I had a near catastrophe way back in the 90ās when a HDD crashed. I was lucky to be able to recover virtually all of the important material. That stuck. Iāve used a variety of software since. Iāve used those I mentioned for at least ten years and have been happy. Never had a hardware failure that caused much anguish since.
Great that you got it back! Time stands still when you get a computer crash. Itās like tomorrow will never come.
Cloning is good to do to. PC crashesā¦grab the clone, insert clone into different PC and back to normal. But with cloning, I have a feeling one might have to do a reinstall anyways. Backing up seems to be more of a chore these days. Easy but not easy.
Looks like youāre ready for doomsday! Donāt mean to go off topic but I like their website layout! Easy on the eyes with nice hues. Not too overly complicated. Wow one of the best site layout Iāve seen. Everything just links up smoothly. Click pretty link on left and results show up on the right. All on one page. This is how a site should be.
Iām using Macrium Reflect Free. Works nicely, backing up the system SSD 3-4 times pr year. I use ViceVersa, for documents and other data files, backing up each day, or with any major change. Please let me know if there is a good free alternative to ViceVersa. Else I think it is worth the money.
Many thanks for all the input from everyone. I was then able to finally make a choice! It was tough the last few hours deciding.
Iāve decided to use FreeFileSync. Itās open source and ad free. Plus itās got that nifty parallel file transfer tech. Letās just hope I donāt have to reinstall.
I like Paragon for Image BU. But others are acceptable.
Years ago Acronis had verify problems. And instead of addressing the problem, they just deleted the hundreds of negative posts on the forum. Thatās why I stopped recommending it. But that was decades ago.
I donāt think you can do better than Syncback for file type backups.
Iāve had clients on Syncback for decades without a problem.
Very customizable if you want to get complected. Yet easy on the basic level once you get the hang of it.
Even the free version is adequate for most. I use the free version to copy huge folders or zillions of files.
I donāt trust Windows all that much for big transfers. For example, Windows is not really happy with the Quickbooks file naming conventions and often kicks out a duplicate file message. Syncback doesnāt have a problem.
A hint, when doing a backup, open up the task manager and watch the disk windows. Wait till things settle down after a big job before getting frisky with the power button. The destination disk is often still chugging away after the software thinks the job is finished.
All the Best,
Jeff
I donāt do backups, at least not like this. Precious stuff (photoās, documents etc) are all manually put on at least 2 different drives, the photoās go online storage too.
After many years of computing Iāve come to the conclusion that when windows breaks, to the point itās playing up, then itās time for a fresh install anyway. Little point in restoring a 3+ year old windows installation that is fractured anyway, you are just restoring more trouble for the future and likely itās performing less well than it should. Windows 10 has made me a bit lazy in this respect, it is so reliable (from my point of view) compared to previous versions - having had pcās ranging from windows 95 and every version since, I have never had windows 10 crash on me once, at least not like the older ones used to which were usually fatal.
Obviously drives breaking etc is not included in that, but like I said above, those precious things are already double backed up.
Iāve been doing block level backups to a NAS using Veeam for years. Never had an issue, just make sure you have the restore media created beforehand.
Oh, and be sure to to test restores from time to time.
Yaā never know when something decides to go sideways.
Be sure to make archive copies so there are older intact backups sets just in case the worst happens as in:
Current file system /or files somehow get corrupted. Then the backup software happily copies the corrupt files over the good set.
After all, itās only doing what you told it to do.
Iām also a believer in offline storage of backup sets. Have a few external HDs to make or copy backups sets to. After the backup is done. Unplug that sucker and malware will have a hard time jumping the air gap.
All the Best,
Jeff
Hey good tips again! Iām getting vibes now that maybeā¦
Group 1) People donāt care about the actual program but care a lot about their personal data (photos, files etc)
Group 2) People care about their installed programs and data.
So that means, if you belong to Group 1, then just do cloud or local backup. if you belong to group 2, then clone,local and data backups?
Either way, looks like one will be needing some time for sure! Easy but not easy!
STEP 1
1) Alternative backups to cloud
2) Alternative backups to local
3) Alternative backups to clone
4) All of the above
To Clone or not to Clone?
On the systems I use for surfing or donāt have much in the way of software installed, I donāt bother to Clone. Just do the data. If it craps the bed, a fresh install, add a few open source software packages and my fav utilities and Iām ready to go.
On my main system with lots of paid for software that need activation and have defaults set to what I want and would be a major pain to get back to the ideal setup? A fresh install is an all day affair. Time to Clone.
All the Best,
Jeff
That pretty much sums it up for me too. If you have more than one or two extra pieces of software added to the basic OS re-installling all that is too much work.
Yeah that way works real good. Iām gonna go data and clone. Seems the more sensible way to approach. But first, I think Iāll try the OneDrive cloud way first like zoulas mentioned already. Then if it works out Iāll have 3 backups now!
OneDrive works. I use it as a place to auto upload my phone camera pictures to and have certain frequently used files available without filling up the phone storage. One may find there is insufficient space unless they buy a subscription. Depends on how much āstuffā you have collected.