I Did a Silly Thing

Caleb said:

f14tomcat said:

Caleb, there's a good chance you can put Humpty-Dumpty back together again!

First, fill out your system specs here in the forum. Be specific. OS, hardware (include any external drives, etc.), OEM machine like Dell or HP. Spellout what type of backup procedure you were using prior to Win 10 install; 3rd party like Macrium, Acronis or native (Windows Backup). Files or files and image or image only.

Be as specific as you can be. Also, if you can post a snapshot of Disk Management screen. Has valuable info on it.

There are some good recovery knowledgeable people on this forum, they will help I'm sure.

BUT, info about what you had and what you have now is very helpful.

I would suggest you do not do any cleanups (i.e. Windows Disk Cleanup) or otherwise change the picture too much during analyzing all this.

Good luck!

Thank-you Tomcat and everyone else for your kind advice! It seems like tenforums is a good place to be :)

So given what the majority of you are saying I'm thinking of staying with Windows 10 Preview for now (I am enjoying it after all) and backing up my stuff just in case. Again though my noobiness becomes quickly apparent: what's the easiest/ cheapest/ quickest way to back up my files? Should I just take the files I absolutely need and upload them to something like GoogleDrive / put them on a memory stick? Or are there options to backup my entire system?

thanks again!

- Caleb

Caleb, glad to hear you're a happy camper again!

You can set Google drive to auto backup photos, etc. but keep in miind Google free storage is only 15GB.

A good external USB drive is a good choice and gives you local control of your data. Newegg.com, Amazon.com, etc. have 1TB drives for about $70-$80. Stay away from 3TB drives, they are fritzy!

Macrium and Acronis et al, are also choices but only paid version of Macrium will allow image restore from boot. The built-in (native) File History and System Image backup work fine. Even if the drive is not connected, file history will remember changes/new file and do copies when drive is attached.

I would suggest separate partitions on an external drive (see tutorial), one for System Image Backup ONLY and one for File History and any other data you want to save. This keeps the block-level backup for the system image and it's shadow copies isolated from all else. You can save many, many system images on an external drive. Typical size first time is 25-35 GB. Windows does not create 25-30 GB each time, it's managed through system shadow copies (different subject). Typical image backup time is 15-20 mins.

Cloud (offsite) or Local (external drive you control) is your choice. BUT, you do need to have a backup regimen you're comfortable with and works.

Have a good one!

f14tomcat said:

... but only paid version of Macrium will allow image restore from boot.

@f14tomcat , Nope. You need to create a bootable USB with the FREE Macrium Edition. You can re-image your PC outside the Windows environment. But of course only images created with Macrium will work.
I created an ISO for it if you are interested. You can get it from my NAS here : http://badrobot.no-ip.org:8084/share.cgi?ssid=0B2uBgy
Just use Rufus to create a bootable USB. My link will expire in 4 days. :)
@Caleb , don't rely too much on commercial cloud storage. Invest on at least 1TB USB external hard drive.
As for your Win 10 upgrade, as long as you don't do any hardware upgrade or changes, you should be good. Just keep everything simple for now.

Winuser said:

The paid version of Macrium Reflect gives you the option to recovery from the Windows boot menu without using a bootable USB.

I see. But what if Windows won't boot up at all? Also good to have the ability to recover images outside of Windows.
Thanks for clarification.