Windows 10: Macrium Free - absolutely no reason to avoid taking backups 4 Mins !

Hi there
With speed of modern computers and I/O devices there's really no reason to avoid taking backups -- so many problems could be avoided if people imaged their systems regularly.

Here's a reasonable backup - base W10 system with Office 2016 installed and a few small programs -- backed up to an external SSD attached to a USB3 port via USB3-->SATA adapter.

Ran for just under 4 mins --hardly a bothersome period.





Even with slower devices the latest version of Macrium (FREE) should backup your system just fine -- those who have windows on large HDD's - keep Windows OS partition separate from data then restores etc means you don't have to recover your data. This has been said many times but there's always new users to Windows who might not have this experience / knowledge.

:)

 

Total Back-up

The type of backup you are talking about is generally known as an 'Image copy" backup. The idea is you take a "snapshot", or image, of your current computer setup. That way, if there is a problem you can use the backup program to restore your computer
from this backup to a "known good point". You save this backup to an external drive, is USB drive or (in the past, no so much anymore) burn it to DVD-R disks.

There are a number of paid and free backup tools. Macrium is one of the free one (I have used it in the past).

MACRIUM REFLECT BACKUP

2017 09 05
https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/7363/macrium-re...

https://reflect.macrium.com/webtutorial/How_to_...

http://reflect.macrium.com/help/v5/how_to/rescu... - Create Rescue disk

 

Disk Imaging

Hi, this is Rob again.

Try Macrium Reflect - Free for home use.

How to Create a Full-Disk Backup of Your PC with Macrium Reflect

https://www.howtogeek.com/howto/7363/macrium-re...

Macrium Reflect - Free

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

Hope that helps and feel free to choose a rating and have a great day!

 

No disrespect but this is rather faster than the average users experience, and depends how much is on cd drive, apps installed, if an hdd or ssd etc.

 

Sure there is a reason not to do this. It is pointless. You can indeed make a backup of your 20GB Windows partition every day at 3 minutes a go. After a year you have 7TB of backups of your Windows partition. What use is that?

It is trivial to reinstall Windows and Office - it takes 10 minutes to download the latest version. If you didn't bother backing up your OS *ever* you would be fine - after half an hour you would be up and running on latest version. Personally I make one backup after install and never do it again (or look at it actually). I honestly can't see the point in repeatedly doing so as it will be out of date in 6 months anyway.

Most importantly you don't include the time to back up your data. That doesn't take 3 minutes and that is what is important.

 

That is really fast. Having the backup drive being SATA III is why. My SSD backs up 3x a week to my internal SATA III at nearly the same speed. I saw in Windows 10 notifications this morning it started at 5:00 and ended at 5:03. I have everything I use installed already. I have it delete the old one after making a new one. I only keep the clean install with all apps in another folder. This backup is in case anything fubars my system. I only lose a day or so at max.

Others may not get or see that speed on backups due to system speeds, disk speeds or other issues. It is nice to have that speed if you can get it.

 

Hi there.

You obviously haven't understood the post.

1) Nobody suggests keeping 7TB of backups -- you only need say up to the last 3.

2) It's far quicker to restore (3 - 5 mins) after say a computer virus / infection rather than spend hours on cleansing an infected machine which you can never guarantee will be 100% cleansed (it's like being asked to fly a known defective plane and fix it while in the air !!!

3) Re-installing software (apart from the Windows system) can be quite a job - especially if you have to hunt down serial numbers, old drivers etc. Some software can take a long time to install --for example SAP HANA trial stuff with SAP GUI etc.

4) much easier to restore system when an installed program doesn't work or doesn't uninstall properly -- I don't like messing around with 3rd party uninstallers - especially with the rapidity / frequency of windows updates these days -- there's no guarantee after a windows update that te 3rd party stuff will continue working.

5) Data isn't much good if you don't have a runnable version of an OS to access it with. I use RSYNC / GRSYNC to backup data to NAS but other people use cloud / google drive or whatever. Data also doesn't change hugely for things like multi-media files etc so you only need a complete data backup rarely and then just backup the changes.

The whole point of the post was to get people to backup their systems as a huge amount of problems seen on these forums could be avoided if people performed regular backups.


Cheers
jimbo

 

I create custom Windows images for this purpose. I don't backup my system drive ever, not even my user profile, because it is on a separate drive, which I take backups from only for changed content.

If my computer ever fails I re-deploy my custom system image, that includes all my apps and tools.

A second option is to make a clean install, setup all apps needed and finally make a full system backup after verifying all works as expected. If there ever comes a new cumulative update then, after it has been installed and verified to work, one can make a new image backup.

Taking full system drive backups multiple times per day is completely pointless. Taking incremental backups of user files, several times a day is however crucial if your data is important to you.

 

There are situations where taking a full system drive backup is very useful. It takes me about 5-7 days (working 10-16h per day) to setup everything on my computer, the way I want it. Total space used is around 150-250GB. Restoring a system image takes me about...well it does not even matter how long it takes...I know it will be restored without intervention and within hours. And the best part, all settings are exactly as I have originally configured them.

 

Hmmm. If this latest insider build is the baseline I'll clean install it. It will take me probably a day to get it how I like (not working on it full time of course). Then I'll put it on my PCs.

My point was it takes more than the 4 minutes backup of last years OS. That is useless as it keeps changing. Each 6 months I have to fiddle with my post install script.

Some people will probably start going on about how Linux is better and more secure than Windows (and the networking works of course - their normal bug-bear) and then I'll give up anyway.

I use both Linux and Windows but this is a Windows forum and I would rather stick to Windows stuff here.

You would have to have very few saved photos if you think you can back everything up in 4 minutes and saying backing up your data without an OS to read it is (putting it mildy) silly.

 

What do you mean; "Most importantly you don't include the time to back up your data." If you do a complete backup of your C-drive and store all your data files there, of course it will be saved with Macrium!

My C-drive has about 32 GB of files which has taken me month to create and maintain. Why on earth should I then do a clean install every now and then. On my laptop it takes 3 minutes to do a full backup with Macrium Reflect. I save about three copies on different portable SSD drives to be shure. Macrium does compress the backup on the fly resulting in a file size of about 19 GB (from the original 32 GB).

If you don't have useful data in your system then of course you can skip doing backups on a regular basis. I personally wouldn't dream of NOT doing backups. They have saved me and friends from disaster when the data drive stopped working and had to be replaced. Just do a restore, which took a bit longer, about 10 minutes. So grab a coffe and your system is up and running without doing reinstall of hundreds of programs and special settings.

So, in my case; backup and restore, about 13 minutes. Doing it all from the beginning; month! Not mentioning all lost data files.

 

I'm sure you'll be OK.

Windows 10 Pro x64 is between 6-11GB depending if you compress it. You can either store your data on the same partition or not - it is up to you.

The most important is to backup your data. You save it. You can download Windows again - you can't download your data again.

Disk is cheap - it doesn't matter either way. I'm just saying you can't backup 3TB of your home movies or pictures in 3 minutes that is all.

 

@jimbo45

You are correct! There is absolutely no excuse today to not keep a backup of everything. The way the backups are taken does really not matter, not even the speed(within certain limits) as long as users has a way to restore the system easily into it's original(latest) state after a hardware or software disaster.

 

I also agree; my point was perhaps making OS and data backups should be considered separately.

 

For the average user, probably 90%+ out there, they just want an "app" (easier to speak in SmartPhone-Ese), to save their "stuff". They usually don't know or care about OS's and data partitions and custom images and all that. They just want it to work. Weekly full backups (software of your choice, as long as it's Macrium *Wink). Even with the slowest machine and the slowest Sata and a spinner, there's not anyone out there who doesn't have a half-hour, 45 minutes, on some day of the week to let it cook while they are doing something else.

Average Joe, keep it simple, show them how to schedule, what to do, "make" them test it .......

There are 0 reasons for not doing a backup on some regular basis.