Is there a point in creating an image of your SSD and HD separately?

C0zzie · 08 Sep 2017

I am creating a Macrium image of my SSD and HD separately.

I had some worrying issues with my PC yesterday with black screen/white mouse cursor and Kernel Power 41 so I had help from Microsoft tech to reinstall Windows 10 on the SSD without losing files.

When you 'restore' an image (using the CD), and you have an SSD and HDD, can you select just the 'SSD image' that is separate? Or do you have to create 1 image, that includes both SSD and HDD, and restore that 1 file?

-How does it know to put 1 image back onto the 2 drives I am using?

-Also, if the SSD breaks down, but the HDD is fine, can you just use the 'SSD' image you made to restore it?

..if this makes sense?

Thank You

ignatzatsonic · 08 Sep 2017

Are you using Windows Imaging or a third party product?

I've never actually tried, but I wouldn't think you could make an image that was composed of partitions from two or more hard drives.

And even if I could, I don't see why I would.

If you have an SSD and a HD, you could make an image of each. Each would be completely separate. You would then restore them separately as you saw fit to the specific hard drive destination of your choice. The destination drive has to be large enough to accept the restored image.

You say "if this makes sense". Maybe not. I'm not entirely sure I understand your situation, so maybe you can give further details.

I assume your SSD contains Windows and that your HD contains something other than Windows--such as data of some type. If that is the case, I personally would not make an image of the HD. I'd just back up whatever is on the HD through ordinary non-imaging means. But maybe the HD doesn't contain data??

More details and further clarity would help.

arachnaut · 08 Sep 2017

I do many types of image backups for a variety of reasons/disaster scenarios:

1) I image just the C: system partition quite often
2) I image the full system disk with all its partitions before Windows updates
3) I image various other partitions less frequently.

Here are the scenarios I plan for:

1) Since the C partition is small (especially if you turn off restore points which can easily become multi-GB in size) I can image it in about 10-15 minutes (with verify). The small size and quick backup makes it easy to do this, even I could schedule it if I wanted. I generally don't do that because only I know when the full dataset on the C drive is in some known good state.

If I get some anomaly in Windows, I can restore a previous image faster than I can debug the problem.

2) If any hard drive fails I can restore it individually.

The advantage of partition backups is that they are far smaller than a full disk backup if you partition disks in some intelligent fashion.

The disadvantage of partition-only backups is when you have some data that is common to something else on other drives - then a single restore could make something out-of-sync. For example the email agent may be on one drive and the email account data on another.

3) I have several very big drives. I partition some of them with a small top partition - a few hundred GB in size. I label these partitions TMP1, TMP2, etc. Since they are at the top of the rotating disk, the latency and read times are fast. I use this area for system temp files, Chrome internet caches, Windows search indices, etc. This offloads stuff that might be in the C drive and things that can cause frequent fragmentation issues. Also, this data, if lost, is not very serious or it is easy to re-generate. These things don't ever need to be backed up. Also, disk fetches for that data can occur at the same time as system data is being fetched, with superior latencies due to parallelism.

4) I have 2 very large (4TB) drives - Big Boy (H) and Big Girl (I). These are what I call my computer 'attic'. They are full of stuff that I never want to backup, because of the size, but I don't want to lose. So I have a copy. H and I are identical and I sync them with robocopy periodically. I put all my install files on H, photos and videos, Rip folders, etc. Then every week or two I sync H: to I:.

5) I have two backup programs - Acronis is for only partition images, Retrospect is only for nightly incremental backups. Each program has it's own dedicated external drive that is usually mounted.

The point is - give some thought to the design of your drives, partitions, and backups. They all form a single eco-system.

Josey Wales · 08 Sep 2017

ignatzatsonic said:

Are you using Windows Imaging or a third party product?

I've never actually tried, but I wouldn't think you could make an image that was composed of partitions from two or more hard drives.

And even if I could, I don't see why I would.

If you have an SSD and a HD, you could make an image of each. Each would be completely separate. You would then restore them separately as you saw fit to the specific hard drive destination of your choice. The destination drive has to be large enough to accept the restored image.

You say "if this makes sense". Maybe not. I'm not entirely sure I understand your situation, so maybe you can give further details.

I assume your SSD contains Windows and that your HD contains something other than Windows--such as data of some type. If that is the case, I personally would not make an image of the HD. I'd just back up whatever is on the HD through ordinary non-imaging means. But maybe the HD doesn't contain data??

More details and further clarity would help.

From the OP

I am creating a Macrium image of my SSD and HD separately.

I use MR and I would make separate images

Berton · 08 Sep 2017

Josey Wales said:

From the OP

I use MR and I would make separate images

Ditto!

Porthos · 08 Sep 2017

I do the same with MR. SSD is backed up monthly before updates and data drive when I feel I made significant changes (I don't usually make many additions).

C0zzie · 08 Sep 2017

ah dang! I just realised something obvious from reading @ignatzatsonis's last paragraph.
My SSD contains my OS (Windows 10), general softwares (HD tune, Spotify, CCleaner), editing softwares (such as Maya, Photoshop, Unity etc) and 1 Game (might add more to it)
My 2TB internal HD is only a storage drive which contains; -Documents -Downloads -Music -Pictures -Videos
I also have all of this backed up manually (copy and paste) onto an external HD (that I used for University)

So...I actually dont need to create an image of my HD if its just a storage right...?
I only need to create an image of my SSD, whether its before an Windows Update (that rolls out every Tuesday I think), or if I make big changes, like software edits etc.

cereberus · 08 Sep 2017

C0zzie said:

ah dang! I just realised something obvious from reading @ignatzatsonis's last paragraph.
My SSD contains my OS (Windows 10), general softwares (HD tune, Spotify, CCleaner), editing softwares (such as Maya, Photoshop, Unity etc) and 1 Game (might add more to it)
My 2TB internal HD is only a storage drive which contains; -Documents -Downloads -Music -Pictures -Videos
I also have all of this backed up manually (copy and paste) onto an external HD (that I used for University)

So...I actually dont need to create an image of my HD if its just a storage right...?
I only need to create an image of my SSD, whether its before an Windows Update (that rolls out every Tuesday I think), or if I make big changes, like software edits etc.

Use Macrium Reflect to image backup ssd (to hdd if you like).

Use File History Backup or any 3rd party tool to backup folders from data drive.

No need really to backup Data drive with Macrium. If you do, do it separately from ssd, partly to stop huge image backups, and partly in case a drive fails.

ignatzatsonic · 08 Sep 2017

C0zzie said:

So...I actually dont need to create an image of my HD if its just a storage right...?
I only need to create an image of my SSD, whether its before an Windows Update (that rolls out every Tuesday I think), or if I make big changes, like software edits etc.

No, you don't need an image to backup data although some people back up data with that method. I prefer to do it by more ordinary means that are not complicated by the imaging process.

Yeah, make a new image if possible before any significant changes to your C partition---whether those changes are done by MS updates or by your own fiddling. I make one once a month. In fact, I made a new one 30 minutes ago because I expect MS make a significant update circa next Tuesday.

Your SSD likely has multiple partitions and I'd just make one image file containing ALL of those partitions. You'll end up with one Macrium file with an MRIMG extension.

Berton · 08 Sep 2017

I would consider a backup of my D: Data partition or drive to be an archive against something happening to my files, anything that exists nowhere else and would otherwise be hard to recover. To that end anything I want to keep is on at least one other drive.