New
#11
I apologize. I should have explained in more detail rather than ask a meaningless 'generic' question. The following applies to both my wife's and my own PC.
In both cases the PC's single hard drives are partitioned into several logical partitions. C: contains the system files including program installation folders (program.... folders). The additional logical partitions E: and F: on both PCs contain only data files (word docs, excel files, downloads, My Images, etc. I've even moved the Firefox and Thunderbird profile folders to E: for easy backups. This was done ages ago and I forgot you could not know the hard drives were so partitioned.
The external HDD are purely for backups in both my wife's and my laptops.
My wife is technophobic and therefore I would like to automatically 'image backup' her entire physical HDD to her external hard drive once a week. Incremental backups are fine here. I use image backups because it would allow me to restore her entire HD (OS and data) if it went south. Also, since I can "view" the image backups and restore individual data files when necessary, this has worked fine for me as her 'tech support' person. Her usb external HD is permanently connected to her PC because she never moves her PC from its desk.
My situation is different. I constantly move my laptop around the house so the external usb HD (also only used for backups) is only connected when needed. Indeed I have 2 external HDs for my own backups that I rotate for extra security. So in my case I do make an occasional image backup of C: and more frequently make image backups of my data partitions. Why do I make image backups of my data files? Not sure why. I started doing this because I discovered I could view the individual files even in the image backups and I therefore could restore even individual data files when necessary. Is there a disadvantage to image backups even for data partitions?
Anyway, what brought this entire topic up was that I discovered that on my wife's PC her backups had all failed. For the past 2 years! I don't know why they failed. So, I quickly made a full backup on her external drive. Went well.
I am now looking for an automated solution for her PC since I'm not checking her backups regularly. Looking for that is what prompted me to ask the generic question about backup software. I use Macrium Reflect and occasionally EaseUS on my own PC but don't know if problems have recently arisen with these. The backups that failed on my wife's PC were with an automated setup using an old paid version of Acronis. So I'm looking to switch her to something else.
I hope that better explains why I asked.