I'd like to try to back it up once in a while regardless of the changes...And when anything goes wrong I can copy that working image back to my current SSD.

My C drive partition is about 930gb (with 470gb used). Upload bandwidth is 9-10 mbps via ethernet[

Backing up 60-200 GB worth of OS, applications, and user files to the cloud is not a pleasant experience, nor is it fast...and, I doubt restoration over the same path would exactly qualify as 'greased lightning' either. Maintaining 500 GB of cloud storage will cost you 2x annually what you could have simply purchased a pair of external USB spinning drives of 3-4 TB for $65 each...

What you propose sounds great on paper, however, but, ...it won't be cheap, and, you will pay forever for it, and, you'd better have fast internet. (of course if you had fast internet, you could have reinstalled WIn10 in 10 minutes, redownloaded /reinstalled drivers and applications in 30-40 minutes anyway. (Vice trying to download a 200 GB image in 8 hours)
 

Theminecraftaddict555

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  1. Yes. I have an individual folder for each drive, so I know which is which.
  2. A bit smaller than the actual consumed space. It leaves off things like the pagefile, and does a teeny bit of compression.
One of my 1TB drives: 743GB consumed space, the Full image (last night) is 708GB.
Well it seemed that backing up my windows image to my new external drive was not only less costlier, but didn't take too much time with the macrium software. Not only that, i still have more than 1tb and a half space left for other future images.

So all in all, thanks for the assistance!