Data management, backups, cloning

[Psittac]

I have decided to turn my pervious machine into a data storage device as well as a back up gaming rig.  It has an m.2 non-nvme boot drive, a ssd for games, 2x 2tb hdd's and a 1tb 2.5" hdd and I have a WD 1tb mycloud

 

My plan is to start imaging the OS of my computers and all of my friends computers.  I find that since I am the go to guy that I am quite frequently the one fixing computers, most times their computers are beyond my ability to repair so I end up doing a laborious clean install with drivers and updates and all.  Hence the reason it would be nice to have the option to simply hook up their boot drive and clone a fresh and updated OS onto it and do a few updates.

 

Can I get any and all advice about data management? Including but not limited to cloning OS (which can be kept on an attached drive). Any tips you may have about anything related will help, what configuration to set up my devices, good ways to backup data, restore points RAID etc

 

Another big one would be how to safely attach a potentially infected drive and back it up and/or transfer it onto the original machine while maybe removing any problems in the process.

 

I'm a noob to all of this, ever since I got into the hobby every last bit of data has been expendable without a second thought.

 

Thank you for your time, effort and advice.

[Psittac]

no thought's on any of this?

[Psittac]

nvm, I figured it out just needed to figure out the keywords to use in a google search.

 

I am going to RAID1 my 2x2tb drives and set them up as a network drive.  Then each of my machines will access this drive using the built in Microsoft image tool, since it's an image and not a clone I don't have to worry about it trying to load the wrong boot manager.