Clone or backup my OS drive?

[Mark Kaine]

im about to update windows and i just want to make sure i can go back to the current state if it fails or my pcs performance gets worse (which is likely) 

 

but it shouldn't matter if i clone the drive or back it up, correct?  

[Vishera]

It depends on what the backup method you use backs up.

Cloning is the safest option though.

[TheLANguy]

Yes, you can also manually create a restore point by using backup and restore, which you can find in system properties. Then you can roll back the update. (Please note this will also restore the registry and installed programs)

[Mark Kaine]

17 minutes ago, Vishera said:

It depends on what the backup method you use backs up.

Cloning is the safest option though.

yeah i usually clone the drive... but you need a completely empty hard-drive for that, so i was considering doing a backup instead. 

 

but looks i have to copy the stuff from one external drive to another so i have an empty one... fun...!

 

also im just noticing macrium doesn't even recognize my WD black as formatted,  so i couldn't use that for a backup anyway without losing the stuff that's actually on the WD, strange!

 

 

see, says "unformatted" but it definitely is formatted im using the drive all the time lol... 

[Vishera]

1 minute ago, Mark Kaine said:

yeah i usually clone the drive... but you need a completely empty hard-drive for that, so i was considering doing a backup instead. 

You can clone the drive to a VHD file,

Just create a VHD file and mount it, it will be recognized as a normal drive.

[Mark Kaine]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

You can clone the drive to a VHD file,

Just create a VHD file and mount it, it will be recognized as a normal drive.

hmm, i see. still having the same issue as above because it simply doesn't recognize my wd black as formatted,  so i need to empty out another drive first, my OS drive is almost a TB (~700GB) 

 

oh, well, somehow this is never as easy as it should.