Lost in Backing=up Hard Grit

mikeincousa · 24 Jan 2017

I am lost in all the details for fully backing a Windows 10 system.

If I understand correctly that fully backing-up a Windows 10 system requires three separate tracks

Create a system repair disk.
This is done in Windows. Simple enough. Did it.

Creating a system image, which will requires NTFS external storage.
So how do I estimate the size that system image?
With Windows 10 apps?
With Macrium Reflect Free?
Should I look at other apps with higher reliability than that provided by Microsoft?

Setting up a backup, on NTFS media.
Does Macrium Reflect Free take care of this too?
Also how do I estimate the needed external media size for this?

I there anything else I should do? Need to know?

Thanks

Bree · 24 Jan 2017

mikeincousa said:

Create a system repair disk.
This is done in Windows. Simple enough. Did it.

A plain-vanilla Windows 10 repair disk won't include the Macrium tools - you'll need to create another one for that.

So how do I estimate the size that system image?
With Windows 10 apps?

The system image created by Windows 10's Backup & Restore will be approximately the same size as the used space reported by File Explorer in 'My PC' for the drive you are imaging. It doesn't use any compression (except when backing up to DVDs).

Should I look at other apps with higher reliability than that provided by Microsoft?

You already are - Macrium Reflect is a 3rd-party app, one that's well respected on these boards.

mikeincousa · 25 Jan 2017

I have downloaded and installed Macrium Reflect.

It immediately asked me make a rescue disk. I made one.

Last night I made a repair disk from W10.

How do the two differ?

Do I need both?

EdTittel · 26 Jan 2017

You may not need both, but both are helpful. The Macrium recovery image does one thing very well: it lets you boot, then restore a backup of your choosing to the PC on which it's running. The Windows recovery disk does all kinds of things, including startup repair, revert to a restore point, revert to a (Windows) image backup, get to the command line and operate on the disk, and more. I always keep both around because they let me do (and repair) different kinds of things.
HTH,
--Ed--

mikeincousa · 26 Jan 2017

I started to make a backup, but stalled at the opening window.
What is the difference between a clone and an image?

EdTittel · 27 Jan 2017

A clone generally means a copy of the contents from one drive to another (so when you are done you have two identical copies). An image is a copy of the contents of a drive, a kind of snapshot, if you will. You could conceivably (though not intelligently) store the image on the same drive as the original, so there's no requirement to have two drives for this process.
HTH,
--Ed--

mikeincousa · 27 Jan 2017

I think I have successfully imaged my main and file drives.
I just tired to make a clone of the file drive with the same destination drive as the image copy.

A dire warning appeared that the destination would be overwritten.

So drawing from hard learn past experiences I aborted.

You mentioned that is possible to store images and clones on the same drive?

What do I need to do that. I should have enough room for at least the files drive, but I would have to check that.

Also. In Linux moving a full disk image to another machine is a BIG deal. Mostly dealing with the change in UUID's. How does this work in Windows, and using this software.

My worst backup fear is having a spiffy file that will not restore to another machine.

Oh. Thanks for your cogent comments Ed. They are very much appreciated here (the high south-central Colorado mountains.)

EdTittel · 28 Jan 2017

No, I didn't mean to suggest you could clone a drive onto the same drive where images are already stored. You could, however clone a drive and then use the resulting cloned drive to also store images of the original drive. Sorry if my earlier post suggested otherwise: I certainly didn't mean it to. Cloning is something you do once, usually when you want to abandon an older, slower drive which you'll replace with a faster, newer one. Thus you would clone from old&slow to fast&new. This makes it unlikely you'd keep running the old&slow drive anyway. But indeed you can do what I said earlier here. So that's why I'll quote an old saying, which is particularly apt in this situation: "Just because you CAN do something, doesn't mean you SHOULD do it" (emphasis mine).
HTH,
--Ed--