is it possibe to avoid losing programs after a reset on windows 10?

zbook said:

The less commonly used applications or the applications that are potentially hard to recover are installed on the HD.

zbook - This gives the OP the impression that applications installed on a separate drive would remain installed in the event of an OS reinstallation.

Denis

I preach to my clients to back up monthly. I do the same on my 3 computers. As for your New computer if I had it in my shop (Win 10 only from the old computer) I would restore the backup to the new computer after backing up the new computer first.

Only isue is MBR or UEFI on the old computer. The NEW computer will be UEFI. In many cases if the old one is MBR I will adjust the BIOS of the new computer accordingly. This is only if the old computer runs perfectly in the first place and the drive is good and can be imaged.

I do this for a living and can do it in my sleep so depending on your skill level and inderstanding of Macrium and BIOS settings it might not be an option for you.

but am i'm right in thinking you have to make regular images or you will lose recent data?

Restoring an image means EVERYTHING in the partitions restored is replaced- including user data and settings.

Therefore, I regard it best to keep user data off C: as far as reasonably possible.
My preference is not to use the default library folders, for various reasons.

The disk/partition you are most likely to need to restore is your system disk/partition.

There is, therefore, a good argument to use
a. Disk imaging
b. Data backup - specific to critical data that changes mrore frequently and is on C: - or indeed elsewhere.

The frequency of (b) can be greater, could be scheduled with on-line backup disks, for example - or perhaps better to a cloud server, where the data size is appropriate to the upload speed.

Note that System Restore is data independent, but significantly unreliable, and no use where the disk fails or is otherwise unusable.