[SOLVED] What's the best way to back up windows 10?

[Deleted member 2849646]

Hi everyone,

I know there are probably many ways to do this, but what's the best way to back up windows 10? Historically I have just copied over all my documents periodically to an external hard drive, and make a .txt file of the software I have installed, and also some screenshots of other minor things like desktop layout etc. I'd also save the bookmarks from firefox and it'd be backed up to cloud too.

This has the benefit that when I reinstall windows on a new drive, I have a clean install with no 'junk' that would otherwise be migrated if I kept an active clone of the main drive. However, I would lose all the settings, which can be bit of a faff to get back to how I want them. Not a biggy, but is there a better way to back up than copying my documents, my music and my photos over every time? Is there a version control kind of backup that I could do? Is that what 'File History' does? Is it a sound method of backing up everything in terms of data integrity? Also, what're all the other stuff it backs up? By default it seems to backup the whole Users folder - is it also backing up all the settings for various programs too? I know this can be deselected but just wondered what alll the rubbish it backed up was

In the past I used time machine and that was pretty straightforward as it handled version control for apps and software, and deleted the oldest back up when space was needed. Guessing there's nothing that sophisticated on Windows?

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

On all my installs, I do:

Day 1 Image. That is the bare OS
Day 2 Image. That is the OS with all applicable updates, and my initial base load of regular applications.
Thereafter, a series of Full and Incremental Images. Keep for 30 days, deleting the eldest as it goes.

If I ever need to return it to the DAy 1 or 2, I have those images stored away.


"Guessing there's nothing that sophisticated on Windows? "
Macrium Reflect does this easily. All automated, on whatever schedule and retention time you want.

That is a central part of my backup routine.

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]

And those are images of the full drive contents. Not parts of it.

 

[geofelt]

I do not have an answer for you.
I mainly want to hear about what others are doing.
My needs are modest, I do not change much.
Every once in a while, I clone my C drive to a ssd using the samsung migration aid and keep it aside.
The only truly irreplaceable data I have is photos, and I copy them to a USB drive and send a second copy to my son in another city.
I have used this clone in the past as a basis for a hardware upgrade, so I have confidence that it works.
Have you ever tested your backup sstem?
I would be paranoid that by doing so, I might find out that the backup did not work as I thought it should and I now was left with nothing.

 

[USAFRet]

Have you ever tested your backup sstem?

I have.
Both just in testing, and to actually recover from a fully dead drive.

960GB SanDisk SSD died. Literally no warning. Dead dead dead. A secondary drive, no OS. But irreplaceable family pics.
Put in a new drive, click click on Macrium. All 605GB recovered, exactly as it was at 4AM that morning when it ran its nightly Incremental.

 

[Deleted member 2849646]

On all my installs, I do:

Day 1 Image. That is the bare OS
Day 2 Image. That is the OS with all applicable updates, and my initial base load of regular applications.
Thereafter, a series of Full and Incremental Images. Keep for 30 days, deleting the eldest as it goes.

If I ever need to return it to the DAy 1 or 2, I have those images stored away.


"Guessing there's nothing that sophisticated on Windows? "
Macrium Reflect does this easily. All automated, on whatever schedule and retention time you want.

That is a central part of my backup routine.

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

I don't understand what you mean by the incremental. Does that mean only anything new gets backed up to the external hard drive? So a bit like File History on Windows? I had a look at that link you posted - interesting, thanks!

What're people's thoughts on this:

I've got a 2TB storey station - I just copied my C drive documents, pictures and music over (simple copy and paste) - then compared folder size and number of files, and if they match I take it that the data integrity is good.

What I did until last week in addition to this is have a separate external drive permanently hooked up to the PC and backs up data to it using "File History", so it catches the daily increments too of the files. Now the external drive has failed i'm thinking of getting a 1TB ssd and adding that as a secondary internal drive and am thinking about setting up file history so it copies over the photos/music/documents that I add to my main 512gb ssd, and I can dump any extra stuff there too, e.g. torrents etc. Alongside this, once a week or month I'll continue backing up to the storystation by manually copying the files to the samsung story station. So this means i'll have in effect 2 backups. Does this sound like an OK setup?

I'd be interested to hear how the macrium OS, and macrium + software + updates works. Do you basically make a back up to another drive an image of the OS when fresh and when updates have been installed (day 1 and day 2?), and then do you do the incremental backups on a completely separate drive, or is the day 1 and day 2 backups and incremental backups all on the same drive?

Never used macrium before but I would definitely consider it over my copying and pasting method if it has some kind of self-data integrity checking. Does the software verify the image after copying? One of my biggest concerns with using software is that if there is no verification of number of files or size, then maybe it missed copying a file or some kind of corruption has happened or something - how do you guard against that?

Another thing I have been considering is getting a NAS, but it's a big investment and my needs are basic, so I haven't done so yet, but to build extra redundancy I think it may be worth doing in the future, but i'll keep an open mind about that for now.

Thanks!

 

[USAFRet]

Incremental is just the changes since the last Full or Incremental.

An Image is just a file. xxxx.mrimage.
I have ALL the house systems, and each of their physical drives, back up to a single folder tree on the NAS. That could just as easily be an external.

This is the systems:

And the subfolders for each of the physical drives on my main system:

And a selection of the individual Images from my C drive:

All in one folder tree.

 

[Deleted member 2849646]

Incremental is just the changes since the last Full or Incremental.

An Image is just a file. xxxx.mrimage.
I have ALL the house systems, and each of their physical drives, back up to a single folder tree on the NAS. That could just as easily be an external.
...

All in one folder tree.

I think i'm getting the idea of the setup but few more questions please!

So you have the images (day 1 and day 2) saved to the NAS, and you have the 24hr increments for last 14 days also backed up to the NAS? Question I have is, how do you ensure the system doesn't automaticallyk delete the day 1 and day 2 backups that you want to keep as master 'clean' backups? Do you add some kind of exception not to delete these images into the macrium software or something, or are they on separate drives?

Secondly, with regards to the folder backups of all the computers, is this basically like "File history" on windows? Only the changes are being added to the backups on the NAS, for last 14 days?

Thanks again!

 

[USAFRet]

Missing a file?
Well, this grabs the whole physical drive or partition.

Absent an error, it DOES grab everything. But at some point, you have to just trust the tool and your procedures.

Macrium ALSO has the function to temporarily mount an Image, either Full, Incremental, or Differential. Windows will see it as just another drive letter. You can go in an retrieve a single file if desired.
"I need the version of my resume from last Tuesday". No need to recover the whole thing. Mount, and go find that particular file.

 

[USAFRet]

For mine, it is 30 days. I only screencapped that small part. But could be whatever time period you want. 1 week or 6 months.

It can't delete the Day 1 & 2, because they live in a different folder.

 

[USAFRet]

This is from my new HTPC

 

[USAFRet]

The entire backup folder, for multiple systems, multiple drives, for up to a month...consumes 4.6TB in a folder on the NAS.

 

[tomreedtoon]

I would like the people reading this thread to consider a procedure to back up Windows 10 using two external drives.

First, make a complete backup of the C: drive to one external drive. This backup, which takes about two hours or more, would be done once every three months.

Second, make a backup on a second external drive for only the data folders: documents, videos, photos, work projects. This would be done perhaps once a week.

My reasoning is this: if the system's C: drive fails, it would be possible to restore the OS and all associated files to a new hard drive. Then, the data backup drive would restore all the documents and data files to the most recent versions.

Now, I know that for Apple, it's possible to make a incremental backup on one external drive with Time Machine. But there is no such backup program for Windows. An incremental backup could not restore the OS, drivers, programs, and all updated data files to a new hard drive.

The computer owner is not very computer literate. She wants something that will protect her, but which won't require a lot of continual work to update the backup drives. I am satisfied with the backups on my Linux Mint computer using Timeshift. But she does a lot of video and writing projects. She wants to save everything and be able to restore her computer in case of a hard drive failure. And no, she isn't wealthy enough to store everything on the cloud, which she doesn't trust anyway.

Please tell me, does the plan I describe sound like it would meet her needs, and actually work? Thanks for your help!

 

[OrlyP]

Veeam has a free agent for Windows. I use my media server (Plex) as the backup target on the network as it has a lot of storage. You can backup to an external USB drive as well.

So far, I am backing up around nine (9) PCs and laptops me and my family uses. I have had 100% success restoring a couple of PCs when Windows Update messed up.

 

[USAFRet]

Please tell me, does the plan I describe sound like it would meet her needs, and actually work? Thanks for your help!

Macrium Reflect does Full, Incremental, or Differential images.
Unattended on whatever schedule you wish.

My system gets an Incremental image every night, each drive individually.
Save for a rolling 30 days, deleting the eldest.

So I could recover each drive individually, or the whole system, from any day in the last month.

 

[tomreedtoon]

Macrium Reflect does Full, Incremental, or Differential images.
Unattended on whatever schedule you wish.

My system gets an Incremental image every night, each drive individually.
Save for a rolling 30 days, deleting the eldest.

So I could recover each drive individually, or the whole system, from any day in the last month.

Thanks! I'll consider it...although selling her on a regular backup on her irregular work schedule will be a challenge.

 

[USAFRet]

Thanks! I'll consider it...although selling her on a regular backup on her irregular work schedule will be a challenge.

2 options:

1. A good backup routine
2. Risk losing everything on that PC

 

[DSzymborski]

Thanks! I'll consider it...although selling her on a regular backup on her irregular work schedule will be a challenge.

You can set it up once and it'll run automatically, so there's no real backup schedule for a person to deal with.