[SOLVED] Need Advice On Data Backup Solution And Operating System

[Osiris4.0]

I'm planning a new build and there are 2 things i'm hung up on .The first thing is a way to regularly back up my system drive.I've had a hard drive die on me before.I was messing around on my computer one morning and just like that, with no warning, or signs anything was failing, I get a blue screen with a bunch of text flash across my screen faster than I can read it.When I turn my computer back on it won't boot into Windows because, as I would later find out, my hard drive was dead.Since then i've had it in my head that when the time came to get a new computer I was going to have my system drive setup in RAID 1 because I want some kind of redundency in place so, that in the event this happens again, I can simply discard the failed drive and pick back where I left off like it didn't happen right down to the same wallpaper and where my desktop icons are positioned.I'm not some sort of expert on this though.I've never actually set up a RAID before, so i'm learning things I didn't know that are making this more complicated.

For example - hardware vs. software RAID.From what I read, a hardware RAID would be better, but what's a good NVMe drive RAID controller to get?On top of the added cost of having to get a second NVMe drive and a RAID controller and the complexity of setting it up, i'm reading things like updating the BIOS would destroy my RAID and erase my drives.Another backup solution I guess would be to use something like Macrium Reflect to regularly make a full drive image.What are the pros and cons of both of these methods?Are there any other options I should consider?

The second thing i'm hung up on is the OS.I would really rather have Windows 11 Pro, but I know it's come out of the gate with some problems like the one it had Ryzen CPUs.I know i'm going to have this new computer for more than the few years of support that Windows 10 has left, and frankly don't want to be bothered having to upgrade later.I guess what i'm asking is how long do you think it'll take them to iron out the problems that have come up with Windows 11 atleast to the point where it would be reccomended?Not only is my computer really old, but with these supply issues and the cost of things going up, i'm feeling a bit of a sense of urgency.I feel like if I don't get a new computer now it's going to be even harder and more expensive.

 

[Eximo]

Most higher end motherboards have integrated RAID controllers.

RAID is not a backup solution. If the system fails, for whatever reason, software or hardware, both drives are in the system. If you delete a file, it is deleted from both drives. If you get malware, you get malware on both drives. If the powersupply explodes and takes out the motherboard and drives, you've still lost everything at double the price.

A proper backup solution would be something like a regular clone of your system drive to an external drive that you disconnect and store away from the computer. Daily, weekly, etc as long as it becomes routine. For important files that can't be replaced, cloud storage is a good option, or irregular backups as needed to another storage device.

Windows 11 is probably fine to use for everyday things. Still some game and program incompatibilities that need to be worked out, but unless you are using this for important work it will be fine. Not much call for Windows Pro, I like it for the remote desktop features, but that is about it. And there are certainly software solutions to that. Upgrades from 10 to 11 are going to be easy, so I wouldn't worry about that either. Happens all the time now anyway. The major releases of Windows 10 are actually a complete re-install anyway, about every 18 months of late.

Component prices are increasing, doesn't seem like that is likely to relax at all until well into next year, which means a slow slide back to normalcy, probably looking at 2023 for competition to drive prices down again. Some of those new fabs might also be operational by then.

 

[Osiris4.0]

So, you're saying I should use software to create a disk image file?Any suggestion on software that will do that automatically, let's say, every few days?Will it create a file the same size as the whole drive everytime, or will subsequent files be created just with what's changed to save space?

You're also saying that I will be able to just install Win 11 Pro in place and have all of my apps, files, and settings stay the same?That's the thing I don't want to be bothered with, having to re-install everything and put it back just like I had it.

 

[Eximo]

Macrium Reflect is certainly capable. Plenty of others out there.

If you have network attached storage you could set up something to be automatic. If you are thinking of leaving something like an external drive plugged into the system 24/7, breaking rule one. If the system is compromised, the external drive is likely to go along with it. Though anything powered on 24/7 has a chance to be compromised over a network.

Something like a reminder to yourself, every Wednesday, plug in an external drive, take a system image, then unplug the drive. It is even conceivable to have two external drives so that if something bad were to happen while a backup was taking place, you would still have something to fall back on.

If you have Windows 10 Pro, yes, Windows 11 Pro should just drop right on top of it, and give you a grace period in which to roll it back.

Windows 7 to 8, to 8.1, to 10 on one of my systems, all the way though, even upgraded to Pro at Windows 10. Even went through a hardware change at one point.

 

[USAFRet]

Read through some solutions here (mine is the first post):

What is your backup situation at home?

What is your backup situation at home? And if you don't do that, why not? Every single day, I read multiple threads here of "How do I get my stuff back?" or "That drive had 5 years of photos of my kids!!" Be it a dead drive, dropped phone, virus, accidental deletion, formatting the wrong...

forums.tomshardware.com

 

[USAFRet]

I was going to have my system drive setup in RAID 1 because I want some kind of redundency in place so

First off, know that RAID is NOT a backup solution.

It is for physical drive redundancy and continued uptime, NOT data redundancy.
We can go into details on this if you wish.

 

[Osiris4.0]

First off, know that RAID is NOT a backup solution.

It is for physical drive redundancy and continued uptime, NOT data redundancy.
We can go into details on this if you wish.

Yes, please.Go into details.I thought that's what physical drive redundancy was, having a second drive ready to take over if the first one fails..like what happened to me.How is that not a backup?Also, after reading what your setup is, i'm curious.What's an "incremental"?

 

[Osiris4.0]

Macrium Reflect is certainly capable. Plenty of others out there.

If you have network attached storage you could set up something to be automatic. If you are thinking of leaving something like an external drive plugged into the system 24/7, breaking rule one. If the system is compromised, the external drive is likely to go along with it. Though anything powered on 24/7 has a chance to be compromised over a network.

Something like a reminder to yourself, every Wednesday, plug in an external drive, take a system image, then unplug the drive. It is even conceivable to have two external drives so that if something bad were to happen while a backup was taking place, you would still have something to fall back on.

If you have Windows 10 Pro, yes, Windows 11 Pro should just drop right on top of it, and give you a grace period in which to roll it back.

Windows 7 to 8, to 8.1, to 10 on one of my systems, all the way though, even upgraded to Pro at Windows 10. Even went through a hardware change at one point.

You did all of that with your stuff still in place?Have you ever encountered, however trivial, any issues?I've also read that installing an "upgraded" version of Windows like that is not as good as a clean install then re-installing all of your stuff back on top of it because it can cause problems.

 

[USAFRet]

Yes, please.Go into details.I thought that's what physical drive redundancy was, having a second drive ready to take over if the first one fails..like what happened to me.How is that not a backup?Also, after reading what your setup is, i'm curious.What's an "incremental"?

With a RAID 1, the OS and you, the user, sees but a single instance of a file.
Accidental deletion...it is gone, just like if there was only one physical drive.
As well as ransomware, corruption, accidental formatting, etc, etc...
A RAID 1 does nothing for that.

There is not a 'second copy' on the other drive.

RAID 1 can be good when you actually need continued uptime....say if you were hosting a webstore, and downtime = lost sales.
But any company that does that ALSO has (or should have) a good backup routine.

Incremental is only the files that have changed since the last Full or Incremental Image was run.
Differential (which Macrium also does), is all the changes since the last Full Image.


I've actually had to put that procedure into practice, following the death of a 960GB SanDisk SSD.
605GB on it....it died suddenly. Reasons unknown.
Slot in a new drive, click click in Macrium. All 605GB recovered exactly it was at 4AM that morning, when it ran the nightly Incremental.

 

[Osiris4.0]

With a RAID 1, the OS and you, the user, sees but a single instance of a file.
Accidental deletion...it is gone, just like if there was only one physical drive.
As well as ransomware, corruption, accidental formatting, etc, etc...
A RAID 1 does nothing for that.

There is not a 'second copy' on the other drive.

RAID 1 can be good when you actually need continued uptime....say if you were hosting a webstore, and downtime = lost sales.
But any company that does that ALSO has (or should have) a good backup routine.

Incremental is only the files that have changed since the last Full or Incremental Image was run.
Differential (which Macrium also does), is all the changes since the last Full Image.


I've actually had to put that procedure into practice, following the death of a 960GB SanDisk SSD.
605GB on it....it died suddenly. Reasons unknown.
Slot in a new drive, click click in Macrium. All 605GB recovered exactly it was at 4AM that morning, when it ran the nightly Incremental.

With a RAID 1, the OS and you, the user, sees but a single instance of a file.
Accidental deletion...it is gone, just like if there was only one physical drive.
As well as ransomware, corruption, accidental formatting, etc, etc...
A RAID 1 does nothing for that.

There is not a 'second copy' on the other drive.

RAID 1 can be good when you actually need continued uptime....say if you were hosting a webstore, and downtime = lost sales.
But any company that does that ALSO has (or should have) a good backup routine.

Incremental is only the files that have changed since the last Full or Incremental Image was run.
Differential (which Macrium also does), is all the changes since the last Full Image.


I've actually had to put that procedure into practice, following the death of a 960GB SanDisk SSD.
605GB on it....it died suddenly. Reasons unknown.
Slot in a new drive, click click in Macrium. All 605GB recovered exactly it was at 4AM that morning, when it ran the nightly Incremental.

Oh I know all of that about RAID 1, that it copies a drive in real time, but is only seen as 1, and doesn't help with viruses, or accidental deletion, and such.I guess I was more narrowly focused on my drive physically failing because that's what actually happened to me.I've never accidentally reformatted a drive, or had ransomeware, or anything like that.Although I have, but rarely, encountered data corruption.Is it true that updating the BIOS destroys the RAID and erases the drives, even a hardware RAID?I was thinking about getting one of those highpoint controllers.Would I still have to tinker around in the BIOS if I got one of those.I thought getting a hardware controller would be more like plug-n-play than a software RAID.

 

[USAFRet]

Oh I know all of that about RAID 1, that it copies a drive in real time, but is only seen as 1, and doesn't help with viruses, or accidental deletion, and such.I guess I was more narrowly focused on my drive physically failing because that's what actually happened to me.I've never accidentally reformatted a drive, or had ransomeware, or anything like that.Although I have, but rarely, encountered data corruption.Is it true that updating the BIOS destroys the RAID and erases the drives, even a hardware RAID?I was thinking about getting one of those highpoint controllers.Would I still have to tinker around in the BIOS if I got one of those.I thought getting a hardware controller would be more like plug-n-play than a software RAID.

Physical drive fail is not the most likely cause of data loss.

Given a good backup routine, and if you can suffer through a whole hour of downtime....the RAID 1 is not needed.

A BIOS update can indeed screw your RAID config. Depends on how that RAID is instantiated, and what the particular BIOS update is actually doing.
Any BIOS update, or any other large config change, needs to be done with a known good backup of all the data.

 

[Osiris4.0]

Physical drive fail is not the most likely cause of data loss.

Given a good backup routine, and if you can suffer through a whole hour of downtime....the RAID 1 is not needed.

A BIOS update can indeed screw your RAID config. Depends on how that RAID is instantiated, and what the particular BIOS update is actually doing.
Any BIOS update, or any other large config change, needs to be done with a known good backup of all the data.

You said your SanDisk(i'm assuming the full image) was 605GB.How big were the incrementals?

 

[USAFRet]

You said your SanDisk(i'm assuming the full image) was 605GB.How big were the incrementals?

That particular drive is long gone.

But, from another current drive:
1TB Intel 660P, secondary drive used for photo work:
Full Image is 705GB
Nightly Incrementals are between 2GB and 24GB, depending on what I did that day.

My current C drive, 500GB Samsung 850 EVO:
Full Image is 235GB
Nightly Incrementals are between 3 and 5GB.

 

[Osiris4.0]

That particular drive is long gone.

But, from another current drive:
1TB Intel 660P, secondary drive used for photo work:
Full Image is 705GB
Nightly Incrementals are between 2GB and 24GB, depending on what I did that day.

My current C drive, 500GB Samsung 850 EVO:
Full Image is 235GB
Nightly Incrementals are between 3 and 5GB.

That particular drive is long gone.

But, from another current drive:
1TB Intel 660P, secondary drive used for photo work:
Full Image is 705GB
Nightly Incrementals are between 2GB and 24GB, depending on what I did that day.

My current C drive, 500GB Samsung 850 EVO:
Full Image is 235GB
Nightly Incrementals are between 3 and 5GB.

How does it work with incrementals?I get flashing a full drive image onto a new one if you need to, but how would you do it with an incremental to make sure it's up to date with the latest backup?

 

[USAFRet]

How does it work with incrementals?I get flashing a full drive image onto a new one if you need to, but how would you do it with an incremental to make sure it's up to date with the latest backup?

You select which Incremental you wish to recover...which day.
It incorporates the Full and that Incremental, and all incrementals in between.

This is HUGELY useful if there is some weird thing that happened 'yesterday'.
You can recover from the day before the BadThing happened.

 

[Osiris4.0]

You select which Incremental you wish to recover...which day.
It incorporates the Full and that Incremental, and all incrementals in between.

This is HUGELY useful if there is some weird thing that happened 'yesterday'.
You can recover from the day before the BadThing happened.

I also read on some site yesterday that you can't just restore an image to any system, that it has to be the same hardware.Is that true?

 

[USAFRet]

I also read on some site yesterday that you can't just restore an image to any system, that it has to be the same hardware.Is that true?

Absolutely correct.

Moving that Image is just like trying to move the physical drive+OS between systems.
Usually fail.

Macrium has a function for "ReDeploy", which supposedly can work with different hardware.
I've never tried it, so can't advise on success.

But with any major hardware change (motherboard), a fresh install is always recommended.

 

[Osiris4.0]

Absolutely correct.

Moving that Image is just like trying to move the physical drive+OS between systems.
Usually fail.

Macrium has a function for "ReDeploy", which supposedly can work with different hardware.
I've never tried it, so can't advise on success.

But with any major hardware change (motherboard), a fresh install is always recommended.

What about a different drive?For example, if the image was made from on a Samsung 970 EVO, it fails, can I put the image onto a 980 PRO?What about a different brand?

 

[Eximo]

What about a different drive?For example, if the image was made from on a Samsung 970 EVO, it fails, can I put the image onto a 980 PRO?What about a different brand?

That should still be fine. The format on the drive is all the system cares about, isn't really aware of the drive type, speed, internal layout, etc. It just sees a logical drive.

 

[USAFRet]

What about a different drive?For example, if the image was made from on a Samsung 970 EVO, it fails, can I put the image onto a 980 PRO?What about a different brand?

A different drive, in the same system, is rarely a problem.
For a 970 -> 980 Pro? No problem at all.

Now...if you were going from a spinning HDD to a 980 Pro....the Image would be lacking the requisite driver for the NVMe drive.

For saving the Images....it absolutely does not care where.
My images are stored on my NAS box, from multiple different systems and drive types.
All in one big subfolder tree.

 

[Osiris4.0]

Macrium Reflect is certainly capable. Plenty of others out there.

If you have network attached storage you could set up something to be automatic. If you are thinking of leaving something like an external drive plugged into the system 24/7, breaking rule one. If the system is compromised, the external drive is likely to go along with it. Though anything powered on 24/7 has a chance to be compromised over a network.

Something like a reminder to yourself, every Wednesday, plug in an external drive, take a system image, then unplug the drive. It is even conceivable to have two external drives so that if something bad were to happen while a backup was taking place, you would still have something to fall back on.

If you have Windows 10 Pro, yes, Windows 11 Pro should just drop right on top of it, and give you a grace period in which to roll it back.

Windows 7 to 8, to 8.1, to 10 on one of my systems, all the way though, even upgraded to Pro at Windows 10. Even went through a hardware change at one point.

You did all of that with your stuff still in place?Have you ever encountered, however trivial, any issues?I've also read that installing an "upgraded" version of Windows like that is not as good as a clean install then re-installing all of your stuff back on top of it because it can cause problems.

 

[USAFRet]

You did all of that with your stuff still in place?Have you ever encountered, however trivial, any issues?I've also read that installing an "upgraded" version of Windows like that is not as good as a clean install then re-installing all of your stuff back on top of it because it can cause problems.

Sometimes an in place upgrade works, sometimes it causes issues.
There is no 100% either way.

 

[Osiris4.0]

I've been seeing all these reviews talk about how the Adobe apps, for example, actually run slower in Windows 11 than 10.What do you think is a realistic time frame for kinks like that getting ironed out?

 

[USAFRet]

I've been seeing all these reviews talk about how the Adobe apps, for example, actually run slower in Windows 11 than 10.What do you think is a realistic time frame for kinks like that getting ironed out?

Unknown. Might be next week, might be next year.
Or it might be just clickbait articles, and the actual "problem" is 0.5%.

But that is one of the issues with early adopters.
There is also a whole system issue with Ryzen systems. That is slowly being patched and fixed.

 

[Osiris4.0]

Well you've given me some things to think about.I've spent so long thinking of getting a RAID setup that I kind of felt mentally committed to it, if that makes.A regular disk image backup sounds like it might be better, not to mention cheaper.You may have just saved me over $800.I guess now I can put that money towards the inflated cost of a new GPU.😵