May I suggest that PC users establish a data backup plan? Updated Version!

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41

Backup

My PC has:
1TB M2 NVMe SSD - Samsung 990
1TB M2 NVMe SSD - Intel 665p
4TB M2 NVMe SSD - Samsung 990 PRO
Windows 11 Pro , Office 365, Chrome Browser, FS2020, & FS2024

Around 3.2 GB free of 6 GB of storage
= 2.8 GB used

4 TB Backup drive - Western Digital Passport HDD
Full Backup = 842 GB - AOMEI Backup Software

I have been using Acronis True Image Backup Software
and liked it better but got tired of the needing to upgrade
at additional cost.

AOMEI is a lifetime purchase.

Note: The Acronis backup size was about the same.

Also, I used to use a 1TB Backup drive but wanted to keep 2 copies of the backup. One current and one previous.

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42

I had forgotten all about the WD backup. Thanks for the post.

The only requirement for the program to work is to have an installed WD product. HD or SSD. Since I have a WD HD, the program installed.

I have looked through it and will backup tomorrow. I might ditch Paragon in favor of Acronis True Image.

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43

I can only speak about Macrium.

  • You just have to format the drive NTFS as usual.
  • You set up a schedule in Macrium (including retention rules.) It’s a little confusing at first, but there are YouTube videos that explain it pretty well.
  • Macrium has an option to create a bootable image that gives you access to the backups. It can be on a USB drive, or as a boot option before Windows gets loaded. I use the latter. When I start the system it goes through the BIOS, then I see two options:
  1. Start Windows 11
  2. Start Macrium Reflect
    From there it simply launches Reflect and I choose the image I want to restore, be it one of the Full, Differential, or Incremental backups. Sometimes an Incremental restore is all you need.

For the backup drives, I have one for my C: drive, and one for my D: drive. All the backups could be on a single drive with enough space. Keep in mind that backup images are compressed - it’s not a 1-to-1 file size. Full backups are fairly large, but Differentials and Incrementals are much smaller. I use a 1TB drive to backup my 500GB C: drive, and a 4TB drive to backup my 4TB D: drive.

Hope this helps to demystify things a bit.

45

I forgot to come back and let you know I ditched Paragon in favor of
Acronis True Image. Both are free and good but I like Acronis better. It has more features and backups take less time. So thanks again!

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46

A neat feature of the Acronis True Image backup is that you can access the backup with File Explorer and use it like normal storage.

Like for my UserCfg,opt file in FS2024, I can:

  1. access it with File Explorer on the backup drive
  2. copy it
  3. and replace the file on my regular drive.

Other backup programs only allow you to restore the backup.

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47

I didn’t know the backup file could be accessed directly with File Explorer. I thought the only way the files could be accessed is by first opening Acronis and accessing them that way. Nice tip. I tried it and it works like a charm. Thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

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