Windows 7 End of Life Announcement

[Milkfloat]

I am not really a fan of Windows 10 backup - I just keep all my files on OneDrive, with a weekly backup to a hard drive. I prefer to see my files and have portability in a disaster.

Regarding UAC, the short description should be - you get a pop up asking if you really want to allow the process to do something that requires an admin account.

 

[MontyVeda]

Anyone having problems with W10 backups? I've got someone on the W10 forum warning me off because they're a load of trouble.


I just got more and more confused trying to read up on this, so in the end I just gave up and registered a new email address for the user account. I didn't really want another email account given the choice, but going down a road I don't fully understand seems like a recipe for problems in the future.

I don't really see the point of backups... all my important stuff is stored on external drives and as a whole, it's all too big to backup anyway.

 

[ColinJ]

I don't really see the point of backups... all my important stuff is stored on external drives and as a whole, it's all too big to backup anyway.

"If it is worth doing, it is worth backing up!"

I have witnessed several colleagues go ashen-faced when their non-backed-up hard drives failed. One had to go to our departmental manager and explain that he had just lost the mission-critical report that he had spent a year writing (at a cost of £20,000+)! Let's just say that the meeting did not go well...

I remember another example of a dead HDD. The company sent the drive to a specialist who disassembled the drive in a 'clean room' and rebuilt it. I think they managed to salvage most of the data off that one but it caused several weeks delay to the project and cost thousands of pounds to sort out.

Every now and then I backup my entire SSD to an external USB hard drive. I backup my documents folder daily to USB flash sticks, alternating between two so if one of those fails as well as the drive in my laptop, I still have a one day old backup.

It is advisable to keep offsite backups too in case of fire/theft - you could easily lose the backups as well as the originals if they are stored in the same place. I have left flash drives with a friend elsewhere. I will probably start backing up to OneDrive too.

 

[MontyVeda]

"If it is worth doing, it is worth backing up!"

I have witnessed several colleagues go ashen-faced when their non-backed-up hard drives failed. One had to go to our departmental manager and explain that he had just lost the mission-critical report that he had spent a year writing (at a cost of £20,000+)! Let's just say that the meeting did not go well...

I remember another example of a dead HDD. The company sent the drive to a specialist who disassembled the drive in a 'clean room' and rebuilt it. I think they managed to salvage most of the data off that one but it caused several weeks delay to the project and cost thousands of pounds to sort out.

Every now and then I backup my entire SSD to an external USB hard drive. I backup my documents folder daily to USB flash sticks, alternating between two so if one of those fails as well as the drive in my laptop, I still have a one day old backup.

It is advisable to keep offsite backups too in case of fire/theft - you could easily lose the backups as well as the originals if they are stored in the same place. I have left flash drives with a friend elsewhere. I will probably start backing up to OneDrive too.

yeah but... I'm talking of four external drives of music, movies and TV shows currently equalling around 6TB of data... which is why i said as a whole, it's all too big to back up anyway. Backing up huge external drives to more external drives is a bit daft. It's like putting my entire vinyl collection (currently around 1300 LPs) on tape... just in case.

 

[ColinJ]

yeah but... I'm talking of four external drives of music, movies and TV shows currently equalling around 6TB of data... which is why i said as a whole, it's all too big to back up anyway. Backing up huge external drives to more external drives is a bit daft. It's like putting my entire vinyl collection (currently around 1300 LPs) on tape... just in case.

Oh, that kind of thing - maybe not!

I was thinking in terms of work. If I record my own music or videos (I do intend to), I will definitely backup those files no matter how big they are!

 

[Mart44]

I keep a disk image of the entire Windows 10 system. I have used 'Backup and Restore (Windows 7)' for this in the past a good number of times and it has always been OK. I haven't used it for a while but as far as I know, nothing has been done to stop it working. It's just a bit old now and might disappear in a future update.

These days, I use EaseUS ToDo (paid version) on one computer and Macrium Reflect (free version) on another. Both do the job. I have needed to write the image back to the C: drive with EaseUS and all worked well. Certainly a lot quicker than reinstalling everything and setting things up again. I haven't needed to write the image back with Macrium yet but I'd hope it will be OK if do.

Files such as documents and photos are backed up individually too ..and in number of places.

 

[Milkfloat]

yeah but... I'm talking of four external drives of music, movies and TV shows currently equalling around 6TB of data... which is why i said as a whole, it's all too big to back up anyway. Backing up huge external drives to more external drives is a bit daft. It's like putting my entire vinyl collection (currently around 1300 LPs) on tape... just in case.

If you really want everything then look at Amazon storage, a I think I pay about 75p a month for 20TB of slow storage. I would however question if you really want to backup everything.

 

[MontyVeda]

If you really want everything then look at Amazon storage, a I think I pay about 75p a month for 20TB of slow storage. I would however question if you really want to backup everything.

I can imagine the joy watching all that lot upload ... i mean