[SOLVED] Opinions on free total system win 10 back ups and recovery

[Fredvon4]

I have lost faith in Win 10 pro backup and recovery tools. I have several new CPU systems with 10 Pro I want to do weekly ISO level complete system images and more importantly total restore as needed after air gap lock down from detected Ransom ware attacks. The Win 10 systems all have a variety of SSD and HDD 1TB drives to access and several large partitions that could be encrypted but currently NOT. I do not trust BitLocker

My current network does not have a NAS and each CPU/ Laptop is a discreet entity wife and I do not need access to each others files.

I simply want to be able to tell a ransom ware hacker to go f--- your self and start over within a day of air gapping

I have 5 Win 10 pro systems and willing to pay reasonable fees per CPU but all I see, seem to be cloud based...I have way too much local drive space to pay for off site storage

Opinions please as I have too many hours searching all the on line mags "best " and Tom's guides

So sayeth the preacher ---so sayeth the flock

Flock speak out please...grin

 

[USAFRet]

Macrium Reflect, hands down.
The Free version works, paid is a little better.

I have the Paid on my main system, Free on all the others.

This will, of course, have to go to some central shared storage place.

My systems do nightly, or every other day, or weekly...depending on its use and my level of pain if it goes bad.
My main system does a nightly Incremental, keep a rolling 30 days.
My HTPS, a full drive image weekly. Because there is little actual data on it.
Wifes system, a full drive image every other day, keep for 2 weeks.

My procedure is changed a little since I wrote this, but the basics are in the first post here:

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

 

[Lafong]

Yep. Macrium Reflect.

Free version is perfectly OK for most people. Paid version has a few other features. Paid version usually on sale at least once a year from Macrium direct.

How often you would make a new image would depend on how much/fast your system changes. I don’t keep data on C and don’t make a lot of changes, so I make a new image only monthly, keeping the 2 most recent.

You’ll have to decide if you want to use incremental or differential images, rather than “full”. I use full only. Differentials are available only in the paid version if I recall correctly.

A full image creates an mrimg file. You choose which partitions to include. Standard procedure would be to include ALL partitions on a given drive, but you choose. The mrimg file will be large…..circa 60 percent of the sum of the size of the occupied space on the chosen partitions. I have 45 occupied, so my mrimg files are now about 25 gb. That’s using default “medium” compression. There is a “high” compression choice, but it doesn’t help much. Takes me about 5 minutes to make a full image. You can make an image using defaults in maybe 6 mouse clicks.

Store the mrimg file anywhere you want other than on a partition included in the image. Internal, external, or both. It’s a highly valuable file, so you probably would back it up like any other valuable file.

Your first task should be to make bootable “rescue media” on a USB flash drive within the Macrium interface. You would need to boot from this to restore the image if your drive is unbootable. Often, the drive is still bootable, in which case you’d boot from C as usual and run Macrium from C to restore.

Image restoration is a bit more complicated than making an image. You won’t be comfortable with it until you do it a time or two. You need to correctly choose WHICH partitions to restore and WHERE to restore them.

You can also use Macrium to migrate to a new drive when all is well…using imaging or its “cloning” capability. It’s not just a disaster recovery tool.