Question Method of Backing up

[Artisanico]

I am currently performing a scan on my main storage disk data using Disk Drill and since it covers only around 200Mb per day I can see that this is going to take many months. To avoid the problems in future, I plan to back up my dozen or so main folders each on their own partition on my HDD, and keep folders that have been corrupted / might be prone to corruption in various separate partitions. Can anyone advise me as to any drawbacks with this? I have one in mind, but perhaps it's rather minor: what happens when Windows runs out of letters of the alphabet for drive letters?

 

[rgd1101]

#1 drawback is if the whole HDD failed. everything is gone.
try different hdd or ssd and have multiple back on your important data

 

[LordVile]

Just use a cloud backup?

 

[USAFRet]

I am currently performing a scan on my main storage disk data using Disk Drill and since it covers only around 200Mb per day I can see that this is going to take many months. To avoid the problems in future, I plan to back up my dozen or so main folders each on their own partition on my HDD, and keep folders that have been corrupted / might be prone to corruption in various separate partitions. Can anyone advise me as to any drawbacks with this? I have one in mind, but perhaps it's rather minor: what happens when Windows runs out of letters of the alphabet for drive letters?

Full drive images, off to some other physical device.

With your plan, if/when the drive dies, you will lose the data AND the backups.
Also, trying to backup individual 'folders', invariably, you will forget one.
Lastly, doing this manually, you will forget.

The basic backup concept is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise inaccessible.

There are many automated tools for backing up your data.
I use Macrium Reflect.

Automated Incremental images every night, off to a folder tree in my NAS.
6 physical drives, full drive Images, each in their own subfolder.

 

[Artisanico]

Full drive images, off to some other physical device.

With your plan, if/when the drive dies, you will lose the data AND the backups.
Also, trying to backup individual 'folders', invariably, you will forget one.
Lastly, doing this manually, you will forget.

The basic backup concept is 3-2-1.
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise inaccessible.

There are many automated tools for backing up your data.
I use Macrium Reflect.

Automated Incremental images every night, off to a folder tree in my NAS.
6 physical drives, full drive Images, each in their own subfolder.

Yes I was going to have several different drives with all the data on. I intend to do this with AOMEI, as long as I can clone the HDD onto a flash drive and it is just as accessible. As long as there is nothing wrong with it in principle, I'll go ahead with it. The fact that there is no indication of what happens when there are no more drive letters left (i.e. there are not enough letters in the alphabet) made me think that my method is so non-standard as to be in some way not good hardware- or software-wise.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes I was going to have several different drives with all the data on. I intend to do this with AOMEI, as long as I can clone the HDD onto a flash drive and it is just as accessible. As long as there is nothing wrong with it in principle, I'll go ahead with it. The fact that there is no indication of what happens when there are no more drive letters left (i.e. there are not enough letters in the alphabet) made me think that my method is so non-standard as to be in some way not good hardware- or software-wise.

Running out of drive letters (the alphabet) indicates you're doing it wrong.

My backups...5 different systems, a dozen physical drives...are accessed under a single "drive letter".

And "clones" are not what you want to do. AOMEI or something else.
Clones are for changing drives, right now. Old HDD to new SSD, for example.
Images are for backing up for potential future use.

 

[Artisanico]

Running out of drive letters (the alphabet) indicates you're doing it wrong.

My backups...5 different systems, a dozen physical drives...are accessed under a single "drive letter".

And "clones" are not what you want to do. AOMEI or something else.
Clones are for changing drives, right now. Old HDD to new SSD, for example.
Images are for backing up for potential future use.

I'd be really grateful if you could expand. I would't know an image from a movie 🙂.

 

[stuff and nonesense]

I don’t have whole system backup of my PC. Windows is a download away, applications and games likewise. I do have a backup of my data, documents, drawings, photos and cat pics windows and applications don’t matter, they are easy to reinstall.

Data is irreplaceable.

My disks are set with C containing operating system and applications, D contains data. I only need to copy D to an external drive and networked PC.

Backing up data isn’t complicated.

 

[USAFRet]

I'd be really grateful if you could expand. I would't know an image from a movie 🙂.

I use Macrium Reflect.

An "Image" is a representation of what you've told it, in a single file.
Whole drive, or partition, or folders.
You can store many on one single drive.
And they can be updated easily. I keep a rolling 30 days for my main system.

A clone is a single snapshot in time, and consumes the entire target drive.

 

[Artisanico]

I find that just one corrupted file copied from a collection of recued files can spell big trouble for the data store - it seems that corruption spreads like a disease, and this has put me into my current predicament, where it seems I will have to sit out many months, possibly more than a year or even two years, of constant scanning with Disk Drill just to see if I've still got my precious data. The fact that there were corrupted files on one data store meant that there were corrupted files on the other backup and both had problems with being read. My idea is to have the multiple partitions so that this spreading of trouble doesn't happen again.