Backing up PC

Heedtheadvice

You might think they are safe but take note of the previous posts.

sticks can fail in an unrecoverable manner at any time. If it does occur.....to late if that is when you need it.....and are easily lost!

Not much on your D drive so nearly everything on your C drive.

I am not familiar with that backup software you link to, it may be fine, but the common free ones (that also have paid more ' pro' versions are the previously mentioned Acronis and Macrium Reflect. Both been around for a long time reliable and used by manufacturers.

My personal choice is Reflect and I backup two fairly large drives (OS and data sections separately) to two external drives on a scheduled basis plus a full backup of everything less frequently do that all programs and settings are saved too. I also make a recovery disk in case of total failure to boot resulting from disk boot problems.

There is a variety of opinion as to how much one should backup (and to test your backups actually work!) including using cloud backup, backing up more in different locations and at the other end not backing up windows (operating system) at all. It all depends upon what is important to you. I value speedy and easy recovery to a working system. Failures do happen but not very often but having had to spend nearly three days to get everything back to normal once I prefere to use a system that can get back on the road within half a day!

At other times hardware failure and replacement with newer standard stuff could mean that some things backed up are not very compatible and require a Windows install from scratch too but you still have the rest to reuse.

searchlight123

nobody has mentioned the backup tool included in windows 10 (file history) that backs up to an external drive and then backs up any items that may have changed since the last back up was done.
is this method considered 'ok' by those more knowledgeable than me?

grumpycrab

I like filehistory (comes free with Windows10, and possibly with Windows8 - not sure what OP is using).  But it depends what your preference is - backing up data (docs/pics/music...) in a format that doesn't need any special software to access OR whole system (image) backup.
As Windows10 appears to be more reliable than previous Windows I don't need to reinstall very often, and even if i had too am quite happy to reinstall from scratch with latest Windows10 install disk.  If you have loads of installed programs, whole image backups can save a lot of time reinstalling them.

libra10

My current PC originally had Windows 8 installed, with free Windows 10 upgrade.
Thanks for the information.  Backing up securely seems to be more complex than I imaged.
Before buying my present Lenova PC, I used to own Sony Vaio laptops until Sony stopped making them for UK users, and every now and then (in order to clear out old files etc,) would take back to factory condition.  It was relatively easy to just add the few photos and documents when back up and running.
Although I regularly back up the few items I have on my Notebook, my idea was that I backed up the whole shooting match - operating system etc, I could just insert the USB stick and it would reinstall everything.
Is that what Acronis and other similar software does?
Have been looking at memory sticks with larger data at Amazon, and most of them don't have good reviews.
Thanks very much for the input.

hybernia

When my laptop was still working, I purchased a physically small 1TB Western Digital external drive from Amazon UK. It's much more robust that the average USB stick and by no means as easily lost. I plugged it into one of the USB ports on my laptop and then used the excellent and always free (for non commercial use) Synchredible, a German software which quite literally 'synchronises' the content of two devices.

In other words, what you have on computer A's hard drive is copied by Synchredible over to backup computer B. If/when the content of computer A's hard drive changes, either through file  amendment, filecreation orfile  deletion, Synchredible almost instantly identifies that and copies only a new or changed file over to the backup drive (or deletes what's on the backup drive so as to match what's been deleted from the primary drive).

As its name suggests, Synchredible runs at an incredibly fast rate, and works unnoticeably in the background, too. So I backed up every time I used the laptop -- it's tempting fate to schedule backups over periods of days or weeks (or worse, months even) because you can experience a hard drive failure at any time and without any notice.

So for me it has always been synchronise / synchronise / snchronise, backup / backup / backup regardless of how many times a week.

I then disconnect the little WD drive, pop it into a small transparent plastic picnic box along with its USB cable and place them in the bottom drawer of my study desk. That's infinitely preferable to having a USB stick / pen drive, which can easily get muddled up with other identical pen drives because they're well-nigh impossible to label up as a guide to their content. Husband also uses Synchredible for his backup regime, though he doesn't trust USB-powered external drives at all and so has his comparatively enormous desktop PC permanently connected to a 1TB Western Digital Elements 'book case' style external drive, plugged independently into the mains.

A final thought: when it comes to safeguarding literally priceless material like photographs from destruction, cheapest definitely isn't best! (And back-ups which are too widely spaced apart is begging for trouble.)

libra10

Thank you hybernia for the information.
Buying a Western drive and Synchredible software sounds like a good option for me.
I have two separate backups of the few photos and documents on my PC, and my husband also has copies of some of the photos.  I regularly keep back ups up to date, it was mainly the system itself which I wanted to back up, along with Office and my password manager, etc.
A lot of food for thought, thanks everyone for your information.  I will consider all the options.
Much appreciated.

Heedtheadvice

Should point out the big downside of any sync type of probs is if something gets deleted that you need/want. If that is then deleted from the synced copy as part of it's activity.......oops.

IvanOpinion

While a secondary backup is a good idea I would also backup important files to a cloud service.  You don't need to back up your entire disk to the cloud just your documents, photos, videos, music etc.

oh_really

https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/cr/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/yoga-series/yoga-3-pro-1370-laptop-lenovo/solutions/HT117511

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libra10 said:

 I think they're quite safe, It's just in  the  event of  a serious crash, I wanted some easy way of backing up the system, with bookmarks, programmes etc, without spending ages getting back to where I would like.

USB sticks are not safe for reasons (1) with use the ram cells become corrupt and wear out (2) on some models the long term heat generated makes things die quicker. Because you have not experienced it yet don't think it does not happen. Forking out loads of cash often makes the usb copy process quicker, but all sticks die, at random, literally work one second, but not the next, no warning.

As you gather, there are 2 types of backup: files and folders, or disk blocks.
Generally when you back up files and folder method, when the disk fails you have to install windows first, once windows works then only can you restore the files. The good thing is you can easily restore individual files.
Bare metal, or disk block method generally copies and restores the whole disk as one lump of data. Restore is often all or nothing, but will wipe the newer existing files and photos in the process.

Acronis is rated high because it works well, and even though it copies a whole disk, it allows you to select file from the big lump of data  too. You can't do a full disk block restore and keep the existing, newer files. The free windows backup and restore works well, but Acronis is better.

End of the day anything is better than nothing. Make sure you backup is valid and contains data and that you know how to restore, and have more than one backup.