backing up

I am looking at back up systems. I used to have a Clickfree which copied everything... you could then start clickfree choose to either start the backup or see your system that was copied already and if you wanted to put something back you could click on it.... Example... C:\Program Files\Black Circle...etc and transfer back what you wanted or the whole system.

Looking at backups from Seagate and Western Digital and emailing with them it seems like they only copy ,, pictures, documents, music....

I don't want to go to the cloud but would like a system like clickfree that copies everything and you can look at it and take what you want.

And for more than one computer.. Clickfree let you have more than one .
Clickfree went out of business (bummer) and i just found out it does not support windows 10.... anyone want a door stop
:-)

Any ideas?

What do you mean when you say Clickfree copied everything? Did it image your entire drive including the OS? Of did it just make copies of your files, pics, documents, music etc.? What did it do that is different? I guess I'm asking what "everything" means besides your files?

I use Carbonite.

There are quite a few backup programs available, some free and some not. Acronis gives you a lot of options as to whether to make images or just copy files. EaseUS Todo is another good one. I have an excellent article about backup software from a tech guy I subscribe to. I'll see if I can find it.

I just copy all the files I want to keep onto an external hard drive without using any backup program. So far I haven't lost any files, as I have multiple backups on several external hard drives. With a USB 3 connection it's pretty fast to transfer large amounts of data (such as photos and games).

It is not an image, but it did copy quite a bit... including my Program files... here's a link to the manual look at pg 10 and 21 page 21 shows the program files... also sending a bigger pic of that... that means everything in program files were backed up.. by game folder included....

manual

picture

I would suggest looking at EaseUS Todo, Macrium Reflect and Acronis. Haven't found that newsletter yet, but I do remember him recommending Macrium Reflect in addition to the other two.

Ok

Finally found it. It's from the Ask Leo newsletter.

What Backup Program Should I Use

And another one...

Can't I Just Copy Everything?

With your backup system are your programs saved.. ie your games

My eyes and head hurt.... but so far I am leaning towards Macrium Reflect

Yes. As are emails - I use the Outlook email client. I also have Gmail and Outlook.com email accounts which are of course, on line. But my main email uses Outlook which is resident on my computer.

Remember though, that if I start with a clean drive and a clean installation of Windows and want to use any programs, I have to install them first to create registry entries. So I would need to install any games from original media or a download. However, all my downloads are also saved, so I wouldn't have to download them again. Which as you know with a slow internet connection would be a real plus!

This would have worked the same with your old backup program. You can't just restore a program unless there are existing registry entries.

I'm thinking of using Macrium Reflect 7 Free Edition, which will create an image and allow me to Restore non-booting systems. Then just back up files that I want to keep up to date. They also have cloning. If a hard drive crashed would I need the clone or would an image work

From a search... "An image is a copy of all the information on a drive. Like a clone, an image copies all of the overhead and data stored on a drive. Unlike a clone, an image does not copy free space, and it makes no attempt to preserve the physical layout."

Personally, I would use an image. However, if you have the Windows operating system disk, you could also just do a clean installation of the OS and then restore all your files and data. Whenever I've moved to a new disk, that's what I did. An image or clone includes your OS plus everything else.

The advantage of restoring an image or clone is that all games and other programs will not need to be installed.

Just remember that an image is a "snapshot" of your disk at that moment in time. Any changes made since the image won't be there.

Yes, I understand that. Figure I can make an image perhaps once a month... just get an external hard drive.. maybe 5T and have 4 folders and keep 2 images per computer deleting the oldest after the 3rd has been downloaded.

No disc's 2 upgraded thru the online and 2 came installed with computers... 3 laptops and 1 desktop

I sure like You Tube.....

That's what lot of people do - just make a new image once a month. Depends on how much you use your computer.

I too LOVE You Tube! I've figured out a lot of things that way.

I set hubby up with it on the TV and he's learning everything there is to know about using wood routers and making things from a tree! Thank heavens for wireless headphones!

Hahaha, Thanks Drac, as usual you are very helpful.

I can’t sing the praises of backing up enough. It has saved my bacon tons of times. From the days of PC Tools and DOS 3.3 onto 1.44 Mb floppies, to Seagate Tr5 tape drives, to external hard drives. DO IT! These days I use Acronis True Image to external hard drives that are disconnected when not backing up. I haven’t shopped around lately, hey I already bought it, so there may be some other good stuff out there. But anything has got to be better than nothing. As long as you can make some sort of bootable media to restore your files if your hard drive crashes. ATI will also clone drives, a very complete package.

Albert

Acronis True Image 2020 is on sale at newegg for $19.99 for the next 20 hours (as of 6 am Eastern Time 1/22/20).

Albert

That's an excellent deal. I can't remember, but I think it's normally about $50.

Sold out

I use a combination of FreeFileSync and Acronis and have done for a long time - on both my WinXP and Win7 machines

I downloaded Macrium Reflect 7 and bought an external hard drive. I've been watching videos of how do make an image of your computer they all show clicking on "image selected discs on this computer"
even the ones by Macrium... This is what I did... but on the software it shows
Backup with two options... none of the videos clicked on the second one. The other option is:
"create an image of the partitions required to back up and restore Windows"

When I found the user guide on the internet it talks about it but I am confused to say the least.
Do I need to do the other instead??
I am linking the user guide if you think you can help mu understand... page 148 and 154

Userguide


If it is the second one why would all the video's show Image Selected discs on this computer..... (I selected them all)

This is the description for the second option...

In the video and post below, Leo says to use the second option. This does look like an older version of Macrium. He says it images the boot files and the C drive. He also shows you how to mount the image as a separate drive and then all your files are available if you want them. You then unmount the drive and it goes back to being a mrimg file.

https://askleo.com/create-backup-image-using-macrium-reflect-free/

I don't have this software, but I'm guessing either option would work if you have a simple setup like Windows installed on a single hard drive with no additional partitions or hard drives for storage or non-Windows OS.

The first option, "Image selected disks on this computer", sounds like it would image more than one hard drive. You might want this one if you have extra hard drives in your computer for storage.

I can't tell you which is best for your purposes because I don't know what sort of configuration you have in your computer -- whether you are using more than one hard drive or whether you have a hard drive with several partitions.

The only disadvantages of backing up everything you possibly can is that it uses up space and takes longer. If you have a huge external hard drive to copy onto, the space isn't really a problem.

When would you want to use the 2nd option?
Say you've already copy/pasted all the data on your storage hard drives using copy/paste, and already have those backed up somewhere. But you want to use Macrium to make sure your Windows installation will still work after you restore it (because it won't if you're using simple copy/paste). The 2nd option wouldn't copy anything you didn't need, but would ensure you had enough to restore Windows on a new hard drive.


Then you'll have an image of everything. The only problem would be if it didn't all fit on your external drive.

Thanks, I will redo them using the second option.

Winfrey I just edited with a video from Leo Notenboom which is really helpful.

Thanks Drac. And Jenny100 I have a 4 TB external hard drive