Yes, You Need Image Backups (and here's how) - Comments Page 1

My invited comment = "Just about perfect, thankyou"

I do a full image with Macrium every month and differentials about every other day. If I need to restore an image, should I restore the monthly followed by the latest differential? Is that correct?

EDITOR'S NOTE: That is correct.

What about cloning? Also if the image is created and the hard drive does die, how does on restore the image back?

EDITOR'S NOTE: Install a new hard drive, then boot from the Restore Disk created by your backup program.

I have been a long time user of Macrium Reflect and have always been satisfied. It is easy to use and is priced right (free).

All good advice, Bob, thanks.
It's worth noting that folks ought to run their anti-malware programs through their computer before creating a back-up, otherwise any nasties on the computer will be replicated on the back-up.
Also, I unplug the back-up drive when it's done, otherwise subsequent nasties which may arrive on the computer may find their way across to the back-up drive.

Or as I like to put it: An unverified backup is NOT a backup, it is a waste of time. I use the paid version of Reflect because I was on RAID0 and needed to go back to a single drive and the paid version will do it. Since once purchased it is forever I still have Pro. Free is great as long as you don't ever change hardware (parameters).

I know many say AOMEI Backupper does image back up. But I just can not figure out how. I only see the ability to clone from one disk to another when using the live disk version.

Not mentioned is Clonezilla which is freeware. Also, my favorite is ReDo, however, it is no longer supported. Latest unofficial version is dated February 2016.

Great article Bob. Very thorough...much appreciated. One question though...if you do an image once a week, your external hard drive will become filled. Do you have a recommendation re which previous images should be deleted in order to maintain an adequate amount of space on that external hard drive?

EDITOR'S NOTE: It depends on how often your data changes. Personally, I keep three weeks of image backups. You might choose to keep one from the first week of each month, for 3, 6 or 12 months. Macrium's paid version has the option to manage your backups, deleting old ones on the schedule you choose.

Nice for windows, but what about those of us that don't like windows and use Linux (Mint 18.1 cinnamon for me)

I dunno. I kind of like the idea of a fresh, clean install of everything. All the Windows updates would be a pain, but worth it. Plus It's a good time to reevaluate all the other programs. Do you really need to reinstall all of them? I certainly don't use a backup when I get a new computer, just copy over my data files (and that's usually a good time to purge a bunch of those, as well.) I speaking strictly as a home user. A work computer may be a different kettle of fish.

Every morning at 3 AM my Win 10 computer backs up my D data drive and my E photos drive to my external hard drive using a small program called "Second Copy" which I have utilized for about 10 years.I can easily view the contents of that backup with windows explorer or Directory Opus. Never a glitch in all that time.

Bob - I have been a reader since Tourbus days and am very grateful for your work. I am, however, on a Mac platform - so an occasional tip of the hat to us Mac users on topics like this would be appreciated. I do realize we are in the minority and, perhaps, the time for you to get up to speed on Mac versions of your recommendations makes it impossible. However, in places where platform specificity is not necessary, it would be helpful. So, for example, in this post, Time Machine continues to work wonderfully for just what you describe.

Every time I use “Backup and Restore (Windows 7).” it runs for a while then crashes, I currently have 364 Gigs on my current back-up file and can not delete those files either.
For some goofy reason when I installed my new printer it renamed all my drive letters and created just as many "Printer" named drives using the old drive letters. This caused my normal backups to be saved to my own Drive "C"
Where are they stored so I can manually delete them?
(I have redirected my backups the the new changed drive lettered drive)

Bob
What about iDrive which you recommended in December? It has a 'Disk Image Backup' feature on its control panel.

1 Have you tried and tested this Bob? and
2 Can you recommend that feature?
3 Am I correct in assuming that one could boot from a memory stick with a disk image of drive C backed up on it?.

EDITOR'S NOTE: I've tried the IDrive Disk Image option, and it seems to work fine. As for your point (3), no, you will need a bootable rescue disk, created by your backup program.

Paul,

Macrium will do that for you. You chose the date of the backup you want restored, and Macrium will know that if it's a differential that was made at that date, it has to append it to the relevant full image.

Ditto with incrementals : chose one to restore from, and Macrium will automatically pick up the whole chain of incrementals, up to the original full image they were added to.

That's the beauty of letting Macrium attach those rather ugly-looking and undecipherable file names on its backups.

To Mike Davies' point, if you leave your external backup drive - or network drive - connected and then get struck by Ransomware, the "nasty" may encrypt your backup drive and render it useless.

I have been an Acronis user, going all the way back to when... dinosaurs roamed the earth. Every few months, I image the WinOS drive in totality (not 'incremental'). But then again, I have also learned a long time ago to never keep user data in the same drive as the OS data. Then, the need for 'user data' archiving becomes a simple task of copying the data rather having to image the 2nd drive (not just a 2nd partition) the user data occupies. Price of an extra HDD certainly is worth the separation of Church (OS) and State (User Data). Loss of either drive is readily replaceable but keeping them in the same drive could (*and has) create irreparable damage to user data.
Just a few days ago, my Win10Pro started having taskbar lock-up (almost like a BSOD), right click context menu hanging and “User Profile Service” lock-up during log-off and/or Restart. After a few hours of investigations, I just pulled out the 2017/01 Acronis image of the WinOS and in 22 minute, I was up and running without any loss of current user data or going thru daily/weekly back up rituals.

When Macrium is updated should a new rescue disk be created?

Windows native system image backup is reliable and easy to use. I've made and used a lot of Windows native system image backups and and have not had any issues.

Well I do need a good system imaging program. I went to the home site of Macrium But it wont let me down load the free version,seem not nice. Thanks for the advise anyway.Guess will just have to muddle along on my own. Do keep up the good advice.