I'm looking to go to a new Windows 10 PC, and changing from a Windows 7 PC.
If I backup the "My Documents" folder and all files and folders within, is there a similar file system
under Windows 10, ie same structure I can dump directly to, or have they changed things and I'll
have a bit more messing about to do?
Thanks
Simple copy/paste with Explorer. Assuming you just copied your Win 7 folders to another drive, under Win 7. That part, essentially, hasn't changed much. Explorer is still basically Explorer. Should be able to just copy/paste 7>10. I would copy the contents not the folder. That way, it's just your data you're dealing with, and not a System created folder I.E. - your "Documents" folder.
Thanks, especially for the copy contents rather than top folder bit.
You're welcome! And welcome to Tenforums!
Don't know what type of backup system you are using. One of the most recommended here is Macrium (free).
Regular backups of your System Image (OS files) and data is one of the most important things you can do.
Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect | Windows 10 Tutorials
Personally, I really don't like those backup software solutions. The often/always encode your files so you need to have their software to re-build your backup files or even look at them. And if your computer/disk is dead that's sometimes impossible. And this whole "incremental backup" idea seems ludicrous to me. Why maintain a base file, and then incremental changes in separate files which, without the backup software, are pretty meaningless?
I tend to just synchronize my files on a daily basis. Much easier and far more useful and intuitive. Just copy important files from main PC to backup PC, no need to encode or use special software or maintain all these incremental files. Yeah, I suppose if you're always making unwanted changes to files and for some reason want to go back to an old version it might be useful, but that rarely if ever happens to me. Save copies of your important files every day and you're good to go.
There is far more to it than you have posted. The main purpose of a backup is to maintain an offline exact copy of your operating system in the event of a failure. Any good backup software gives the means to create a Rescue Media to be used if the main bootable OS drive fails, or otherwise needs to be restored, bit-by-bit.
Doing that using a synchronize files approach is virtually impossible. You may have a copy of your data, but no OS to run it on.
Backups are not just for pictures and movies. They are insurance against a system failure.
Yes, but most home users might not want an exact copy of their operating system, especially if the operating system being corrupt is what's causing the system to crash. Personally, I maintain a second computer with its own operating system that is (hopefully) sufficiently different from the main computer that common mode failures are unlikely. If my main computer fails for some reason, I turn around to my backup computer and it's ready to go. Identical user files, operating system is okay, and I can go ahead immediately and troubleshoot the main computer. No need to manage backup software.
I say this out of experience. I had a system failure, had a compressed/encoded backup file on a separate drive, and couldn't remember when it was backed up, what software was used, etc. A total waste.
Caveat: You'll note a change in Win10 [actually with Win8 and 8.1] where the file management name was changed to File Explorer from Windows Explorer. But in Microsoft's convoluted thinking they did not change all instances of Windows Explorer to match the new name [who knows why or why not, maybe just for confusion value]. So over time using Win10 you'll see either listed in various places.
Of course...but I'd really encourage folks to think hard about what scenario(s) they are actually protecting for when they back up, rather than just take the standard approach of downloading some common backup software and hoping it will work.
To me, the most worrisome issue is if for some reason I can't boot my PC, either due to a hard drive failure (which is reasonably likely) or a software/OS issue that makes me unable to reboot (again, very reasonably likely). If I can boot, I can generally recover okay, or at least troubleshoot my computer. And it's rare that my exact system configuration at any point in time is important. My files from a day ago are usually about as good as from a week ago, or even a month ago. I can usually recover okay.
But if I can't even boot, then I'm in big trouble. I can't access ANYTHING. And no amount of backup software like Macrium will help me. In fact, since computer failures are so rare, it's likely I'll reach for the thumb drive that I copied my encoded backup files to, and wonder "okay, I did this like 6 months or a year ago, and I can't remember what software I used, or when I did this, and I can't even look at the files because they're encoded and my computer is dead". And since my computer won't boot, those files are useless.
For me, it's FAR more useful to have a cheap backup computer (heck, even a $100 Raspberry Pi with an external drive, or one of your old computers that's sitting in the closet) that I can instantly fire up and start troubleshooting.
Anything else other than a dead computer I can recover from, and don't need much in the way of backup. Nowadays, most software is free and can be reinstalled very fast, so having detailed backups of my apps seems relatively useless. What I really need is a way to troubleshoot a crashed computer, and copies of all my backup files (documents, etc.), even if they're a month old.
So again, I'd encourage folks to really think about what they need for backups.
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