Backup inquiries

[Protex]

Hello all,

 

I've had my current PC from around half a year, and am still looking for a viable backup solution suiting my needs, having learnt my lesson from losing everything before. I am a purely home user, running Windows 10, and would like to take regular backups to a non cloud service (External HDD or NAS potentially). This process would preferably be automatic. I have multiple drives, an SSD and an HDD, so would need to backup both. A system image wouldn't be a bad idea, however I don't want to have to roll back my C: in the case of my other drive (E:) failing, or visa versa.

 

Do you have any recommendations for software or other solutions I could use to achieve my goal? 

 

Thank you, Protex

[TidaLWaveZ]

Windows built in full backup no good for you?

[Protex]

4 minutes ago, Protex said:

Hello all,

 

I've had my current PC from around half a year, and am still looking for a viable backup solution suiting my needs, having learnt my lesson from losing everything before. I am a purely home user, running Windows 10, and would like to take regular backups to a non cloud service (External HDD or NAS potentially). This process would preferably be automatic. I have multiple drives, an SSD and an HDD, so would need to backup both. A system image wouldn't be a bad idea, however I don't want to have to roll back my C: in the case of my other drive (E:) failing, or visa versa.

 

Do you have any recommendations for software or other solutions I could use to achieve my goal? 

 

Thank you, Protex

@TidaLWaveZ

[TidaLWaveZ]

3 minutes ago, Protex said:

@TidaLWaveZ

I know, I edited it. Didn't understand why you would need third party software if you had Windows.

[Protex]

Just now, TidaLWaveZ said:

I know, I edited it immediately. Didn't understand why you would need third party software if you had Windows.

As I stated, 

9 minutes ago, Protex said:

A system image wouldn't be a bad idea, however I don't want to have to roll back my C: in the case of my other drive (E:) failing, or visa versa.

 

[TidaLWaveZ]

11 minutes ago, Protex said:

As I stated, 

 

System image is only one of the built in backup features. There's file backup, system backup, and restore point.  They can all be automated and they can all write to custom locations including network drives.

 

If you're really looking for full clones and other options try comodo or aomei.

 

 

[leadeater]

Windows Backup and Restore (Windows 7) is actually pretty good, and yes that's it's exact name in control panel in Windows 10. It supports bare metal recovery as well as individual file restore, and can be read by any OS not just the one that created the backup. As for the newer native Windows 10 backup feature I've never used it but looks less feature rich than the legacy one, go figure.

 

Other option is Veeam Endpoint Backup Free, I know that is good. Then there is the often mentioned ones like CrashPlan and BackBlaze which have free local backup, at least one of them does I don't remember exactly as I don't use those either.

[Protex]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Windows Backup and Restore (Windows 7) is actually pretty good, and yes that's it's exact name in control panel in Windows 10. It supports bare metal recovery as well as individual file restore, and can be read by any OS not just the one that created the backup. As for the newer native Windows 10 backup feature I've never used it but looks less feature rich than the legacy one, go figure.

 

Other option is Veeam Endpoint Backup Free, I know that is good. Then there is the often mentioned ones like CrashPlan and BackBlaze which have free local backup, at least one of them does I don't remember exactly as I don't use those either.

Ah awesome, I didn't realise it had individual file restore, thank you for your help. Now I just need an external HDD to store the 556GB Backup package on...

[Falconevo]

Windows 10 has an updated version of the Windows Backup which allows for bare metal, registry backup, system state and flat file(s) backup.  Personally I would never rely on a backup on a USB disk if you care for your data but I deal with enterprise technologies on a daily basis and have access to remote TB of storage on highly available disks.

You can either use the GUI via the control panel as mentioned above by another user (in Control Panel) which since Windows 7 has had a built in scheduler to allow you to run automated backup jobs.  Alternatively you can perform these via the Wbadmin command line interface which is a little slicker and can be customized to your requirements.

 

Lots of info about the CLI here;

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc754015(v=ws.11).aspx
 

The CLI also allows you to dig a little deeper regarding failures and gathering system info, its also required in the event you attempt to bare metal restore to a system that is not the same hardware configuration.  For example lets say you were performing system state restores on an AMD Chipset machine and had a hardware failure, you would need to import a bare metal recovery point to restore to an Intel Chipset.  That's just one theoretical example where the CLI comes in very useful.

 

Really simple and easy to use and with Powershell proficiency can be utilized to keep copies of backups and utilize a backup rotation (1 backup per day for 7 days for example) and to increment the data rather than performing a full backup every day which would be a little taxing on a USB drive and for 500+GB don't expect a full backup to be quick, even on a USB3.0 capable device.

 

FYI; don't use USB disks for backup when critical data is concerned.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Falconevo said:

Really simple and easy to use and with Powershell proficiency can be utilized to keep copies of backups and utilize a backup rotation (1 backup per day for 7 days for example) and to increment the data rather than performing a full backup every day which would be a little taxing on a USB drive and for 500+GB don't expect a full backup to be quick, even on a USB3.0 capable device.

Windows backup supports their own incremental/differential backup method so wouldn't be a full every day, only time this doesn't apply is when using a SMB share. You only ever have to do a full once, or when ever the backup repo corrupts itself and you have to start a new chain, certainly not the most perfect backup solution but it is free.

 

Previous company I worked for used Windows backup to iSCSI mounts for about 1400 different schools, the bigger ones used Veeam, and it actually works really nicely and has application support for SQL and Exchange. The server version of Windows backup that is.

 

Other than that I do sort of agree about using USB disks but this is for home use and having an extra copy of your data on one of those is vastly better than nothing at all. Using Apple Time Machine and a USB disk is extremely common and I think the same should happen on the Windows side, most people have no idea that Windows backup even exists.