Backup question

[arleetel]

After the Ccleaner incident I decided to backup my system

but I have a small SSD drive (120 GB)with only the operating system on it (windows 7 Home premium)

All my software is installed on the 1,81 TB HDD drive.

Used Easeus and did a system backup (C:\ only)but I’m afraid that if I have to restore the system it will not really work and I will have to reinstall all my software.

I already have a copy of all software setup, downloads, documents, pictures, videos etc... on an external HD.

 

On the laptop the SSD drive is 256 GB with windows 10 as O/S and only a few programs are installed on the HDD and reinstalling them would not be much work.

For this one I used Aomei free and did a system backup (C:\ only)

I suppose this will work to reset the system.

Need some advice here.

Thanks in advance.

 

[AdvancedSetup]

Yes, it would work if it were a full image backup of the C: volume and the C: drive failed. However over time that image would get dated and not work quite as well as expected as new software was add/removed/changed. You'd need to either use one that deals with Delta changes like Snapshots, or do another full image every so often. Though the Delta snapshot methods do work in general I'm not 100% comfortable trusting them myself as it only takes one corrupt delta copy to make the entire restore fail. Myself I'd use a full image and keep a couple of them.

Also, if you have time and a drive to test with, test it out and make sure the restore does work. Don't want to go for a year or two and then when you need it most, find out it didn't work.

Thanks @arleetel

Edited October 2, 2017 by AdvancedSetup

[arleetel]

Thanks for your reply.

I will make a full image and hopefully I will never need it and no I have no drive to test it on.

[AdvancedSetup]

Okay, sounds good.

In case needed:

Backup Software

Cheers

Ron