1 Button Back-up. Really?

milford said:

O.K. Its going thru the motions.

Thanks for the help. I gotta go. Wife yelling.

Super! Post back if you need any more info....

SIW2 said:

It is a bit complicated.

I recommend Aomei backupper as being the simplest imaging program to use .

Best Windows Backup and Restore Software | AOMEI Backupper

I strongly disagree!

milford said:

So it looks like it worked. No errors. Now what? I still have over 400 Gigs of free space on the USB drive. If I do another back-up next week, what happens? Will the next back-up over-write the first back-up, or will it create a second back-up file? Will following back-ups keep adding to the USB drive until its full?

Side note...The Template option was grayed out for the free version. Couldn't do any other kind of back-up.

Should I have named the first back-up?

Did Windows PE install onto the back-up drive also? Will this let me re-install the back-up to the hard drive?
Do I still have to create Rescue Media before I can restore?

I know, read everything.

Did you create a backup definition file? The sentence I bolded above would have created one. In the definition file, you specify how many backups to keep, among other things. So, yes, they are a rolling first-in-first-out deletion based on your definition. Too much to type here, but it's all in the tutorial.

This is a partial pic of a definition file with those parameters.

In Macrium on the main window, click up top in the menu on Other Tasks and then you can create rescue media:

Attachment 194582

If you make a new one and there is one in the folder, it will make a second image with a number change on the end so that you know it is not the same image. NAME-01-00 etc.

If you name the files each time you will know which is what image. You can create your own template and schedule it. If you do that, I would recommend to retain a couple images:
Attachment 194583Attachment 194584

Once you have made the rescue media, I would highly recommend you boot from it and make sure it works. It is always best to have a plan in place before disaster strikes.

You rarely have to add drivers to make the recovery drive work - it has generic drivers that work on most pcs.

It has nothing to do with the actual windows 10 drivers which are backed up when you backup and restore fine.

A CD or 500 MB flash drive (recommend you use a flash drive) is big enough.

cereberus said:

You rarely have to add drivers to make the recovery drive work - it has generic drivers that work on most pcs.

It has nothing to do with the actual windows 10 drivers which are backed up when you backup and restore fine.

A CD or 500 MB flash drive (recommend you use a flash drive) is big enough.

I agree 1000% on the flash drive. Booting from the CD or DVD took my PC nearly 3x as long. Flash drive all the way!

on the thumb drive. It's re-usable, too. So are re-writable DVDs, but I've always considered them chancy. CD/DVD can get damaged easier. Keep 2 thumbs and rotate them, on the out chance one gets damaged or the making of the Rescue fails for whatever reason. You still have a working one. And, by all means boot them to test if they will. Finding out it won't work at the time you need it is the wrong time.

If I do another back-up next week, what happens? Will the next back-up over-write the first back-up, or will it create a second back-up file? Will following back-ups keep adding to the USB drive until its full?

The next backup would normally be a differential backup. That represents the changes between the backup (base image) you've created and 'now' - the current state. Thus it's faster and smaller.

On your backup disk you will then have a large base image and a smaller differential image.
To restore, you need either
a. a base image
or
b. a base image + ANY differential image (related to that base image).

What is kept (how many) is defined by default- and by you:


Thus you can estimate how much space you need for a full set.

Hopefully your first image was this (including all partitions Windows creates when installed- note these are ticked):