Do I need to use a 'Backup Plan Template' in Macrium?

I have been kindly advised by people on this forum that its best to use Macrium to create an 'image' of your SSD only, and to manually backup your HD storage (that has photos, documents, music etc).

Every Sunday (usually evenings), I connect my 2TB external HD, open Macrium, check that my SSD partitions are selected, and in about 20-40 minutes my SSD image has been created onto the external HD. I have 4 images so far, 1 per week every Sunday, before the Windows updates are rolled out every Tuesday.

1) Now since I always remember to manually create an 'image' of my SSD on Sundays, do I need to use a 'Backup Plan Template' in Macrium, as I dont need to backup using differential or incremental for an SSD?
2) The whole 'Purge oldest backup set(s) if less than 5GB on the target volume' that is shows in retention rules, shall I use that? Or do I just delete the oldest 'image' if storage becomes full?

What are your views/opinions on my situation, and is anyone else in my situation also?
What do you do?

Many Thanks

No--you do not need to use Backup Plan Template. Nor do you need to check that Purge choice. I uncheck the choices related to scheduling and retention rules.

I just start from scratch each time I make a new image. I make the same choices within the menus every time, but I don't try to "automate" anything.

I use the default names that Macrium offers and I make a new destination folder each time that is named to show when it was made, such as 092517 if I were to make an image today.

I make full images only. I keep the most recent 2 or 3 and manually delete those I don't need.

It's a personal choice, but I figure that forcing myself to do everything manually each time tends to keep my head in the game and makes me more familiar with Macrium and it's menu choices. I do NOT want to be lulled into a sense of complacency by any automated functions.

Have you ever restored? Have you confirmed for a fact that your Macrium recovery media will boot your PC?

I just have 1 folder called 'SSD Images', and have all the images stored in there.
I put the 'date' in the 'comments' section when creating the images, although I am sure when you boot the CD and find the folder, it shows the dates there anyway, as if you were viewing it in File Explorer.

I have not restored before no, but I have triple checked that my bootable rescue CD works. I think, with some trial and error, I got into BIOS, choose the CD rom as boot order no.1 and rebooted. It took a while to boot into the CD, but when it did, it was really easy to navigate to my SSD images that I had :)

Sounds like you have it pretty well under control.

You might do an actual restore to a spare hard drive you might have, to familiarize yourself with the procedure and prove to yourself that the restored drive boots and responds as expected.

I try to remember to do a virus scan before making a new image. And I tend to make a new image around the 5th or 6th of the month---a few days before Microsoft is likely to give me a bunch of significant updates. The new image serves as a fallback position if the Windows updates have a bad outcome.

So Windows rolls 'geneal bugs and fixes' updates every Tuesday right? However, they roll out important/big updates around the 5th/6th every month?

Unfortunately I dont have a spare HD to restore the image to, but I presume you just select the 'image' you want, and click 'restore'? Simple as?
Furthermore, lets just say I was to restore the latest 'SSD image' to a spare drive, does that mean my OS is in 2 drives now? I understand that you can only use 1 Windows 10 account per PC, but if it son a seperate drive in another PC? How does that work if that makes sense?

see comments:

C0zzie said:

So Windows rolls 'geneal bugs and fixes' updates every Tuesday right? However, they roll out important/big updates around the 5th/6th every month?

Seems to me you might get some kind of an update at any time, but there is typically a concentration of them around the second Tuesday of the month (the traditional "Patch Tuesday")--which will be on the 8th or later. So, the 5th or 6th will ALWAYS be before the second Tuesday.

Unfortunately I dont have a spare HD to restore the image to, but I presume you just select the 'image' you want, and click 'restore'? Simple as?

You have to navigate that Macrium interface that is shown to you when you boot from your recovery media and you have to make the right choices. Not the wrong choices. It's "simple" if you are familiar with it. It's quite intuitive, but there is always room for error.

Furthermore, lets just say I was to restore the latest 'SSD image' to a spare drive, does that mean my OS is in 2 drives now?

Clearly yes.

I understand that you can only use 1 Windows 10 account per PC, but if it son a seperate drive in another PC? How does that work if that makes sense?

I'm not following your reference to "another PC". I'm referring to another drive in the SAME PC. Just as if you had a real drive failure and actually had to go buy a new replacement hard drive, install it in your same PC, and restore your previously made Macrium image to that new hard drive in that same PC.

Ah yes, so I was probably referring to what you describe as 'Patch Tuesday' then.
Maybe I just need to image every month, before the big update you mention, but to be safe I think every week is ok also.

Oh, if the current HD breaks, you plug in new HD/SSD and restore it on that. My mistake, I presumed, for some silly reason, that you meant cloning your image onto a new HD haha..apologies for the confusion.

But Thanks for clearing things up :)

C0zzie said:

Ah yes, so I was probably referring to what you describe as 'Patch Tuesday' then.
Maybe I just need to image every month, before the big update you mention, but to be safe I think every week is ok also.

Frequency is a personal choice.

If you made significant daily changes to your PC, you might even want to make daily images.

My Windows installation evolves slowly with minimal changes, so I use monthly.

Weekly is fine if you don't mind taking the time every week and if you are not cramped for storage space.

At some point, the large sizes of the image files may start to cramp your space and you would then have to decide which images to delete.

If you have 37 images for the last 37 weeks, what good is the 23rd image from last April 17? Again, no problem with that if you have plenty of space. Maybe your images are 10 GB each and maybe they are 100 GB each.

My occupied space on C is about 33 GB. My last image file (Sept 8) is 16.2 GB.