System backup for Windows 10

[olkipukki]

I am recently back to Windows 10 on a bare metal due to (trial) architecture change for Windows-only workstation (Intel->AMD). Still early days how the required software (that available in Windows only) will perform and how long (or may be permanently) will keep in this way.

After spent wasted quite a lot of time to install everything, update etc, my thoughts to avoid next time or if any clusterf%*k happened.

I already have a solution in place to backup work files, interested only in full system backup on infrequently basis.

Ideally, a software that allows me:
 - be independent from Windows 10, so no Windows software on same machine
 - boot from an external drive
 - clone/restore a whole source drive to/from an external/internal drive or over network

I don’t mind to pay lower 3 figures for the right solution.

Is there someone using similar?

[MrMobodies]

- clone/restore a whole source drive to/from an external/internal drive or over network

I don’t mind to pay lower 3 figures for the right solution.

Is there someone using similar?

Not sure if this is any good to you but have you tried Macrium Reflect 7?

Now there is a free for home/commercial just to clone and make disc images.

I paid for mine but as at the time they only had a 30 day trial with all the features unlocked unlike that Acronis.

I don't use it in windows to backup the local windows drive and I haven't tried that yet as I brought it just to disc image or clone customers drives.

Once installed you can make a bootable usb stick (Menu -> Other tasks -> Create Media Rescue) and it will automatically include the drivers for the mass storage and network controllers.

I just install the home version one on the customers to make a bootup copy on a pen drive so if the windows updates fail and the restore doesn't work in event that it can't bootup they can extract the image to another drive and recover the contents later. I expect them bring or buy USB backup drives.

Only two issues I found:

1: The block level driver has caused stability issues on two different installations. It is optional after the install so I untick it.

2: The cloning can sometimes fail (I mean other drives that I plug in to disc image not the local one) on certain drives and it turned out that the shadow copier was accessing the drive so by removing the drive letters it starts and finishes without any problem.

There is an option to ignore bad sectors in  (Defaults -> advanced) but if there are problems with the file system and over a simple shutdown flag not set it is set not to clone at all and this seems to also be the case with Clonezilla as well.

[amspire]

I have been using the Image for Windows suite from Terabyte Unlimited for a long time now. Image. It is very powerful and reliable, and you get a version that installs and can run from within Windows, but you also can use a DOS boot disk version or a Linux Boot disk version that can both boot from a CD/DVD or USB stick. Probably can put it on a hard drive, but I have never tried.

The Linux boot is UEFI compatible and there is a UEFI version of the DOS boot disk. The utility to burn CDs or USB disks is included (makedisk.exe).

All the Windows, Dos and Linux boot choices give the same options. The Windows version gives the options of using either Windows shadow copy or their original drive snapshot tool called Phylock to capture the state of the drive at a point in time to make the image. As a result, the image includes everything including things like registry files.

The boot disks support networking, so you can boot from a USB stick and save to a network location. It can do differential imaging and it can merge differential images.

It can image to and from .VMDK virtual drives, so you can capture a drive on a PC and run it on, say, Virtualbox, or you can make a sysprep installer for a Windows version on Virtualbox, and write copies to hard drives. Very useful.

Works with FAT16, FAT32, NTFS, HFS+, Ext2, Ext3, Ext4, ReiserFS, and XFS partitions. If something uses these partitions, you can image it. This includes Windows (including servers - no special server version needed), Apple, Linux, DVD recorder drives, etc.
 
You have to pay, but you get free updates forever for the version you are on. They stick to one version for many years. I have been using it for something like 15 years and they have only changed the major version once. They do very regular minor version updates.

The Linux boot disk comes bundled with a number of other tools including a tool to mount and unmount partitions, Midnight Commander (a powerful file management tool - like Norton Commander on steroids). Good for recovering files from damaged Windows PC's as it bypasses the Windows folder protections - you can copy files from user directories without knowing the usernames and passwords.

There is a browser tool for the image files, so you can easily recover files and folders from an image file.

The price is US$38.94 and there is a 30 day trial available.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com

Richard

[MrMobodies]

On that Terabyteunlimited website BootIt® Bare Metal boot selector thing.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal-ss.htm

That looks really good.

I have been looking for something like that for sometime.

[amspire]

On that Terabyteunlimited website BootIt® Bare Metal boot selector thing.

https://www.terabyteunlimited.com/bootit-bare-metal-ss.htm

That looks really good.

I have been looking for something like that for sometime.

Terabyte is much more of an engineering tool company then a consumer solution company. They make these tools that let you control everything. So their tools are powerful, but can scare or confuse non-technical users. If you like being able to choose exactly what you want a tool to do, Terabyte products are really worth a try.

[MrMobodies]

Here's a joke: I tend to get scared when I come across tools like the new Acronis that promise things that it can't do if I pay and don't deliver but confuse me over the menus large tiles.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050515000000*/terabyteunlimited.com

So Terabyteunlimited has been on archive since 1997 and despite endless searching and all the crap reviews on the others before I found that Macrium which I paid much more for I never came across it before and they show  pictures of what the packages and it's reasonably priced.

Thank you.

[amspire]

Terabyteunlimited is very well known to IT professionals, but if you were giving advice to ordinary users, you will probably suggest something like Acronis. I think that is why it has been a bit invisible.

It is not that their interface isn't fairly elegant, and it has a simple mode that chooses good defaults for you, but it still has way too many options for most users. If you tell it to copy a blank disk over your Windows C: drive, it will do it very happily. It assumes you know what you are doing.

[olkipukki]

Thanks for the details 

Terabyte looks impressive, and for $50 bargain offers more than needed right now.
Also, they have comprehensive manuals in PDF, that's great to have in a place especially for rare usage software rather than rely on webpages
 

[Jookia]

Doesn't the built-in backup and restore create system images, which can be restored with a startup CD?

[Mechatrommer]

Windows backup? afaik its a toy that doesnt do full backup, no such thing as fresh install. running startup CD and try to recover backup files will spit error messages to you. a waste of time and real frustration in the time when we really need our system back and up again in quick time. i will never trust Windows backup ever not to mention it will degrade performance and HDD space unecesarily if you enable auto backup/restore point creation.

otoh AOMEI Backupper is easy to use and free, i never need a pdf or help manual to understand it. but i never try raw boot using its feature (maybe it has, but its not my favorite workflow anyway) in case of catastrophic crash that i cant boot from my OS HDD, i'll prepare/keep a basic/fresh OS install on another HDD with AOMEI and the backup data in it, put my main (need to be restored) HDD as secondary drive and do the restore. no need lower 3 figure price, just the price for an backup HDD. i think i've downloaded and tried few other recovery solutions mentioned, but AOMEI is still my favourite. ymmv.

[Kilrah]

https://clonezilla.org/

[digsys]

+1 for all the Terrabyte tools !! Used on many systems for many years - NEVER failed me, easy to use and straightforward.

[Chris_Walch]

Windows 10 does come with two backup solutions
- FileHistory to save your documents, pictures, etc.
- Backup and Restore to do image based backups, just like Windows 7 and 8 did.


There are quite a number of third party tools, some are even free - so just test them.
I'm using Acronis which works most of the time just fine.

[JustMeHere]

Have you considered software RAID1?

[wraper]

Have you considered software RAID1?

It only protects against drive failure. Not a backup solution at all.

[wilfred]

At some time in the past I had trouble restoring a system image after a drive failure because I bought a new drive that was larger. Not sure if that is still a problem but I don't fully trust the Windows system restore. It probably works well for recovering to the same drive but for a drive failure it could be a problem.

Whatever solution you finally settle on at least make sure you test it out. Which means swapping the second drive into your device. Since doing that with a SSD upgrade I am just using the tools I used to do that. (www.easeus.com) I can be sure to be back up and running at the point I was a month or two ago with just a screwdriver.

I do also backup directories with personal files more frequently to a USB drive.

[olkipukki]

I have ruled out "workarounds" such as RAIDs and build-in Windows backup "solution".

Finally, I got a Terabyte license and will try it, hopefully will works as expected.

Also, it seems that Terabyte allows to convert an image to a virtual machine!
I would say - very handy for me, move these around and eventually park under Proxmox.

[Peabody]

One more thing on Terabyte.  I use it on Windows 7, but always do the image creation and restore from the Image for Linux CD. Never trusted shadow copy.  And I also use Veracrypt whole drive encryption.  But I can still make a "smart" image of C:, used sectors only, no paging or hibernation files, because Terabyte also includes Veracrypt for Linux on the CD.  So booting from that, I can mount the encrypted C: in Veracrypt using my password, then use Image to make the image.  Works the same way on a restore.  So you can have an encrypted drive, but still make and restore images as though it was not encrypted, with the same size image files.  I image C: once a month - just *before* running Windows Update.

The challenge for me is going to be a new Windows 10 computer, and whether my method will work there.  So I would be interested in the OP's experience, including how Win10 deals with UEFI, SecureBoot, etc.  Can you boot directly to the Image for Linux thumb drive, which you would need to do to restore an image?

[westfw]

All I want a backup program to do is:

• Create a full disk image that can be used to re-create a bootable drive.  Preferably, it should simultaneously create a bootable USB or CD that can restore that image onto a blank drive.
  (Currently using Clonezilla for this.)
• Bypass the normal permissions issues and back up all the User's "user data" to a browseable filesystem.  (Currently using Windows Explorer for this.  Painfully.)
• Share the same backup storage device for multiple systems.

The procedures I'm using are relatively painful - I wouldn't suggest them to my less-technical family members.  The "pro" backup utilities (including ones I've paid for) all seem to implement complex scheduling schemes that include (sometimes multiple) background windows processes that do ... something.

Is there something like what I'm looking for?)

(Hmm.  Ideally, I'd also like to back up important Applications (but not ALL applications) so that they can be restored onto a fresh disk without hunting down installation media and license keys...)

[Kilrah]

I always consider the system/apps to be a throwaway. When I need to reinstall it it'll be a few years since original install, I want to get rid of the junk (aka recent image is no good) and an image made at the time of the original install after all apps were installed is also no good since over a few years all the apps will need updates (as well as the system itself obviously), some I won't be using anymore, new ones I need won't be there so better and quicker to just start fresh. I do have a folder with all the installers for specific stuff and the licenses are either there or in my email archive. I can reinstall a whole system with everything I need in about an hour, so no biggie. I found that all attempts to "simplify" things by making an image of the system drive always actually cause more issues/take more time than doing a fresh install.

I store all my user data on a separate drive, and have 2 complete file-based backups of that. From the system drive I only back up my user profile minus a bunch of obviously unnecessary stuff so that what's temporarily on my desktop, downloads folder and the like is taken care of.

I just use a simple program, SyncBack SE to handle all the backup/syncing between drives. One profile to mirror the user profile minus some selections into a folder on the data drive, and one to mirror the data drive onto the external backup drives which I rotate and store one off site.

(Hmm.  Ideally, I'd also like to back up important Applications (but not ALL applications) so that they can be restored onto a fresh disk without hunting down installation media and license keys...)

That's typically not an option, you get either all or nothing. It's almost impossible to know what a particular app puts where, especially those with pesky licensing systems that on purpose put stuff in the most improbable locations to try and (usually unsuccessfully...) avoid tampering with the licensing.

[olkipukki]

Quick update:

I have started to use Terabyte software and tried the following:

1) created Image for UEFI bootdisk on an external USB drive - works fine 
2) booted (1) and
  a) created a full disk copy :  I have 2x 970 PRO 512GB in the system, copy & validation took approx 15min, tested a boot on both drives - works fine 
  b) created a backup to external SSD, that's took ~2 hours transfer 1/2TB to Samsung T5

One of the disk 2(a) has disabled to avoid any interference and solely for full backup purpose.
The next step, restore a 2(b) backup on the same system and another machine.

I didn't install Terabyte software on Windows and not planning to do so.

P.S.
Bonus point - Terabyte has DOS version, might work for my vintage pet projects aka DOS, Windows NT/95 era 

[digsys]

Quick update: ....
I didn't install Terabyte software on Windows and not planning to do so.
-----
Bonus point - Terabyte has DOS version, might work for my vintage pet projects aka DOS, Windows NT/95 era 

Good news. As I've said before, I've used it for many many years, on 100s machines by now. In some cases, I do install it on Windows, usually I make them a "master".
Also run about every version, including bootable DOS mode. Every part works. I do not do past Windows 7 though, and have no inclination to :-)

[amspire]

Quick update:

I have started to use Terabyte software and tried the following:

1) created Image for UEFI bootdisk on an external USB drive - works fine 

I tend to use the Image for Linux version instead of the Image for UEFI boot disk. It is both UEFI and non-UEFI compatible and you get a full Linux environment. So you can mount drives, copy and edit files, change partitions - whatever you can normally do in Linux.

The plus for the UEFI boot disk is it will start up much faster.

[olkipukki]

I tend to use the Image for Linux version instead of the Image for UEFI boot disk. It is both UEFI and non-UEFI compatible and you get a full Linux environment. So you can mount drives, copy and edit files, change partitions - whatever you can normally do in Linux.

The plus for the UEFI boot disk is it will start up much faster.

Yep, thats in my wish list.

My first priority was solve 'a problem' in  some minimalist way. I think Terabyte has managed it, ticked all boxes and allowing to do more.

[Peabody]

Quick update:

I have started to use Terabyte software and tried the following:

1) created Image for UEFI bootdisk on an external USB drive - works fine 
2) booted (1) and
  a) created a full disk copy :  I have 2x 970 PRO 512GB in the system, copy & validation took approx 15min, tested a boot on both drives - works fine 
  b) created a backup to external SSD, that's took ~2 hours transfer 1/2TB to Samsung T5

One of the disk 2(a) has disabled to avoid any interference and solely for full backup purpose.
The next step, restore a 2(b) backup on the same system and another machine.

I didn't install Terabyte software on Windows and not planning to do so.

P.S.
Bonus point - Terabyte has DOS version, might work for my vintage pet projects aka DOS, Windows NT/95 era

Not sure whether your test included making an image file, which isn't bootable, but contains all the used sectors of the original partition except for the paging file and hibernation file, and is further compressed.  Then of course you would need to test restoring from that image file back to the original partition.  It would be great if that process works on Windows 10, preferably using the Image for Linux boot CD or thumb drive.