Hard Drive Replacement

Unfortunately, the drive is not reading/writing and the BIOS says it has failed and replace it. I have now contacted Ontrack (in the UK) for them to arrange collection and analysis.

Ontrack in the UK have managed to recover almost every thing for me. They don't come cheap but they are very good at what they do. Because of the disk failure I had to carry out a new install of Windows 10 on the new disk. Luckily I had previously downloaded and saved the Windows 10 ISO to DVD, so that aspect was quite straight forward and obviously a new install is not a bad thing.
The question I have now relates to a new second hard drive that I wish to use as a backup - I am not going to be caught out again! I don't think I need the drive to be a clone but I would like to back up the operating system occasionally but more importantly back up user files and folders on a regular basis. The new drive will obviously have to be formatted and possibly partitioned but what is the best way to do it? Macrium reflect can possibly be used but does this software take care of the disk format? Any guidance on the best way to do this will be greatly appreciated as you can see this is the first time I have gone down this path.

parsonm said:

... I am not going to be caught out again! I don't think I need the drive to be a clone but I would like to back up the operating system occasionally but more importantly back up user files and folders on a regular basis. The new drive will obviously have to be formatted and possibly partitioned but what is the best way to do it? Macrium reflect can possibly be used but does this software take care of the disk format? .

Macrium Reflect can back up the system, creating a single .mrimg file that contains the system image of the partitions from your PC. So just format your drive normally (ntfs would be best) so that Macrium has a drive where it can store the image files it creates. Reflect Free includes scheduling, so you can set it up to do regular images if you wish.

You should also make the Macrium recovery usb, which you'd boot from if you ever needed to restore an image.

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect

Creating a backup image of your computer, drive or partitions - KnowledgeBase v7.2 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

Thanks Bree for responding and the information and links. I will read through the data. One question I have on the backup disk do I configure just one partition or would it be be best to have one for the backup image and another for the backup of the user data on a regular basis?

parsonm said:

Thanks Bree for responding and the information and links. I will read through the data. One question I have on the backup disk do I configure just one partition or would it be be best to have one for the backup image and another for the backup of the user data on a regular basis?

Macrium backs up the partition(s) of your system. If the partitions that hold user data are included in that backup then you can mount a Macrium image to retrieve individual user files using File Explorer. By default your user files are in C:\Users so will be included in the image. As such, a separate backup of user files is not strictly necessary.

However, you can never have enough backups. So a separate method of backing up user files gives an extra level of safety. You could use another app for that, or even just manually copying your user files to an external drive. If you decide to do so, then keeping these backups distinct from the Macrium images is sensible housekeeping. Separate folders is sufficient for that, you don't need to use separate partitions. Of course, for full peace of mind you may want to use completely separate HDDs for Macrium images and user file backups.

Bree,
Reading the installation procedure from Kari Finn's tutorial (How to Create and Restore a System Image Backup with Macrium Reflect) Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect, there is a section 2 on Creating Rescue Media. The question I have here is this Rescue Media dependant on the version of Windows 10? In other words every time Microsoft updates the version of windows 10, do I have to burn a new DVD, assuming all the drivers etc have remained the same?

parsonm said:

Thanks Bree for responding and the information and links. I will read through the data. One question I have on the backup disk do I configure just one partition or would it be be best to have one for the backup image and another for the backup of the user data on a regular basis?

Not sure I'm following the question.

You say "the backup disk".

Are you referring to the location on which you save the Macrium mrimg image file....the destination disk?

Or are you referring to the source disk....the disk containing the partitions represented by the image file?

The destination disk does not need any special partitioning or folders. The mrimg image file can be saved anywhere it will fit, other than on one of the partitions contained in the image file. The destination might be E:\, D:\images, F:\Macrium images, G:\ or whatever. You choose.

The mrimg file can contain whatever partitions you specifically choose, typically more than just C. Typically those required to restore Windows. Quite possibly ALL partitions on whatever drive has the C partition. It can even contain partitions from different hard drives. You choose. If your personal data is NOT on the C partition, you might not include the data partition in the image and instead back it up through some non-imaging means.

During the restoration process, you can choose WHICH partitions to restore.....all or just some. You don't have to restore ALL of the partitions in the image.

parsonm said:

Bree,...The question I have here is this Rescue Media dependant on the version of Windows 10? In other words every time Microsoft updates the version of windows 10, do I have to burn a new DVD, assuming all the drivers etc have remained the same?

It would be good practice to do so, but there is no real need to make new rescue media if it is just the version of Windows that has changed. The WinRE recovery environment that's copied by Macrium as a part of the rescue media is just there to provide a bootable OS for Macrium to run in.

There is more of a case for updating the rescue media whenever the version of Macrium is updated, but even there it's only essential if a bug fix is directly related to the restore functions of Macrium (if so, the release notes will tell you that you must update your rescue media). I've never found any problems when using older Macrium media to perform a restore, despite trying my best to trip it up....

Bree said:

Actually, just to see if it was possible (or would brick the PC) I made an image with 64-bit UEFI Macrium 7.2 then restored it by booting from a legacy 32-bit Macrium 7.1 usb.
Disappointingly, it worked perfectly

New Macrium Reflect Updates - post #1786

Just to update everyone and thank you for your responses.
I noted that the free version of Macrium didn't have file backup included, so that started me looking for alternatives. To cut a very long story short, I found that Western Digital supplied a free full version of the Acronis True Image. All you had to have was a WD drive for it to work. As this was a the top of my list for paid for versions, I have given it a try and so far it appears to be doing all I want and appears to be flexible with configurations. The pdf help file included is very detailed and easy to read.
As a note, the Windows File History software carried out the initial backup OK but come what may I couldn't get it to carry out incremental backups on a daily basis. The changes were just not being recorded. I then looked at Backup and Restore (Windows 7) which appeared to work well - it just compressed everything which made it a pain to check what it had done. Acronis saves files normally and the folder names for the backups included the date and whether it was a full or incremental etc. Much easier to check.
Thanks again everyone for your help and support.