Question Need beginner tips and advice for making a backup and image of OS and apps/games

[Random_Unexplainable_Lag]

I'm a little ashamed to say that after 20+ years of being a PC enthusiast/gamer, I've never done OS backups or images, the only backups I do are manually drag and drop into a folder, then upload it to the cloud and/or external drives a couple of times a year.

I like to do an OS wipe and fresh install around the same time I upgrade my PC hardware but I feel like I'm a dinosaur doing everything manually from scratch, having to spend the next two days getting everything installed again, and then a week getting all of the individual app settings back to how I have them.
So as I'm about to upgrade my hardware I want to do a fresh OS install, get all of my apps and games installed, and setup exactly how I want them… then finally do a proper image backup so next time I need to do a wipe and fresh install it should take a couple of hours instead of a week to have everything back to normal.

But I need some beginner advice on this please as I've literally never even looked into imaging, backups, or what backup apps are good/bad... I have no clue how it works.
Greatly appreciate any advice or tips, but please ELI5 as I have no previous knowledge or experience.

 

[USAFRet]

I use Macrium Reflect for exactly this.

Full drive Images, saved off to some other drive.

Yes, Macrium costs money. But it is one of those applications where it is worth paying for it.

My main system does an Incremental Image every night. Each physical drive individually.
Other systems in the house, weekly or every other day.

 

[Random_Unexplainable_Lag]

I use Macrium Reflect for exactly this.

Full drive Images, saved off to some other drive.

Yes, Macrium costs money. But it is one of those applications where it is worth paying for it.

My main system does an Incremental Image every night. Each physical drive individually.
Other systems in the house, weekly or every other day.

Thanks for the suggestion.
Funny enough, I was just reading and looking at Macrium and trying to work out the pricing and differences between a one-time purchase and a subscription.
I only need it on one system so I think the one-time is better unless I missed something, it seems like a better deal.

The reviews seem v-good and there are a lot of guides/tutorials for noobs like me.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks for the suggestion.
Funny enough, I was just reading and looking at Macrium and trying to work out the pricing and differences between a one-time purchase and a subscription.
I only need it on one system so I think the one-time is better unless I missed something, it seems like a better deal.

The reviews seem v-good and there are a lot of guides/tutorials for noobs like me.

Yes, one time lifetime purchase.

It is the basis for my whole backup scenario.
And I HAVE had to use it to recover data to a new drive.

 

[ubuysa]

I wrote this for a different forum some time ago. FWIW the free version of Macrium Reflect is still available if you search for it....

Backing up user data is pretty straight-forward, it's just a bunch of files, so almost any file copy tool to copy your data to an external HDD (or to the cloud) will do. Personally I would never use an SSD as a backup device - if they fail all the data is gone.

Backing up Windows is much more difficult because Windows opens many of its files with exclusive access, which means that a simple file copy backup tool cannot read them. Instead you need a disk imaging tool, these use the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) to take a snapshot of the drive and they then write that snapshot out to a disk file, usually on an external HDD.

The file copy tool I use is SyncBack Pro, this is paid-for software (and it's not cheap) but I use it because it's able to backup to the cloud as well as to local storage. It's a much better and more configurable cloud backup tool than any of the cloud service provider's proprietary tools, it also means that my local backups and cloud backups are handled by the same tool. SyncBack is a file synchronising tool that copies files to an external HDD and/or to the cloud, but it only backups up those files that have changed since the last backup, so it runs quite quickly. SyncBack is very configurable, I only back up the files and folders I really need to and I also ensure that a file that is deleted on my PC is retained on the backup HDD for 30 days (365 days in the cloud) in case I want it back. SyncBack runs every night so that my user data backup sets are never more than 24 hours old.

The disk imaging tool I use is Macrium Reflect. (free). This can take many different types of backup; differential, incremental, grandfather-father-son, or just simple full backups. I take a full backup of my system drive every night to the same external HDD and I keep the last seven images so that I protect myself against my stupidity over the last week. Macrium Reflect automatically deletes the oldest image each time it runs, it also allows a backup image to be mounted as a virtual drive, so I can access individual files and folders in the backup image should I need to.

I have discovered through experience that partitioning the external drive gives better performance. The user data, which is mostly in many small files, performs better when written to an NTFS formatted partition. The drive images, which are single and very large files, perform better when written to an exFAT formatted partition. I thus have two differently formatted partitions on the external HDD.

Because a permanently connected backup drive can be encrypted by ransomware my external HDD is connected to the mains power via a USB controlled switch - from Cleware in Germany. I schedule the HDD to switch on just before the Macrium Reflect and SyncBack tools run and then I schedule the HDD to switch off when they're completed. The external backup drive is thus only online during the backup. To make absolutely sure it can't be encrypted by ransomware I disable the Ethernet adapter before the HDD is switched on and only re-enable the adapter once the HDD is switched off (I user nicrcmd to do that). This means that even if ransomware is running at the time of my backup run, it can't 'phone home' to get the unique encryption key.

The whole backup process is controlled by a batch job that runs at midnight every night on a schedule via the Task Scheduler. Its actions are these:

Disable the Ethernet adapter
Switch on the external HDD
Wait two minutes for the HDD to come online and settle.
Start the Macrium imaging backup job and wait until it's finished.
Start the SyncBack external HDD backup job and wait until it's finished
Switch off the external HDD
Enable the Ethernet adapter
Start the SyncBack cloud service backup job and wait until it's finished

This gives me a local copy of my data (vital if the Internet is not available and I can't get to cloud storage) plus the ability to restore my Windows system to any day in the last week. It also means that the external drive is protected from ransomware attack.

For belt-and-braces reasons, and to protect against total loss of my PC and external HDD (in a fire for example), I also backup all of my user data to the cloud. I use Google Drive to do that and pay for 2TB of storage, even though I currently use less than a third of that. As mentioned earlier, SyncBack Pro backs up my data to Google Drive in just the same way that it backs up to the external HDD.

My user data, which is irreplaceable of course, is thus in three places; on my PC drives, on my backup drive (which is normally offline) and in the cloud. This isn't the only possible backup strategy by a long way and it may well not suit your needs, but it might give you some ideas for your own backup strategy.

 

[USAFRet]

Adding to the above from ubuysa...3-2-1
3 copies, on at least 2 different media, at least 1 offsite or otherwise unavailable.

Data lives on my PC (1)
Macrium Reflect imaging to my NAS (2)
A couple of large drives in a desk drawer at work (3) (refreshed quarterly or so)