Windows n00b (kinda) - how to do a good backup?

[Stephen Harris]

So I'm an old school Unix geek (been using it for 37 years now; I can SA a unix box in my sleep, which was useful when I used to be on call!). 

 

Obviously I've used  Windows (e.g. work laptop; a test VM or two) but I haven't daily driven one for personal use since... forever (I even used DesqView rather than Windows 3).

 

I've decided to dip a toe into gaming (I'm a gaming n00b as well, unless you count Backgammon as gaming!) so have ordered a machine (7800X3D, 32Gb-6000MT/s RAM, 4070 Super 12Gb) which should arrive next week.

 

Which now means I'm going to start having data on a windows machine that I would want to keep.

 

Now in Unix I know how to make backups so that I can recover specific files or even recover the whole machine if it dies (eg if the SSD fails).  But Windows?  That's a different beast.  Of course I could copy files off (e.g. to a samba server); that's easily do-able.  But Windows also has registry stuff to worry about, and weird places it stores configs.

 

That's a long intro to ask a simple question...

 

How do people back up their Windows machines?

[wONKEyeYEs]

16 minutes ago, Stephen Harris said:

How do people back up their Windows machines?

For a disk image

Settings/Update and Security/Files Backup/Go to Backup and Restore (Windows 7)/Create a system image.

You will also need to Create a system repair disk, on the same page as Create a system image.

There are also free 3rd party progs for this.

 

For data backup SyncBackFree works well.

[Stephen Harris]

Thanks, I'll take a look at these.

 

(Nearly first thing I ever do with a new machine is boot into Linux and "dd" the whole disk so I can return to factory default).

 

I've also heard of disk2vhd which might work as a weekly "complete backup", but I'm not sure how I'd restore from that!

[Alan G]

I have 3 PCs at home and I use NovaBACKUP to do both backups to a local drive and Amazon Web Service.  It also does a monthly disk image just in case there is an OS drive failure (never had to use this feature ),  It's pretty cost effective.  There are a bunch of free applications that can do pretty much the same thing if you look and compare features.

[windozedev]

On 3/24/2024 at 6:46 AM, Stephen Harris said:

I've also heard of disk2vhd which might work as a weekly "complete backup", but I'm not sure how I'd restore from that!

To capture your windows installation, you must be booted into either WinPE or another copy of windows. When capturing, dism will create an image in wim format. Afterwords, the wim image can be applied to a virtual disk or path target.