I have a 700 GB laptop that has 120 GB of hard drive space used. I also have a 2 TB external drive that I would like to dedicate to performing monthly backups of the laptop.
I want a method that is easy, reliable, and thorough. Something that will back up everything (clone?) and, just as importantly, in the event of a total failure, restore everything back to exactly as it was.
I guess I’m looking for software. It doesn’t have to be free, but should be reasonably priced. Ease of use/convenience is paramount. Ease of restoration equally important.
I know I could back up to the cloud, and I may consider that, but I have an unused external drive that I would like to use for this.
I use Macrium Reflect.
I do a disk image. That way, I can keep several backups at once. If you clone the disk, you can only have one copy one the drive.
There is no reason to limit backups to monthly. You can set this software to backup whenever you like (for example overnight). You can set it to do incremental backups and delete older backups so you don’t run out of your 2TB space.
I use Acronis True Image, backing up to multiple external drives (one of which I keep away from home) and I also use BackBlaze to back up to the cloud.
Will all these software solutions backup a computer so thoroughly that if the originating hard drive was destroyed and a new hard drive were installed, the computer would work as before?
All system files, registry, drivers, installed programs, etc. will work identically to the original hard drive?
The OP didn’t specify what OS they’re using, but assuming it is Windows, I, too, have had good results with Macrium Reflect. I backed up my girlfriend’s PC and restored it to a disk image so she could keep using the environment she’s accustomed to within a Parallels virtual environment.
If anyone reading this is on a Mac, take a look at Carbon Copy Cloner. Excellent bootable backups of your disk with incremental backups at scheduled intervals, etc.
Windows won’t boot propertly from a backup to an external so you have to move the backup HD into the internal drive compartment, if I recall correctly, but I’ve done this and booted the new system.
Having two physically identical computers is useful too, in case what blows up is hardware. Then you toss the hard drive into the clone, boot, and continue as if nothing had happened.
I’ve used all the programs mentioned here at various times, but I’ll add a couple thoughts about feature sets you want to consider.
Incremental backups. You definitely want to use incremental to keep the backup up-to-date. If you don’t care, that’s fine. Never mind.
You want a program that will allow you to make a boot USB or CD easily so you can run your backups and restorals from external media. Makes everything much milder.
Many programs allow you to open the backup in an Explorer-type window. This is more helpful than one might think. If I damage some sectors or overwrite a critical file, it’s wonderful to be able to restore just that single file or folder.
Again, these features are pretty common (Acronis and EaseUS has them) and I personally wouldn’t consider a solution that doesn’t.
So, a clone copies everything, but occupies the entire hard drive (the one being used to back up to, the portable drive)?
Well, I wouldn’t keep the external drive connected to the laptop at all times. I’d pull it out and connect whenever I felt the time was right to back up.
This is where I get lost.
Scenario:
I have been faithfully backing up my entire laptop to an external drive. Laptop goes ka-blooey. I rest easy, because I know everything is on the external.
OK, suppose the internal drive is fried. I buy a new one, install it, hook up my external drive via USB, and then…?
I am hoping there is software that, at this point, pops open a window and says, “Hey, it looks like you have a brand new drive! Would you like to restore it as it was from your backup?”
mmm
First, one backup isn’t enough. Create a least one other backup to another drive, just in case the main backup drive fails.
+1 to Windows backup for ease of use. It will prompt you to create a bootable disc or flash drive. I’ve used other backup programs including Reflect and ToDo, but find Windows backup the easiest to setup and use. I backup to a second internal drive on my desktop PCs and copy the backups to another external drive.
For my desktop PCs, I clone the drive to another dedicated SSD and swap out the drive rather than doing a restore (this in addition to using Windows backup for .
Also, in addition backing up the entire drive, backup all your other data to at least two other hard drives/optical discs. Don’t use flash drives for backup because when they fail, they usually fail completely.
While you could restore a backup to another computer, unless it’s exactly the same as the failed PC, it will require different drivers and some of the programs may require reinstallation. Best to always start from fresh with a new PC.
I personally use Acronis True Image, and with that, the situation in that case is:
Boot from the CD drive or USB key using a “Rescue CD” that you burned before your computer went down, or failing that, that you burned or created from another working computer (at work or whatever).
While booted from the Rescue CD you find the backup on the external drive and restore to the internal drive.
Once restore is complete, you reboot the system with the Rescue CD removed and your system restarts normally with all your data that was on the backup there.
Two keys with backups are recency, and rotation. Recency because you only get back up to what you last backed up. Having a 12 hour old backup is far easier to deal with than a 30 day old one.
Rotation is because one of the biggest threats outside of hardware failure is ransomware, and that will happily encrypt your external drive full of backups along with your main drive. But if you have two drives and swap them every few weeks, you have a backup that was not encrypted by the ransomware to restore from.
I also endorse the Macrium Reflect solution. The most basic paid version adds incremental backup capability and some other things to the free version, including more flexible extraction of individual files from a backup image, but the free version is excellent and highly capable software.
You want to do a disk image backup, not a clone. A clone is a block-for-block exact copy of the disk, while an image is a compressed backup file from which the original disk can be restored. Cloning is usually appropriate only if you’re preparing a new disk to be substituted for the old one, not typically as a way to do a backup.
The solution to doing a restore if the laptop’s disk blows up is the rescue CD that Macrium Reflect can burn for you. If the laptop has no CD/DVD drive, Macrium can also create a bootable rescue image on a USB flash drive.
I recently used the free version of Macrium when I replaced my new computer’s system disk with an SSD. I just backed up (imaged) the system drive to an external, installed the SSD, and restored it from the backup. It worked flawlessly. Previous backup software I’ve used in this manner more or less worked, but Windows had some initial hiccups, and one of those (older) programs didn’t properly do the necessary AF sector alignment. Also, I really, really dislike Windows Backup, at least as implemented in Windows 7 Professional.
On the Mac, I use the built-in incremental backup function, Time Machine. I also image the hard drive before major updates using SuperDuper! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the name). Such images can be mounted as external disks, and can be updated.
Time Machine can restore a specific system with user data to a reformatted hard drive with a generic OS install. You can also plug in an external drive and boot from that. It’s been a while since I seriously monkeyed around with this, but I seem to recall that a Mac can also boot from another drive across the network, even to do an OS restore from Apple.
Right now I am dealing with a damaged external drive… the one containing my Time Machine backup files. These apparently use the Mac file system in interesting ways, maintaining multiple links in different backup dates to only one copy of each actual file, so they cannot be stored on a disk of any other format, even if the Mac can write to it.
So I had to format a new external drive to the Mac file format, and I am now copying the backup files, over a terabyte, from the damaged drive. This may take days. Then I can reformat the external drive and see whether it is still good. If not, I will discard the damaged drive and give the new drive its name, and hopefully Time Machine will be able to pick things up and keep going.
All this so I can back up my computer before taking it in for unrelated repairs …
This one point is absolutely crucial for me. I sometimes need to get my hands on an older version of a file right now without going thru a lot of hooey.