Windows 10: Simple Back Up

I have a single 1tb external hard drive and two Win 10 laptops - both 64bit - one is win 10 Home the other is Win 10 pro. Both have a 500gb hdd.

Is it possible (and easy) to back up both laptops to the one hard drive?

I need a full back up of Windows, settings, programs, data files, in fact EVERYTHING I had before a total disaster happens.

Can I do this within Windows or else can someone recommend a proprietary, hopefully free alternative software?

On a second, but related issue. Can I get away with a recovery drive USB for the system, and then just copy my data files to the external hard drive, with drag and drop?

:)

 

Anna features lost with Symbian Belle upgrade N8

Then you should have backed it up!!!!! Nokia makes this very simple.

 

Nokia C3 - Problem connecting to usb mass storage

hey dudue i got same problem with,,

the solution is quite simple,

you just go to synch and back up then go to back up.. select back up..

wait a few seconds untill its done ant attach it again into your pc..

it will workk.

thanx

 

Yes, you can back both up on that drive. Just point the software to back it up there. May as well get used to a 3rd party backup, for MS is deprecating the Windows 7 backup in 10 with the next update. A lot of members here use this:

Macrium Software | Your Image is Everything

Of course there is other backup software out there.

 

@carrotmuseum

Addressing this part....

Yes, you could, but the mentioned Macrium Backup software gives you the best protection. And you can keep multiple historical copies of your system backup, which would include all your data files. It is easy to use an image backup to retrieve individual files, should that be necessary. There are lots of other file-only backup options available. Drag and drop (Explorer copy) would work, but would be tedious and error prone. I'd stick with the full image via Macrium or another available option.

 

Ok thanks, is Macrium easy to understand/use. Is there a simple instruction list available somewhere?

 

It states on the download page:

Macrium Reflect KnowledgeBase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase - KnowledgeBase v7 - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

 

Online user guide is here. And you can download the entire thing as a PDF (374 pages).

Macrium Reflect v6 User Guide - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

 

See this excellent tutorial in the most excellent tutorial section

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Windows 10 Backup Restore Tutorials

You will see several Macrium related tutorials - it is the firm favourite of members here by a long way. A poll some months back indicated over 65% of members here use it.

 

Thanks for that, cereberus. I'm going to have to learn it. That makes it a lot easier.

 

According to the features table in that tutorial the free version does not back up files and folders!

 

Correct. This would be a complete system backup via mirroring. If you want just files and folders backup:

Open Settings app (Hold Windows key + I) > Choose Update & security > Choose backup > Use File History by adding a drive.

 

Not as a separate feature, no. But all your files and folders are backed up in the image, and as I posted earlier, can be easily accessed. The File History option posted is going to change also.

Two articles concerning it's future. It appears to be going away in the Fall Update (Oct 17th). You may want to consider other options instead of soon to be dead option.

Microsoft may be killing File History with the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update | Windows Central

Thinking About Windows 10 File History - Thurrott.com

 

There may be a stay of execution though. The Timeline feature that some think was intended to replace it has been dropped from the Fall Creators Update.

Microsoft won't deliver Timeline as part of Windows 10 Fall Creators Update | ZDNet

Personally, while I have File History turned on I've never had cause to use it to restore anything. It's very much my third line of defence. My second line of defence is regular system images and, as has been pointed out, it's possible to retrieve individual files from an image.

My main backup is simply to copy everything (files and folder structure) from my User folder to a backup folder on an external (or network) drive. Each time I back up it's to a new sub-folder with the current date as it's name (eg: H:\Backups\2017-09-06\). This is something I've been doing since my Windows 7 days.

The simplest way to do this is to open a command prompt in the folder you wish to back up and type:
XCOPY *.* H:\Backups\2017-09-06\ /S /E

You could write that into a .bat file as I have done to make it easier to use. Actually, you could make it far more sophisticated if you want (and I did). Full and Incremental backups are possible using the /M option. This copies only files with the Archive attribute set (and clears the Archive attribute), so the command...
XCOPY *.* H:\Backups\2017-09-06\ /S /E /M

...will only copy those files that have changed since the last backup. For a Full backup just use this command first:
ATTRIB *.* +A /S

This is a very simplistic description of my backup .bat file, but it demonstrates the principles. The current incarnation runs to some 160 lines of code, has replaced XCOPY with RoboCopy and accepts a whole string of command line parameters (with parsing to check they make sense) that specify Full or Incremental, the destination (network or local) and the backup's name (to which it appends "_Full" or "_Incremental" as appropriate).

I run a weekly Incremental and a monthly Full backup. I suppose I could get Task Scheduler to run it for me, but it only takes a few second to type the command - and I do like to watch to make sure it has worked. *Smile

 

That sounds like just what I want - similar to what I do, only manually. How would I back just the Win 10 files and program settings?