Good method to back up Win 10 system?

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  1. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #41

    Bazz said:
    There is nothing wrong with the Windows back up image it does what it says on the tin and I've tried it and my image restored as expected, however it comes up as a windows 7 image from a windows 10 CD rescue disk.
    Regards
    An advantage to Macrium Reflect over the Windows built-in image is that you can mount the Macrium Reflect image and retrieve individual files from it. Can you do that with the image that WIndows makes? (I don't know, have never tried it.)
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  2. Posts : 46
    64-bit 10240 10 Pro
       #42

    MR is the best of it's kind , IMHO.
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  3. Posts : 191
    Windows 10 Home 64 bit
       #43

    Hydranix said:
    If you want a totally flawless backup, you could use my method.

    Advantages:
    -Absolute perfect byte-for-byte backup.
    -Can be restored to an exact point
    (for example if you backed up, upgraded operating system and found it did not work, you can go back to the exact point you were at when you backed up)
    -Compressed with very fast decompression or very good compression ratio
    -Completely free

    Disadvantages:
    -Cannot be backup up while using Windows
    -Is not a differencing backup
    -Generally must have an equal or larger sized storage disk to contain the backup
    -You must be more technically literate, as there is no GUI. (though you can use one if you want)


    This works particularly well if Windows is installed on an SSD, and you have a large HDD for data.

    Download a Linux distribution. I use ArchLinux.

    Boot the operating system in Live mode.

    Locate your system partition with
    Code:
    fdisk -l
    or
    Code:
    blkid
    Mount the location where you wanna save the backup.
    Code:
    mount /dev/sdXn /mnt

    Then using the Unix command
    Code:
    dd if=/dev/sdXn bs=10M | lz4 -v > /mnt/path/to/backup.img.lz4
    The backup begins, and will be a perfect image compressed with a fast modern compression algorithm.


    To restore the image you use
    Code:
    lz4 -d /mnt/path/to/backup.img.lz4 | dd of=/dev/sdXn bs=10M
    When finished, unmounts your backup store location, and/or simply reboot.




    Online backups (online meaning when using the operating system to be backed up, not meaning the internet) are great and all but all of the Windows tools I've seen are limited in that they don't back up 100% of everything, and cannot help you much when your filesystem gets corrupted. You still gotta reinstall and set everything back up.

    Other software that makes full image backups always seems to have some lame catch (proprietary image format, must buy pro version to restore more than 10GB, cannot backup X because of Y limitation). Perfect image backup with 'dd' is the most thorough backup you can get. And you can even mount the backed up image from within windows using ImDisk.

    With ImDisk you can actually get a lot of the same results, but that's out of the scope of this post.
    That's way too complicated. AOMEI Backupper does a great job and has options for how much you want to compress the data. You can even choose no compression but the default option seems to be the best. It also has boot disk creation. Either in a Linux format or WinPE. Restoring using the boot disk works flawlessly but you can also restore from within Windows. If the backup to be restored is of the drive currently in use, the program loads the backupper into memory and then restores the image on to the current drive. It's a great, and free, program.

    I do my images on to a second HDD installed in the machine. That works faster than using a USB external drive.
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  4. Posts : 88
    Win 10
       #44

    NavyLCDR said:
    An advantage to Macrium Reflect over the Windows built-in image is that you can mount the Macrium Reflect image and retrieve individual files from it. Can you do that with the image that WIndows makes? (I don't know, have never tried it.)
    Many years ago, I used Acronis TI; however, they came out with a couple of versions (5 plus years ago) that got a lot of criticism. Since that time, I have stuck with the Win7 built in features for backups and system images. I have not encountered any problems doing that, although now that I am using Win10, I have no idea how dependable the built in system images and backups are. I assume they are okay, although rather basic like WIn7.

    But reading this thread, I am impressed with the number of people who have given high marks to Macrium Reflect. So much so that I decided to install the free version this evening. And I think I can have more confidence in an outside company that has dedicated itself to backup services (unlike Microsoft).

    Having said all that, I do have one (stupid) question. After installing Macrium Reflect, I was prompted to create bootable media. So I inserted a blank CD. But then I got prompted to do it a second time. Once again, I inserted a blank CD. Now I've got two CDs, one CD in which it appears Macrium was referring to as Rescue Media (which will not boot during my quick test). Then I've got a second CD called Start-Up Media that 'does' boot during my test.

    Anyone have an idea why the Macrium software prompted me to insert a CD twice and why this scenario occurred that I have described? I guess it doesn't really matter since I've established one of them does work. But I was curious about this and whether or not I am/was missing something? Thanks.

    BTW-looking at the Start-up media on my CD, it does appear very intuitive/easy to use. Tomorrow night I am going to create a new system image of my WIn10 configuration.
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  5. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #45

    Don't know about it asking for 2 CDs. I've done a DVD and it only asks for 1 DVD once.
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  6. Posts : 2,799
    Linux Mint 20.1 Win10Prox64
       #46

    An advantage to Macrium Reflect over the Windows built-in image is that you can mount the Macrium Reflect image and retrieve individual files from it. Can you do that with the image that WIndows makes? (I don't know, have never tried it.)
    Yes, you can. Using backup from Windows built in, you just search for .vhdx file in the backup folder, open disk management and mount it then you can selectively restore file(s). However, I would strongly recommend to use either Macrium Reflect Free or AOMEI Backupper
    Last edited by topgundcp; 10 Aug 2015 at 19:35. Reason: Correction of file type:VHDX
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  7. Posts : 88
    Win 10
       #47

    topgundcp said:
    Yes, you can. Using backup from Windows built in, you just search for .vhd file in the backup folder, open disk management and mount it then you can selectively restore file(s). However, I would strongly recommend to use either Macrium Reflect Free or AOMEI Backupper
    I am just curious, does anyone know how the backup works in Win10? In other words, does it default to a differential backup of the system image....or a differential backup of the files/folders? I am a bit confused on this issue. I understand the free version of Macrium Reflect only makes system images and differentials of those system images (no backups of files/folders nor differentials of those files/folders). Am I correct on this? I am just trying to get an understanding of how Macrium Free differs from the built in version inside Win10. No doubt, the paid version of Macrium Reflect is best, but I want to experiment with the free options first.

    I did run into a problem today. My Western Digital My Book Essential external hard drive (1TB) is not being recognized in Windows 10. And when I called WD about it today, the person I spoke to didn't have any answers about when/if it will be supported. So I had to resort to using a smaller Seagate 500GB SSD. Now, this drive is nicer because it's SSD. However, it's also only half the size as my WD. So this brings up a second question. Does anyone know if older versions of WD external drives (like mine) will be supported anytime soon in Win10?
    Last edited by scott784; 10 Aug 2015 at 17:40.
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  8. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #48

    topgundcp said:
    Yes, you can. Using backup from Windows built in, you just search for .vhd file in the backup folder, open disk management and mount it then you can selectively restore file(s). However, I would strongly recommend to use either Macrium Reflect Free or AOMEI Backupper
    Thank you! Didn't know what kind of image file Windows backup created 'cause I never used it Macrium Reflect also has an option to convert it's image files to VHD.
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  9. Posts : 11
    Windows 10 Enterprise x64
       #49

    rive0108 said:
    I use windows to backup image

    Attachment 28659
    Same here.
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  10. Posts : 2,799
    Linux Mint 20.1 Win10Prox64
       #50

    Thank you! Didn't know what kind of image file Windows backup created 'cause I never used it Macrium Reflect also has an option to convert it's image files to VHD
    @NavyLCDR
    I made a mistake, actually the file extension is .VHDX not .VHD.
    Here's the screen shot of what Windows Built in backup containing multiple files which is bad. If any of these files are corrupted/missing then it will fail to restore while Macrium Reflect Free or AOMEI Backupper produces only a single file which you can just double click and mount. With Windows built in, you have to open Disk management->Attach the .vhdx, assign a letter then you can explore it. In addition, there's no way to verify whether the backup is any good.
    NOTE: The 3 .VHDX files are: Recovery, EFI System and C Drive.
    Good method to back up Win 10 system?-.jpg

    As mentioned above, Macrium also has an option to convert its .mrimg file into a VHD file. Which you can use to create a virtual machine using VmPlayer.

    Macrium also can be used as a mini partition manager using drag and drop.
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