New laptop Windows 10 backup

libra10

I bought a new Lenova laptop a couple of weeks ago, and upgraded to Windows 10, setting up the programme as I wanted it.


It all took quite a while upgrading to Windows 10, loading Live Mail, a couple of programmes, importing Favourites, etc.


What I want to do is to 'clone' the system (as it is now) so that in the event of a crash, I can load either a USB stick or hard drive, and I won't have to reload all the paraphernalia that comes with buying a new computer.


Can anyone advise the best way to do this?


Thank you

wymondham

Windows backup should be fine to do this as long as its used on the same computer. As Windows 10 was an upgrade it wont activate if you need to restore to a different pc.

libra10

Thanks for replying.


The backup would be for the same PC. My son 'cloned' his MacBook Pro, using a programme from the internet. He found it really easy to do, but we can't see anything to do similar on a PC.


It would be handy to have a copy of the PC system knowing that in the event of a serious virus or crash of some kind, we would just need to load either a USB stick or hard drive, and the computer would be useable again.

Pincher

Do a Disk Clean-up.

Create a Restore point.

Use Recovery Media Creator to create USB Boot Flashdrive (16GB+)

Go to File History in Control Panel, use "System Image Backup"
See bottom left of screen.

libra10

Thank you very much Pincher for your comments.


Will check this out tomorrow, and hopefully follow your advice.


Much appreciated.

bsod

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

system image backup is preferable as it allows updates, and doesn't take over (and delete everything already on!) the backup device, whereas a clone does.

Jivesinger

Pincher wrote: »

Use Recovery Media Creator to create USB Boot Flashdrive (16GB+)

The Windows 10 process to Create a Recovery Drive has an interesting feature to Backup System Files, which is different from earlier Windows versions in 2 important respects:

1. It can create a USB which will install Windows 10, from scratch, on a bare disk, even if you clean-installed Windows 10 and wiped out any OEM Recovery Partitions before creating the Recovery Drive
2. It quite often doesn't work. Some computers can't create a recovery drive with this option at all, others work on a retry.

It will be very nice when it's finished.

However it's more reliable if you leave out the system files, and should be enough to restore a System Image as mentioned above.

libra10

Thanks everyone for your comments.


My son will be doing the backup. When he created back up media for his MacBook, he used software downloaded from the net, called 'Carbon Copy', and transferred to a new SSD drive.


In the event of his computer failing, he can now drag the backup to the MacBook, and everything should be fine without having to reinstall programmes, etc.


That's what we want to do for the Lenova. We don't want to have to reinstall Windows 10, Live Mail, etc.


The computer I bought is a Yoga Pro 2 and has an SSD drive, if that makes a difference.


Thanks for your help.

Jivesinger

Although the Recovery Drive and built-in tools mentioned by Pincher are potentially useful, personally I use Macrium Reflect Free as mentioned above.

Make sure you also create Rescue Media so that in the event of a complete failure you can reboot the computer from the Rescue Media, in order to restore the backup.

Whatever you do (whether it's the Windows Recovery Drive, or Macrium or something else), make sure that you have tested out the process of booting from the Rescue Media/ Recovery Drive, so you know what to do if something goes wrong later.

Edit: I forgot to say - one advantage of Windows Recovery Drive is that it can do other jobs in addition to restoring backups - for instance you may be able to use it to get back to a System Restore point. Make sure System Restore is switched on too; sometimes a Windows 10 install leaves this off, for some reason.