Looking for backup solution

[Vyse]

Hey guys! ,

 

im looking for a backup program / provider / cloud service / etc that can basically backup my complete ssd drive.

 

Im concerned of hardware and software failure, and want to protect a running windows (like system recovery stuff) and if possible everything else like games, music, desktop picture, settings, apps, etc.

 

So basically a program / service which backs up my complete C drive, either to another HDD or to the cloud, and which lets me do recovers from those backups.

 

Is there anything in existence other than copy pasta everything to a new HDD? I´d like to auto-backup everything weekly or so.

 

Thanks!

 

P.S. Im using Windows 10, currently C (my boot ssd) is 250GB big.

[M1k3y]

You might want to have a look at robocopy. I don't know if it can run as a sceduled task and you will have to do a bit of setup and maybe a small amount of scripting, but it can do what you want for free. (It's basically a implementation of rsync, one of the most powerful copy and sync tools from the linux world.)

[emosun]

if you run your system in a raid 1 configuration you will have two OS drives. having two drives will make the system faster and if one dies the other is still alive and will work alone.

[M1k3y]

emosun said:

if you run your system in a raid 1 configuration you will have two OS drives. having two drives will make the system faster and if one dies the other is still alive and will work alone.

Sorry, but RAID is NOT a backup. It won't protect from overvolt damages, accidental deletion, system errors, data corruption or "Windows being dumb". The only thing it protects you from is an isolated fail of a single drive.

 

Vyse, if you want to make sure your data is safe, you want to have a look at the 3-2-1 strategy:

3 copies of the data on

2 different types of medium with

1 copy being stored offsite.

 

For this you could use 2 external hard disks you clone your SSD to (which satifies 3 and 2). Store one of the Disks at another location and swap them regulary. In the worst case (lightningstrike during backup / house burns down) you lose all data since the last swap. Also use 2 external disks from different manufactores, to make sure you don't have 2 disks from a bad batch.

 

And if you want to go really fancy to make sure you don't accidently delete data and only discover it after overwriting your backup drives, you can look at differential or incremental backups. I heard "borg backup" is quite good at this kind of backups, although I don't know how easy it is to use on Windows.

 

EDIT: Also try the recovery process, the earlier the better (as long as there are no data to loose). If you never tried wether restoring a backup works, you don't have a backup.

[Vyse]

31 minutes ago, M1k3y said:

have a look at the 3-2-1 strategy:

 

3 copies of the data on

2 different types of medium with

1 copy being stored offsite.

 

For this you could use 2 external hard disks you clone your SSD to (which satifies 3 and 2). Store one of the Disks at another location and swap them regulary. In the worst case (lightningstrike during backup / house burns down) you lose all data since the last swap. Also use 2 external disks from different manufactores, to make sure you don't have 2 disks from a bad batch.

question

 

for 3 (copies of the data), what software would you recommend?

also, im not only trying to protect / backup files, but my whole system (windows with settings and stuff)

is this possible?

 

Because only for data I have Dropbox / iCloud / etc.

 

Thanks!

[emosun]

35 minutes ago, M1k3y said:

Sorry, but RAID is NOT a backup. It won't protect from overvolt damages, accidental deletion, system errors, data corruption or "Windows being dumb". The only thing it protects you from is an isolated fail of a single drive.

I wasn't aware that "level of protection" is what dictated a backup. 

here I was thinking a backup was a another copy of something. how silly of me.

 

by your own logic then , your 123 system does not have a constant backup of the os drive , only incremental ones. So the most current data on the drive would be totally lost. 

not only that , but since the system has to back up the drive and isn't always writing to it when the main drive is written to , it does it in slow chunks instead of doing it immediately. 

 

[M1k3y]

6 hours ago, Vyse said:

question

 

for 3 (copies of the data), what software would you recommend?

also, im not only trying to protect / backup files, but my whole system (windows with settings and stuff)

is this possible?

 

Because only for data I have Dropbox / iCloud / etc.

 

Thanks!

You just can backup the whole drive (everything in C: ). With this all settings and software will be saved. The only thing not being saved will be your Partition Layout and your Bootloader. In case of a complete drive failure you will have to use a recovery/install disk to repair the bootloader. 

 

The only way to get around this is to make an offline backup using a live system like partedmagic. 

 

For a simple "online" backup you can just use any tool which can do mass copy jobs. 

 

I will look into some alternatives later and write them down. 

[M1k3y]

6 hours ago, emosun said:

I wasn't aware that "level of protection" is what dictated a backup. 

here I was thinking a backup was a another copy of something. how silly of me.

 

by your own logic then , your 123 system does not have a constant backup of the os drive , only incremental ones. So the most current data on the drive would be totally lost. 

not only that , but since the system has to back up the drive and isn't always writing to it when the main drive is written to , it does it in slow chunks instead of doing it immediately. 

 

Yes, you will loose data. The point of a backup is not to make sure you always have a 100% accurate copy, but to have a copy good enough that you can restore your state with as little work as possible. 

 

If the backups are applied regular, you will only loose what has been done since the last copy. On short intervals its no problem to redo what has been lost. 

 

In theory a RAID sounds like the perfect backup. The problem is that it only protects you from a single failure scenario. 

 

What you actually want is a real time replication to a offsite datacenter with automatic disk snapshots. But that is just insanely expensive to set up and bottlenecks on your Internet connection. 

[M1k3y]

Vyse, I just realized that I actually don't know what exactly you want.

 

What are you using the machine for?

What are your main concerns?

How often/much is your system changing?

Can the system be off (as in "not usable") while running the backup or do you need backups while the machine is being used?

Are you comfortable using a more advanced backup system or do you need a "single button noob solution"?

Is your focus on saving your system settings, or the system as a whole?

Do the backups need to be able to interrupt and continue on demand or are you ok with letting your system run until it's finished?

[Vyse]

7 hours ago, M1k3y said:

Vyse, I just realized that I actually don't know what exactly you want.

 

What are you using the machine for?

What are your main concerns?

How often/much is your system changing?

Can the system be off (as in "not usable") while running the backup or do you need backups while the machine is being used?

Are you comfortable using a more advanced backup system or do you need a "single button noob solution"?

Is your focus on saving your system settings, or the system as a whole?

Do the backups need to be able to interrupt and continue on demand or are you ok with letting your system run until it's finished?

The dream would be an automatic backup of all of C (the complete drive with all settings, files, registry, windows settings, installed programs etc).

By automatic I mean weekly or something like that, and this can be done by backing up everything fresh everytime and then delete the older backup, or just update the backup to mirror the current state of C.

 

What are you using the machine for?

- Private machine, nothing suuuuper important like work stuff, just personal stuff

What are your main concerns?

- hardware failure

How often/much is your system changing?

- hardware not often at all, maybe 3 times a year (new HDD or something small)

- software ofc daily / weekly

Can the system be off (as in "not usable") while running the backup or do you need backups while the machine is being used?

- up to the program, I dont mind either

Are you comfortable using a more advanced backup system or do you need a "single button noob solution"?

- basically the backup contains a private computer windows with games and programs installed + a few personal data, so I´d say a noob solution would be plenty enough, since I am looking for such a backup solution out of pure laziness to backup / copy everything manually by myself and out of straight paranoia that IF something happenes to C, I need to do everything from scratch again (install every program, download every exe, setting up everything, too lazy for that)

Is your focus on saving your system settings, or the system as a whole?

- system settings, windows settings, all installed programs and their settings, all folders and subfolders and their location, basically a complete mirror of C://, so when I need to do a backup because lets say power outage and my SSD is dead, I load my backup data and voilas, windows is there like it was, all data is there, all programs are installed, everything is working, woohoo

Do the backups need to be able to interrupt and continue on demand or are you ok with letting your system run until it's finished?

- since my whole C (mainly programs, games, some files) is only 250GB, it can be done in one whole sitting

 

 

I realize that for my purpose the solution I am looking for might be waaaay to professional / overkill, but if there is such a solution, even for a monthly fee, I wouldnt mind!

[mrchow19910319]

Hey, I know on mac there are softwares like carbon copy cloner and superduper and of course time machine to do EXACTLY what you want. 

 

I don't know anything on windows that does that, 

 

However, there is a backup solution that is called : backblaze. They will pretty much do what you want exactly. Back up your system, make a bootable drive (windows and macOS I think?), and most importantly, you can upload as many files as you want. There is no storage limit. Everything I described will only cost you 5 bucks a month. And if someday your system failed, they will mail you a bootable USB drive so that you can have everything you need right away. I think this service is only provided in the US? 

 

But anyway their service is worth checking out. I 'm not from the US so I do not use their service. 

 

Give it a try.