Backup/Image question

Hello,
For a new laptop with NVMe 256GB and an internal HDD 2TB, was wondering what the best way is to make a backup of OS partitions so that if needed, just copy over the partitions and be done with it.

I have moved Users folder to another partition so I currently have:
C:\OS
D:\Users
E:\Data
F:\VMs - use 2-3 VMs running simultaneously.

Am trying to set up Backup on the 2TB HDD.
I can make Macrium images of C and D together that makes my OS components.

Question 1 - Can I make partitions equal to or slightly bigger on 2TB HDD and clone C:\ and D:\ partitions to these partitions on 2TB HDD, so that I have another way to restore in case there is an issue with Reflect image?

Question 2 - Is it preferable to use VMs on HDD instead of NVMe? I use snapshots and there is a lot of disk thrasing. Or is it preferable to use 2TB HDD just as a backup store that does not get used much?

Would now need to have incremental backups of E:/Data folders on a regular basis. Am gradually moving most data to this E:\ partition and having D:\Users contain default data etc.

Thanks,

I thought one could clone "partitions", is it not?

If one can then what stops one from cloning multiple partitions on to partitions on disk-2?

Cloning can give problems as then you have two active disk with the same name etc. An image can be compressed so you can keep more copies. For data back up to Google drive or one drive it's automatic and data is safe you can get it anywhere in the world

If one cannot "Clone" partitions, then I was thinking of using Partition Magic's Copy Partition feature to Copy all System Partitions to partitions on the HDD. Can this be done.



Can I make a copy of all these partitions to a SIMILAR sized partitions on HDD and then use the remaining space for Image Backups, Data backups etc?

This is just to ensure that I can go back to a good state in case Image Restore fails etc.

Planning on creating an image for all the above partitions at one go. While restoring multiple partitions to a new disk, do I need to create partitions first or will the restore process create all the above partitions and restore data in each?

Thanks,

What I do on my dual drive computers (SSD + HDD):

My SSD is strictly for the OS and programs and apps. My user data is stored on the HDD and I use folder junctions in C:\Users\John to point to D:\John on the HDD. For example, C:\Users\John\Documents is a folder junction that points to D:\John\Documents. You have your SSD partitioned into OS partition and data partition, so you would actually be backing up your data partition to the HDD, whereas I backup my data partition to an external NAS drive.

At the end of my HDD, I have a FAT32 6.5GB partition. In this partition, I keep the most recent Windows 10 installation ISO file extracted. Then I copy the boot.wim file from Kyhi's recovery tools over the top of the Windows 10 boot.wim file. So, when I pick boot from HDD from the UEFI boot override menu, it boots into Kyhi's recovery tools. From there I can either restore my backup image using Macrium Reflect, or I can clean install Windows by running the setup.exe contained in the same partition. I can also access the almost useless advanced troubleshooting options of the Windows 10 install drive by selecting the repair option after I run setup.exe.

The remainder of the front of the HDD is an NTFS partition. On it I keep a backup image of my SSD stored. So if the SSD goes bad, or the OS gets corrupted, all I have to do is select the bootable partition on the HDD and restore the image back to the SSD. The only difference on your system would be that you could also include your data partition in the backup image.

Just to clarify. There are 2 sets of Data - one in D:\Users and one in E:\Data.

Most of my data is in E:\Data and my OP did mention that I'll be needing to make incremental backups of this data.

The data in D:\Users is something that I need when I first install OS and hence is part of my OS Image.

So data yes but not the kind that you're thinking of. D:\Users partition is only 25GB and is about 50% used. My data similar to the one that you backup is on E:\Data.

Do you make an image of only OS partition or is recommended to image the 3-4 System Partitions as well?

nkaufman said:

Do you make an image of only OS partition or is recommended to image the 3-4 System Partitions as well?

If you want to be able to restore the computer to a bootable condition after a failure using only the image restore function, then you need to image all the partitions except for the recovery partitions. It is fairly easy to recreate a boot partition from scratch if you restore only the OS/Data partitions, but the other system partitions are so small they won't add to the image size hardly at all. If you want to save space in the backup image, you can leave out the recovery partitions.