Question Issues with the "Monday Clone" for RAPID system recovery?

Imacflier

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Good afternoon, All,

I am building a new system. It will be used for entertainment 80% of the time. The remaining 20% will be time critical income producing work: primarily MS Office and Project in support of proposals, red teams, and detailed schedules for aerospace and defense primes. This work is truly time critical: miss a deadline and not only not get paid, but not get future work.

My concern is not with work-in-process, that is covered in multiple places on multiple media, but rather recovery from a system crash, instability or malicious software. Now I am already using my LAN to keep an updated image (I use Acronis Disk Director). In an abundance of caution, I ran a test recovery. It just took too damned long! Probably because of trying to shove too much data over the air.

My system drive is a 2TB NVME which contains my OS (Win10 Pro) and a library partition containing previously submitted work, contracts, DoD requirements in the form of Data Item Descriptions (DIDs), etc. All data which is recoverable or downloadable, but which is needed RIGHT NOW when a deadline approaches. I also have a 1 TB NVME that duplicates my library partition, while my work-in-process is backed up onto usb flash drives.

Much to my surprise, the system I am building has an unpopulated 3.5 drive bay! So I finally get to the idea: I will hardwire a power switch to control power to a 4 TB Ironwolf sata hard drive. First thing on Monday morning, assuming I have a stable system, I will boot up and then flip the switch to activate the HDD. Since the majority of MS updates occur on "Update Tuesday", the system will have had time to 'settle'. I will then clone my current system NVME to the HDD, and then flip the switch to shut it off. Should I have the need, I can pull my system NVME, turn on the HDD and boot to a system version no more than about a week old...effectively instantly!

OK all you wisdom filled experts (yes I am looking at you USAF Retired ;)), what is wrong with this approach and what would work better?

Be well,

Larry
 

kanewolf

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Get a laptop (which you probably already have) to be your bridge hardware while your primary is restored.
You have to prepare for failures other than a disk. If you had to replace the power supply because of a nearby lightning strike, you would also be down.
 

Imacflier

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How would you know the Monday clone will boot when you need it for this very very critical work?

"RIGHT NOW" means within 60 seconds?

60 minutes?
No system is fool proof because fools are so ingenious. That being admitted to, if it works as a process....and I see no reason it should not...then minutes, not hours.....I once missed FedEx and had to fly coast-to-coast to hand carry.

Larry
 

Imacflier

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Get a laptop (which you probably already have) to be your bridge hardware while your primary is restored.
You have to prepare for failures other than a disk. If you had to replace the power supply because of a nearby lightning strike, you would also be down.
Yeah, but I can only plan on mitigating one failure point at a time....and my house input power is pretty well protected....and lithium UPS...and auto switch start gas power generator.

Good advice, though.

Larry
 

Imacflier

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Therein lies your basic problem.
WiFi, by its very nature, is much slower than a wired connection.
Even when you beat it and whip it, it just refuses to go any faster!

Anyway, thanks to all who have contributed....and to anyone else who chooses to later!

From all I have read today, it appears that no one thinks that what I propose will not work.

Besides, the best backup is kind of like the best gun for home defense: it is the one that will be used, and I will use the Monday Clone since I find it least intrusive.

Be well and thanks, again,

Larry
 

USAFRet

Titan
Moderator
Images, not Clones...

My basic backup routine. Modified somewhat since I wrote this, but here's the basics.