Windows 10: Windows backup best practice: system image vs. personal documents

Hello,

I would like to make full system images to recover from a dead hard drive, and frequent incremental backups of my documents to recover from accidents/malware etc.

My documents are large (over 500GB). If I kept them in C: then system images would be huge slow and take a lot of storage. So I keep them on a network D: drive and keep everything there. But plenty of apps throw stuff in /AppData/, settings in the registry, and random folders like /Music /Videos /Pictures etc; iTunes puts huge iPhone backups in /AppData, Dropbox and Resilien don't work on network drives (I know you can trick them with links, but they won't get notified of file changes). Worst of all WSL keeps an entire filesystem and all my documents somewhere deep in /AppData.

I don't even know how to backup applications and settings. If I have to reinstall an OS I don't think I could restore applications and registry settings without reinstall every application from scratch.

So what's the best practice for backing up a lean system image and all personal documents and settings?

submitted by /u/sudomatrix
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:)

 

BEST PRACTICES - BACKUPS

BE_H:

I have been thinking about what I should do along these lines.

Can you tell me exactly(step-by-step) how I would go about setting up each of the four items in your list on my computer?

(I just started using Win 10 so, I am not very knowledgeable in its use.)

Thank you very much.

 

BEST PRACTICES - BACKUPS

Currently I am creating / taking the following backups on a scheduled basis.

1 - system repair disc - because I don't know if any tools used when booting from the disc may change when Windows applies updates

2 - Windows Image

3 - Windows backup

4 - file history - only my personal files

I'd like to know if what I'm doing is excessive especially when discussing the first 3 in the above list.

thanks

 

BEST PRACTICES - BACKUPS

I don't know what a "Win backup" is. Windows 10 includes a version of the Windows 7 backup utility, but it's not for making backups. It's for restoring Windows 7 backups to Windows 10. Some people insist on making backups with it, but they eventually run
into trouble.

As I mentioned, I don't use Windows' own utilities. I have Windows and all my installed software on the C drive, aka the system drive. I have all my data on a separate drive. I image the system drive and use backup software on the data drive, and I do this
daily. There's nothing else to backup. I'm done.

Also, about the system repair disc, how often should I make one?

Can't help you there because, like I said, I don't make a system repair disk. My thought is: Why repair (and risk the chance of making things worse) when I can replace?

If you want to know why I use backup software for my data drive when I could just as easily image the data drive, that's my personal idiosyncrasy. The backup software stores my data in .zip format, which any computer can read. So in the event my computer
melts down and I need to recover a file quickly, I can open it on any computer.

(And for any advanced readers out there, yes I'm aware of the benefits of proprietary formats for folder and file backups, like Macrium Reflect's format, and I do make those kind of backups also.)