Windows 10 backup

[dkandcar]

What is the best and/or fastest way to back up my Windows 10 computer. The control panel shows a backup program with the wording "windows 7". When I activate it, the backup process takes 12 hours or more. My hard drive is 289GB with about 40 GB free, and I would be backing up to a Seagate drive of 1.9 TB, mostly empty.
Dick

 

[Tim Locke]

The free version of Macrium Reflect or one of the other backup programs... there are several that are good. Paragon I think still exists.

 

[Clintlgm]

The free version of Macrium Reflect or one of the other backup programs... there are several that are good. Paragon I think still exists.

I'll second that Macrium Reflect The free version handles most peoples needs. You can Manually Create Drive Images and Clone from Disk/SSD to Disk/SSD and manually create Differential back up. The Paid for version allows Scheduling backups and Incremental backups and support.

 

[dkandcar]

Thank you everybody for your input. I'll probably try Macrium, but first I'll manually back up files myself.
Dick Anderson

 

[davehc]

I have tried several of the freebies, over the past years. I did have Acronis, which is not free, but I felt it was a bit long in the tooth. Macrium is good, but it comes down to how many bells and whistles you want - they all work as promised.
I did fine EususToDo. was one of the most straight forward efforts.

 

[BigFeet]

AOMEI Backupper is also a good one. The free version works fine for backups. But Macrium seems to be the go to.

 

[Saltgrass]

When I activate it, the backup process takes 12 hours or more.

Just for info, a normal Image backup will take around 30 minutes. If it is taking longer, the file transfer may be slow or there is something on the drive which takes extra processing power.

Since you don't say what type of system you have, it may be the processor is slow or busy doing something else. Are you showing many folders on your system with double blue arrows? Since you drive is so full, it may be taking extra time to create the shadow copies it needs.

 

[davehc]

I guess it depends on the size of the OS, including your own third party installations. In my circle, they are all average users - no heavy game players. Creating an image, including the boot up time, never exceeds 15 minutes.
12 hours though, definitely indicates a fault in the system.
But when I read the op, it is obviously referring to the MS built in backup. Maybe that is slower. I have no experience with it

 

[Clintlgm]

Thank you everybody for your input. I'll probably try Macrium, but first I'll manually back up files myself.
Dick Anderson

300GB Plus will take a very long time to manually back up. and you'll probably end up with errors causing restarts. Images are much quicker and much more reliable. Window Back up has been depreciated in 1093, and good riddance since it has been very unreliable for the last few years. I would make an image of everything with MR you can restore individual files and folder extracted from the image. The with the paid version you can make file and folder backups. As stated earlier a Drive image takes about 15 to 30 minutes and is very reliable and it you use Verification which you should that will take another 10 to 15 minutes with the amount of Data you're dealing with.