Backup/restore/external drive advice please

[#1]

Good idea, however I will need to obtain another hard drive.

[#2]

I have separate system and data disks, the system disk being an SSD. I back up both using Acronis True Image. Whilst I have never had a system disk failure, I have upgraded this several times over the years. Every time I have done this I have not bothered with restoring from my back up. Rather I have bitten the bullet and done a clean system re-install. This has cleared out all the programs that I no longer use and the dross left behind from updates to stuff I do use due to a fresh install of the latest versions. This results in improved performance all round, be it a pain to do.

To my mind it is the integrity of the data disk that is key to preserving data, hence the advantage of keeping it isolated. If my system disk gets screwed up there's no risk to my data.

[#3]

One option is to just backup your most valuable data, frequently & on multiple devices. You can always replace the OS, if it should be necessary.

[#4]

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@RobPN wrote:

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One option would be to remove/disconnect the original system drive and replace/connect another in its place, then try and restore to the replacement.  That way, if it doesn't work you simply reconnect the original drive.

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It certainly does that. I don't know if this a motherboard or windows thing, never got around to finding out. Last year I transferred everything on the 'C' drive over to another disk. Moved what was the original 'C' drive (think it became an 'F' drive) and inserted the newly backed up drive in place of the original 'C' drive. On start up, I was quite surprised to find Windows (8.1), without any hiccup or whatever, calmly booting from the original 'C' drive. I disconnected the drive and the computer then decided that the new 'C' drive was bootable. I reconnected the original 'C' and again, the computer decided that was the bootable drive again. I ended up going into the bios and forcing it to use the new larger 'C' drive. All I used for the backup was the software that came with the new drive. Piece of cake really.

[#5]

Almost certainly you connected the new drive to a different SATA port.

There are ways round this problem, but I don't know if Windows provides the necessary support.

[#6]

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@idonno wrote:
It certainly does that. I don't know if this a motherboard or windows thing, never got around to finding out. Last year I transferred everything on the 'C' drive over to another disk. Moved what was the original 'C' drive (think it became an 'F' drive) and inserted the newly backed up drive in place of the original 'C' drive. On start up, I was quite surprised to find Windows (8.1), without any hiccup or whatever, calmly booting from the original 'C' drive....

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Quite simple really, the software made an exact copy of the partition, including the Universally Unique IDentifier (UUID) which windows uses during the boot sequence. This means that, when booting, MS Windows will use the first partition it finds with the UUID of the partition into which MS Windows was first installed, which may not be the partition the boot module was loaded from. You can use an independent bootloader and MS Windows will still randomly select the partition. The only way to guarantee you boot from the correct partition is to change the UUID of the OLD partition - which means, for most people, that copy of MS Windows will not boot, even if it is the only disk, unless you change it back. It's part of Microsoft's "anti-piracy" scheme.

Phil

[#7]

Baldrick1's reply is a good one in seperating your system disc from your User data.  You can then choose the most appropriate back up plan for each of them.

For example, it is probably better to do a full archive of the system disc every month with incremental (diffrerences)  backups each week.

You can then do a 'File' backup of your User data depending upon its importance to you and your level of paranoia.

I use Acronis to do this, it costs about £30 and it does all this according to a preset schedule

As someone else has mentioned, its also better to store your backups on an external disc drive - USB3 external drives are pretty nifty.  I bought a caddy off Evil bay and slotted a SATA drive in and leave it continuously connected. It then just powers up when it is needed to do backups.

We also have a NAS on our home network with mirrored disc, but I am particularly paranoid 🙂

Hope this helps

Mike