SOLVED Back up

[Iceboy]

When and how many times should you back your pc?..and if you have to fix windows if you a problem and you used your back up, would this take you back to the problem again or is back up a term of backing up your files etc?.

 

[Tim Locke]

I use Reflect and have a script to do a full backup every week on Monday ( before the usual patch Tuesday) and incremental every other day. I do an extra full backup before and after a new version. I redo the boot thumb drive when Reflect suggests it.

 

[Iceboy]

What do you back up to, another hard drive or usb?

 

[Bastet]

I use Macrium Home & follow the Grandfather, Father & Son backup - Full backup 1st every month, Differential backup every Monday & Incremental backups Tuesday - Friday.
I have a 5Tb external hard drive to hold these backups & the File History backups.

 

[Iceboy]

Thanks for that

 

[Tim Locke]

External 2GB USB3 hard drive. I have considered up to a 5 GB drive.

 

[Grizzly]

File backup every day on another internal HDD on my laptop (have two HDD's in there instead of a ODD). weekly file backups on two different external HDD's. Every other week PC image with Acronis onto an external HDD (just the system partition, not the data partition).
has worked for me so far. In between the images full data backup onto a networked PC that I run purely for storage (it has about 10 TB of storage space, but I need to upgrade some drives as they run out of space)

 

[Iceboy]

So a 32gb USB stick would do it then really unless you do a lot of work on your pc?. Thanks everyone

 

[Bastet]

How big is the hard drive which you’re backing up?
I doubt a 32Gb USB stick would be big enough for Macrium but would be OK for File History maybe.
I would consider a backup drive at least twice the size of your Windows drive.

 

[Iceboy]

1gb

 

[Grizzly]

1gb

1GB??

If you only back up your own files, then it probably would be enough, for a whole system you need something in the 500GB or greater range (depending on how full you drive actually is).
My backup drives are not less than 2TB (cause I do not want to run out of space for some time)

 

[Iceboy]

Meant 1tb

 

[Iceboy]

Surely if you keep backing up, it would replace the last back up with the new one?.

 

[Bastet]

Not with Macrium no, it will create a 00-00 full backup then add to this - 01-01 etc.
On the next full backup it will start again with 00-00 but will not delete the previous backup unless you manually do this.
Hence why you require a large external hard drive.

 

[davehc]

You can always delete earlier backups, when you are totally satisfied later updates/installations are working.
I keep an original fresh installation backup, and then the last two. Works for me.

 

[Iceboy]

Thanks for this, I can see the importance of backing up, it was the keeping of past backups. A couple yes, but not all.