Windows 10 Backup Strategy Solution Suggestions

Thank you everyone! I finally have a full image backup of my main computer.

Macrum is exactly what I was looking for. After Carbon Copy Cloner saved me on OS X, this is definitely a must have. The initial backup took a couple of hours over my 10Mbps LAN, but I will be rebuilding it and expanding my little lab.

The only thing that the free version of Macrum does not do are incremental backups, but deferential weekly and monthly images are just fine.
@jimbo45: The VM idea is great as well, I have VirtualBox installed but never actually used it as a kind of sandbox testbed. No shed with geothermal possibilities on this end, I'm jealous. :)

One very last question about the backup strategy itself. I read somewhere that we should keep three backup copies? I would be satisfied with a local one and one in the cloud. Any thoughts?

I do not have that many requirements when backing up my computer. But I always using free AOMEI Backupper because it basically meets all my needs, full/incremental/differential backup to external drive. It also supports backing up to NAS and network, which is useless for me. Anyway, it is worth trying.

reddice said:

I upload the most important files on my D drive to OneDrive for backups. I also backup the entire D drive on another external hard drive. I pay for the 1TB Office 365 solution because of OneDrive backup and the fact that the real free office alternatives are terrible.

I also have Office 365, the Home version is great as everyone gets Office and 1TB of storage on OneDrive - so a total of 5TB. For many years I attempted to use OpenOffice and it just doesn't feel right.

I have just gone through complete re-installs of Windows 7 on my machine and Windows 10 on my wife's machine. Have been thinking about what to do this time to backup our systems.

I had an image of my Windows 7 system drive, but it had been made using the built in Windows backup. When time came to use it, it would not work. The data drive was not affected, so no trouble there. I also had a second Win10 drive that I had abandoned in favor of my old Win7.

The Windows 10 failure was caused by the flawed W10 update issued on Jan 3rd. I tried for 3 days to fix that, but eventually did a clean install on a new SSD. Luckily the personal and data folders on the old drive were still accessible even although it would not boot.(I put it in a USB enclosure).

After these experiences, I came to conclusion that it makes little sense to clone a windows system disk. It may already have various errors that build up after numerous updates. We don't use many stand alone programs these days and the few we have can easily be reinstalled.

So my plan is:
- Have MS isos available for Win 7 and Win 10 for future clean installs.
- Make recovery thumb drives for each OS (They may get system going without a complete re-install)
- Keep all personal files like documents, photos, desktop on cloud storage (Dropbox/Gdrive in our case)
- Copy Data disks and all personal files directly to external USB harddrive a couple of times a year as secondary backup.

I have used Macrium and other backup programs. They work OK, but generally the disks just lie around and I am lax about maintaining the backups. The only times I have really needed them, they would no longer work My fault likely, but that's my experience.

My feeling is to keep things simple and don't rely on a program that would only be used once in a blue moon :)

pmrozik said:

I also have Office 365, the Home version is great as everyone gets Office and 1TB of storage on OneDrive - so a total of 5TB. For many years I attempted to use OpenOffice and it just doesn't feel right.

Free feels more right to me than C$169 one time for Home & Student or $109/yr for Home :)

365 Includes a lot of stuff we don't need. OpenOffice does too, but it is free and totally compatible. My wife has use OO for years. I kept using Office 97 until recently, but now switched to OO. It works just fine - just need to get used to menu items sometimes being in different places. We only use word processor and spreadsheets and save in MS Office format so others can open them.

Up until recently, I used Windows Live Mail. Not being supported any more. No MS alternative on Win 7 and the mail on on Win 10 is atrocious. Installed Thunderbird. Really happy with current version. It looks like WLM and works perfectly on win 7 and 10.

RolandJS said:

"...lax about maintaining the backups..." please do not be lax about routinely making backups onto external media. The 'Net boards have many threads from the "have no backups" or "only have old backups" from poster figuratively, and rightly so!, beside themselves.

Preach all you want, but you will have a hard time convincing me that any backup program would be better than the KISS method I outlined above No need for backups!