Best way to Back up pc (like Mac Time Machine)

[leyo96]

As the title say what's the best way to back up my pc so if I lose a file, I get a virus, I have a drive failure, ecc. I'd be able to recover my system with no problems?

 

Time machine is the only thing I miss from Mac Os since switching a long time ago.

[Letgomyleghoe]

raid 1 would work if a singular drive fails, but wont help if you get malware that destroy your drives

[leyo96]

9 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

raid 1 would work if a singular drive fails, but wont help if you get malware that destroy your drives

Well, I know it. That's exaclty why I asked which is the best way to do a back up as you'd do with time machine

[Letgomyleghoe]

i dont get what your asking then, you could connect an external storage device and back up all your files that way.

[leyo96]

13 minutes ago, scuff gang said:

i dont get what your asking then, you could connect an external storage device and back up all your files that way.

Ok but with what program? That's my question

[Letgomyleghoe]

1 hour ago, leyo96 said:

Ok but with what program? That's my question

you dont really need a program, but im sure there is a few i you search for it. ive never needed to do this so i havent looked for software before 

[leyo96]

9 hours ago, scuff gang said:

you dont really need a program, but im sure there is a few i you search for it. ive never needed to do this so i havent looked for software before 

Of course you need a program.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

there is no alternative. it really annoys me as well, having to do backups manually. there are ways to do it with seperate servers with redundancy etc but that's waaaay too expensive for the average consumer.

 

it's really a shame after 12 years of time machine there still is no alternative for it on Windows.

[Letgomyleghoe]

11 hours ago, leyo96 said:

Of course you need a program.

just do it manually like twilight said, you dont need software except file explorer

[leyo96]

On 11/24/2019 at 3:28 PM, Twilight said:

there is no alternative. it really annoys me as well, having to do backups manually. there are ways to do it with seperate servers with redundancy etc but that's waaaay too expensive for the average consumer.

 

it's really a shame after 12 years of time machine there still is no alternative for it on Windows.

Macrium reflect. We live in 2019 and you do your backup manually....

[SpaceGhostC2C]

On 11/23/2019 at 10:50 PM, leyo96 said:

Ok but with what program? That's my question

There are too many, most I have no experience with, and others I've just used very few functions, not really for regular backups.

1 hour ago, leyo96 said:

Macrium reflect.

That's one of them, which makes me wonder why you opened the thread then...

Iomega used to bundle the "NeverDown" software, but nowadays Iomega itself doesn't exist.

You can also use any file sync software to compare a backup drive with your local drive and copy updated files as necessarily. You would be running the backup manually, though. But some programs can be automated through task scheduler or scripts. For example, the program used in the following project:

Spoiler

 

For both data and system settings you would need some form of shadow copy that gets your system hidden files properly backed-up too. But I see no value in backing up system files (well, not true, if I lost my boot drive right now it would be extremely tedious to get both Windows and Linux properly set up again, especially the latter - so many google searches to be repeated...). I mean, if the point is "no downtime in case of failure", then RAID 1 for the OS drive is an obvious choice, and then regular (manual or automated) backups of your data.

[Roswell]

I don't really know what's going on in this thread but Windows has automatic backup methods built-in.

 

You can use "file history" to go back in time for individual files or fokders and/or "backup and restore" to schedule automatic system imaging so you can fully recover your entire installation.