Simple Back Up

f14tomcat said:

...The File History option posted is going to change also... It appears to be going away in the Fall Update (Oct 17th)...

There may be a stay of execution though. The Timeline feature that some think was intended to replace it has been dropped from the Fall Creators Update.

Microsoft won't deliver Timeline as part of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update | ZDNet

Personally, while I have File History turned on I've never had cause to use it to restore anything. It's very much my third line of defence. My second line of defence is regular system images and, as has been pointed out, it's possible to retrieve individual files from an image.

My main backup is simply to copy everything (files and folder structure) from my User folder to a backup folder on an external (or network) drive. Each time I back up it's to a new sub-folder with the current date as it's name (eg: H:\Backups\2017-09-06\). This is something I've been doing since my Windows 7 days.

The simplest way to do this is to open a command prompt in the folder you wish to back up and type:
XCOPY *.* H:\Backups\2017-09-06\ /S /E

You could write that into a .bat file as I have done to make it easier to use. Actually, you could make it far more sophisticated if you want (and I did). Full and Incremental backups are possible using the /M option. This copies only files with the Archive attribute set (and clears the Archive attribute), so the command...
XCOPY *.* H:\Backups\2017-09-06\ /S /E /M

...will only copy those files that have changed since the last backup. For a Full backup just use this command first:
ATTRIB *.* +A /S

This is a very simplistic description of my backup .bat file, but it demonstrates the principles. The current incarnation runs to some 160 lines of code, has replaced XCOPY with RoboCopy and accepts a whole string of command line parameters (with parsing to check they make sense) that specify Full or Incremental, the destination (network or local) and the backup's name (to which it appends "_Full" or "_Incremental" as appropriate).

I run a weekly Incremental and a monthly Full backup. I suppose I could get Task Scheduler to run it for me, but it only takes a few second to type the command - and I do like to watch to make sure it has worked. :)

That sounds like just what I want - similar to what I do, only manually. How would I back just the Win 10 files and program settings?

carrotmuseum said:

How would I back just the Win 10 files and program settings?

The sure way to back up the Windows 10 system and its settings is to make a system image, with Macrium for preference.

My backup is just of my User folder, including the Documents, Downloads, Pictures, Music and Videos folders. On restoring a system image (which may be up to a month old in my case) I can then update my user folder with the latest versions of my personal files.

AOMEI backupper standard, its free..

not only disk image/partition image, it support file/folder backup too.

it has problem with bootable iso/disk creator , to boot on UEFI, you should copy boot file from windows dvd/iso source, i mean EFI > boot > efi file

Not idea what EFI or UEFI is!

carrotmuseum said:

Not idea what EFI or UEFI is!

Here's some reading on it. It pertains to BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). It's what operating system boot from. It has gotten to be quite sophisticated.

Welcome to Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Forum | Unified Extensible Firmware Interface Forum

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface - Wikipedia

carrotmuseum said:

Ok thanks, is Macrium easy to understand/use. Is there a simple instruction list available somewhere?

Macrium is very easy to use, just one click or via an automatic BU set within Macrium.

I found it not so easy to set up. The various menus seem to be all over the place and difficult to find when wanted. I had to make notes of how to reach a menu. Also, at first I found actually using the concept of "Keep"ing several backups difficult to set up to do what I wanted. Basically, if you set up a schedule so that a backup is made at a certain time on a certain day or days, or manually, if you set Keep to, say, 3 backups, you will always have three: the most recent, the next most recent and the one before that. Every time a new BU is made, that third one will be deleted. I have never used differentials or incremental backups. I found Macrium excellent when set up.

If your C drive is on an SSD (along with programs) Macrium takes only 15 minutes (at 5:15 pm every day) to make my backups in the background without noticeably slowing the computer. It can do this even when the comp. continues to sleep. I use FreeFileSync to make backups of my internal HD which holds Documents, Pictures etc. FFS backups only the changes since the last backup so is extremely quick. On the other hand, Macrium's backups are always full images of a drive and this would takes a long time for my internal HD which holds 650 GB of data, 95% or more of which never changes and therefore never needs to be re-backed up.

Stevekir said:

Macrium is very easy to use, just one click or via an automatic BU set within Macrium.

I found it not so easy to set up. The various menus seem to be all over the place and difficult to find when wanted. I had to make notes of how to reach a menu. Also, at first I found actually using the concept of "Keep"ing several backups difficult to set up to do what I wanted. Basically, if you set up a schedule so that a backup is made at a certain time on a certain day or days, or manually, if you set Keep to, say, 3 backups, you will always have three: the most recent, the next most recent and the one before that. Every time a new BU is made, that third one will be deleted. I have never used differentials or incremental backups. I found Macrium excellent when set up.

If your C drive is on an SSD (along with programs) Macrium takes only 15 minutes (at 5:15 pm every day) to make my backups in the background without noticeably slowing the computer. It can do this even when the comp. continues to sleep. I use FreeFileSync to make backups of my internal HD which holds Documents, Pictures etc. FFS backups only the changes since the last backup so is extremely quick. On the other hand, Macrium's backups are always full images of a drive and this would takes a long time for my internal HD which holds 650 GB of data, 95% or more of which never changes and therefore never needs to be re-backed up.

You obviously misunderstand things.

On one hand you say Reflects images are always full backups and then you say you do not use differential backups.

You talk about other tools only backing up changes. That is precisely what differential backups are for ie only backup changes since last full backup. They are usually tiny compared with full backup.