Backing up before a re-install

[Charkel]

It's time to come clean. First step of accepting your addiction is admitting you have one.... I have a problem. *sigh* I'm a hoarder. *sigh* I have EVERY SINGLE 'My Documents' folders from when I was 10. Yes that is correct. Since the age of 10. I am 27 years old today.

 

So copying the important files of a C drive is in my backbone. But there must be more ways of restoring your fresh install to what it was.

 

Walllpaper, screen settings,SETTINGS, VPN's setup in network manager, shortcuts AND SO FORTH.

 

What is your backup routine right before a fresh re-install?

AND are there any softwares that makes this a breeze? (Copying the important family photos and movies aside)

[Christophe Corazza]

11 minutes ago, Charkel said:

I have EVERY SINGLE 'My Documents' folders from when I was 10. Yes that is correct. Since the age of 10. I am 27 years old today.

 

I recently turned 26. I have also every single file from when I was little. However, I store all of them on my server. None of my computers have any files/documents/etc. saved on their drives. That way I can always access whatever file I want, whenever I want and wherever I want (if there is internet connection off course). That has helped me quite a few times in not so nice situations. Therefore I don’t need to backup a PC if I want to do a clean install since there are simply no critical files to back up.

[LogicalDrm]

From one Win10 to another Win10 is as close to clone as you can get. And its still not perfect. Things that will move with synced Microsoft account: everything you can do with just OS settings. To get software specific settings, you need to do a lot of manual work. If you use Firefox or Chrome, use their built-in syncing features to get bookmarks and most of settings saved. For most other software you need to manually copy settings from My Documents, AppData/Roaming or software's install folder (have notepad file where you have all relevant paths saved for restoring!). Some software just don't have easy way to do this. Notably MS Office. And extra customization on new Firefox. Use any built-in backup feature software might have.

 

For places like My Documents and Desktop, you can just copy everything and paste them back. Shortcuts are tricky, but if you have used default filepaths for things, they will work again once related software is installed.

[Charkel]

8 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

From one Win10 to another Win10 is as close to clone as you can get. And its still not perfect. Things that will move with synced Microsoft account: everything you can do with just OS settings. To get software specific settings, you need to do a lot of manual work. If you use Firefox or Chrome, use their built-in syncing features to get bookmarks and most of settings saved. For most other software you need to manually copy settings from My Documents, AppData/Roaming or software's install folder (have notepad file where you have all relevant paths saved for restoring!). Some software just don't have easy way to do this. Notably MS Office. And extra customization on new Firefox. Use any built-in backup feature software might have.

 

For places like My Documents and Desktop, you can just copy everything and paste them back. Shortcuts are tricky, but if you have used default filepaths for things, they will work again once related software is installed.

This is 8 to 10. in this case.

 

 

- For the shortcuts I have separate shortcut apps that will handle that for me. (Locating the exe path and replacing it)

- Chrome till handle all sync from account in-app

- Steam library is on another drive, no problems. One try to install to that folder and it will find them all files.

 

Maybe themese are completly different on W8 and W10. But I have this perfectly calibrated monitor setup and screensaver and energy saving times to turn of screen etc etc etc... Of course I can fix it one by one when I notice it. But WHAT IF there was an app for backing that. How nice it would be.

 

I guess once I go W10 my windows account will sync these settings or something. I have never used W10 yet due to driver compability issues even tho I call myself a WIndows expert

[LogicalDrm]

2 minutes ago, Charkel said:

Maybe themese are completly different on W8 and W10. But I have this perfectly calibrated monitor setup and screensaver and enery times etc etc etc...

No luck there. I have DisplayFusion (for dual screen in Win7). Which has backed up settings file. Load that and everything is almost like it was before. Only thing I had with move from Win7 to 10 was how differently colorscheme and dpi settings were. Took good few hours to get everything good. With color theme it took picking rgb codes from old screenshot.

[Charkel]

9 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

For most other software you need to manually copy settings from AppData/Roaming

 

I chose to exclude AppData because of it's enormous size.Maybe I should investigate what is taking up all that space tho. Might be important to keep if I notice I miss some presets ive spent hours on in some app

I manually copied ONE app from AppData since i couldn't find any other settings for it so I assumed I wanted to keep that.

[LogicalDrm]

3 minutes ago, Charkel said:

I chose to exclude AppData because of it's enormous size.Maybe I should investigate what is taking up all that space tho. Might be important to keep if I notice I miss some presets ive spent hours on in some app

I manually copied ONE app from AppData since i couldn't find any other settings for it so I assumed I wanted to keep that.

Just pick ones you really need. Roaming is the folder where most settings are. I doubt you really need browser things since they come from cloud anyway. Or any other software which has backup function. Local folder holds much of temp and cache stuff.

[Charkel]

54 minutes ago, LoGiCalDrm said:

Just pick ones you really need. Roaming is the folder where most settings are. I doubt you really need browser things since they come from cloud anyway. Or any other software which has backup function. Local folder holds much of temp and cache stuff.

I had time and space to do the full AppData. Thx for telling me it keeps a lot of settings.