The Proper Way To Backup Windows 10 When It Goes Kaput

[ARNKUSA]

Go easy on me here guys. I thought I'd get with the times and update to Windows 10 from a relatively stable Windows 7. It seemed great until things spiraled into chaos and finally ended with a blank screen and a flashing dash. Meaning, I had no way of accessing any recovery utilities (that I know of). This after configuring the setup and installing all of my applications. I had to restart from scratch with Windows 7 Home Premium.

So my question is, what does one do to backup & restore a PC when you can't access any restoration tools, drives, or disks. Furthermore, how do you backup everything to an image so that you have very little downtime. I'd like to make a backup every day and have a way to revert it in case of a disaster.

Is there a way to handle this without physically making recovery discs every day?

Just a few things about my setup:

I've installed Windows to an SSD drive. I have another 2TB Seagate HDD. I have two external hard drives I can use to backup an image, but how are these images accessed in the case of a major crash? That's what confuses me. Should they be burned to a bootable DVD from another computer? Would it be a matter of taking the image to another computer and burning it to disc and then inserting the disc into the trashed computer?

What's the best thing to do here? Cause I can't afford the time lost! Appreciate any help or guidance.

 

[Aaron Reinhard]

First of all, kudos for installing Windows on an SSD. That is already a HUGE step into the 21st century. Not to mention it will GREATLY reduce the likelihood of another system crash. My first question is: Besides your O/S, are you installing other programs and such on the SSD as well or have you installed them onto your HDD?

As far as recovery utilities, I HIGHLY recommend the freeware boot utility called Hiren. (You can google Hiren to find the website to download and burn to a bootable CD) I cannot tell you how many times this utility has gotten me out of a pickle. I could spend hours bragging about it. A little research on Hiren will open many doors whenever data is "lost" and needs to be recovered.

As far as backing up your data, I personally use Macrium Reflect Free. It can backup to image files and it can clone whole drives, depending on your need. You can also set up a schedule for automatic backup.

With your current setup, there are quite a few ways to accomplish your mission. Let me know what progress you've made so far as I would be happy to answer any further questions that you might have.

 

[ARNKUSA]

First of all, kudos for installing Windows on an SSD. That is already a HUGE step into the 21st century. Not to mention it will GREATLY reduce the likelihood of another system crash. My first question is: Besides your O/S, are you installing other programs and such on the SSD as well or have you installed them onto your HDD?

As far as recovery utilities, I HIGHLY recommend the freeware boot utility called Hiren. (You can google Hiren to find the website to download and burn to a bootable CD) I cannot tell you how many times this utility has gotten me out of a pickle. I could spend hours bragging about it. A little research on Hiren will open many doors whenever data is "lost" and needs to be recovered.

Thanks for your reply, yes I'm trying to keep the program files on the SSD and additional content that might go with those programs on another 2TB HDD I have installed. I plan on cloning the SSD to an additional SSD drive I have ready to install. I'll check out Hiren, but I've had some success with AOMEI, for some reason Macrium always fails when checking the backup for accuracy so I've had trouble trusting it. I bounce back and forth between AOMEI and EaseUS ToDO.

 

[ssal]

Go easy on me here guys. I thought I'd get with the times and update to Windows 10 from a relatively stable Windows 7. It seemed great until things spiraled into chaos and finally ended with a blank screen and a flashing dash. Meaning, I had no way of accessing any recovery utilities (that I know of). This after configuring the setup and installing all of my applications. I had to restart from scratch with Windows 7 Home Premium.

So my question is, what does one do to backup & restore a PC when you can't access any restoration tools, drives, or disks. Furthermore, how do you backup everything to an image so that you have very little downtime. I'd like to make a backup every day and have a way to revert it in case of a disaster.

Is there a way to handle this without physically making recovery discs every day?

Just a few things about my setup:

I've installed Windows to an SSD drive. I have another 2TB Seagate HDD. I have two external hard drives I can use to backup an image, but how are these images accessed in the case of a major crash? That's what confuses me. Should they be burned to a bootable DVD from another computer? Would it be a matter of taking the image to another computer and burning it to disc and then inserting the disc into the trashed computer?

What's the best thing to do here? Cause I can't afford the time lost! Appreciate any help or guidance.

Since I learned how to use Macrium Reflect Free to clone my disk for switching over to SSD, I learned a lot about Reflect. For me, I think it is the best backup you can have, in conjunction with File History (Windows 10). I have an external 5TB HHD attached and schedule my File History backup of my mission critical files incrementally. Once every other week, I use REFLECT to image the SSD (system and whatever is on drive C. I created a boot media with my UBS and tested it a few times to make sure it work.

When my computer crashed, like a major virus attacked, I booted it up with my USB boot device and restore the image from the external HHD. Then I reload the lates copy of the data (from FileHistory), and I will be whole.

Looks like you have enough of the hard drives attached to this machine to do this.

 

[strollin]

First of all, the time to backup your system is BEFORE it crashes, not after.

Pretty much all backup programs provide a way to make a boot disk which will allow you to boot from that disk in order to run software to restore your backup. That boot disk might be a CD/DVD or a USB stick.

As suggested, Macrium Reflect Free is a good one to get. Use it to create a system image of your machine then make sure you create boot media that can be used to boot the machine after a catastrophic failure.