# Backup and Restore



## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

"Backup and Restore" makes a reference to "Windows 7." This suggests there is a different way to make drive backups. Is there?


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Of course there is, third party backup and restore suites, and that's what Microsoft has been officially recommending you use since Version 1709, when they deprecated the core component of their very old (hence the Windows 7 designation) built-in utility, which was never the best option to begin with:

Microsoft Announcement of Deprecated Features, including SIB [Backup and Restore (Windows 7)]

I certainly wouldn't want to wake up one morning after a Windows Update to find that the utility I'd been using to take backups no longer exists, and eventually that will happen.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

I never used it until I had more than one system to back up. I have a lifetime license for _Acronis TrueImage 2018_. This is only for one machine. I have a support account with them. I think I will contact them about adding on. I have used it, in several forms, since 2009. It has always done an excellent job.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Acronis is an excellent product but, as you noted, it does not have a free version.

If they will not allow you to get a multi-machine license extension, or the cost is too high, there are scads of alternatives that can be had at no cost provided one is backing up a personal (as in non-business-use) computer.

EaseUS To Do Backup, Paragon, and Macrium Reflect (and plenty of others) have free backup and recovery suites for non-commercial use.

My personal experience is that once you've used one, using any other is pretty much a piece of cake.


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## thomasjk (Feb 8, 2006)

FYI.
The most current production version on True Image is 2020. A beta test is currently ongoing for TI 2021.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

> Acronis is an excellent product but, as you noted, it does not have a free version.


Acronis has a 30 day trial version you can download for free https://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomputing/thanks/acronis-true-image-2020/
When you buy a new SSD drive, it usually comes with a link to Acronis True Image version for that manufacturer like the WD Free Edition  These versions are limited to one machine use and other restrictions that the paid version does not have.


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## thomasjk (Feb 8, 2006)

spunk.funk said:


> Acronis has a 30 day trial version you can download for free https://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomputing/thanks/acronis-true-image-2020/
> When you buy a new SSD drive, it usually comes with a link to Acronis True Image version for that manufacturer like the WD Free Edition  These versions are limited to one machine use and other restrictions that the paid version does not have.


The Acronis versions that come with various hard drives are also usually several versions down level from the current full version.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

I am just pointing out that there are free versions. To do what the OP wants, he will need to get the most recent paid version.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

thomasjk said:


> The Acronis versions that come with various hard drives are also usually several versions down level from the current full version.


You mean SSDs, not hard drives, right?


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## louwin (Jan 3, 2010)

I totally disagree! System Image is the BEST backup in my book. I've been using it for YEARS every week or ten days. I've had to restore an image 4 times in the last 20 years!
PERFECT! I don't care what the "doom and gloom" people say! I'm on Windows 10 Pro 64bit and wouldn't use any thing else!!!!


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

louwin said:


> I totally disagree! System Image is the BEST backup in my book. I've been using it for YEARS every week or ten days. I've had to restore an image 4 times in the last 20 years!
> PERFECT! I don't care what the "doom and gloom" people say! I'm on Windows 10 Pro 64bit and wouldn't use any thing else!!!!


What exactly are you disagreeing with?


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## thomasjk (Feb 8, 2006)

Stancestans said:


> You mean SSDs, not hard drives, right?


Acronis has been included with both Hdd's and SSD's. Since the discussion is about an SSD I should have said SSD.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Stancestans said:


> What exactly are you disagreeing with?


I think he's saying he believes in the built in Backup & Restore (Windows7) and doesn't need Acronis or others.


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## louwin (Jan 3, 2010)

Stancestans said:


> What exactly are you disagreeing with?


All the comments saying the System Image is inferior to Acronis and every other expensive backup App?


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

I contacted a rep on Acronis' support forum. There is a feature in TrueImage which can be used to create a bootable rescue media on a compact disc. The rep basically said I could use this CD on any machine I wanted to. The OS on the disc is Windows PE. Since I made the one I have on my Windows 10 desktop, it takes on that appearance. On the CD is the backup and restore utilities. I have used it in the past to create hard drive images of other machines on an external USB hard drive. TrueImage is not very good at creating file names so I change them to be unique to each system.

I replied to the rep that there are times when the media CD fails to start properly. They track usage by private IP addresses. It also could be that if it is unable to make an internet connection, it might or would refuse to start. I seem to remember a set of generic network drivers being a part of creating the backup CD, but I am not sure.

I went over everything in the above paragraph in my reply to the rep. Now, I will wait and see what his reply will be.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

louwin said:


> All the comments saying the System Image is inferior to Acronis and every other expensive backup App?


Free is not expensive. I've already given a short list of backup and recovery suites that are available at no cost for non-commercial use. There are plenty of others.

Microsoft has deprecated that utility and been advising the use of third party backup and recovery applications since Version 1709. It's not really a suggestion, but a warning.

It is foolish to use a deprecated feature that could be removed at any time. It's not that it doesn't work, it's that it could be removed whenever MS sees fit, and that makes any backups you might have useless since the restore functions will be gone, too. 

A word to the wise is sufficient.


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## spunk.funk (May 13, 2010)

The feature in Acronis True Image to make a bootable CD can also make a USB Flash drive. If your CD doesn't work all the time, you will want a USB Flash Drive. Also, most new computers are no longer including CD/DVD drives. CD's can get scratched or other issues. Flash drives can be formatted and re-used.
To best way to create an image file of your system is to do it outside of Windows, so that is why you would want to boot to outside media and not the HDD to run the program to create an image. 
Your USB Flash drive or CD can be used on as many computers as you want


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

After another follow-up message from the Acronis rep, and from my own research, I learned that any Acronis version post-dating the initial release of Windows 10 will not work on a Windows 7 system. End of story. I feel this was a really bad decision on their part. I never had a Windows 10 setup which would run, without issues, until the 19xx series came out. Since, it has been smooth sailing. I completely skipped the 18xx series. I ran Windows 7 Pro x64 on my i7 desktop for 15 months.

I have four computer systems. I have been a contributor to a prime number research project since 2005. This collection consists of three desktops and one laptop. One desktop is the i7 i mentioned which runs Windows 10 Pro x64. The others, two desktops and one laptop, are all older and all run Windows 7 Pro x64. I don't use the laptop much at all. Mostly, it stays in its padded case. I have no backup drivers for this laptop so having a reliable way to restore it, if needed, is important.

With Acronis off-the-table for the Windows 7 systems, I must rely on something else. It has been the built-in backup utility up until now. I had to do a restore on one system several months ago. It worked very well. I tried another backup/restore product called "Paragon" a couple of years ago. It seemed to work alright, but I was not comfortable with it. Currently, they are nearly exclusive to business and database products.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

storm5510 said:


> After another follow-up message from the Acronis rep, and from my own research, I learned that any Acronis version post-dating the initial release of Windows 10 will not work on a Windows 7 system. End of story. I feel this was a really bad decision on their part. I never had a Windows 10 setup which would run, without issues, until the 19xx series came out. Since, it has been smooth sailing. I completely skipped the 18xx series. I ran Windows 7 Pro x64 on my i7 desktop for 15 months.
> 
> I have four computer systems. I have been a contributor to a prime number research project since 2005. This collection consists of three desktops and one laptop. One desktop is the i7 i mentioned which runs Windows 10 Pro x64. The others, two desktops and one laptop, are all older and all run Windows 7 Pro x64. I don't use the laptop much at all. Mostly, it stays in its padded case. I have no backup drivers for this laptop so having a reliable way to restore it, if needed, is important.
> 
> With Acronis off-the-table for the Windows 7 systems, I must rely on something else. It has been the built-in backup utility up until now. I had to do a restore on one system several months ago. It worked very well. I tried another backup/restore product called "Paragon" a couple of years ago. It seemed to work alright, but I was not comfortable with it. Currently, they are nearly exclusive to business and database products.


You could try the other free backup utilities on your Windows 7 computers; for example: Macrium Reflect and EaseUs To Do Backup. If the latest versions of those one don't work on Windows 7, you could use their older versions instead, specifically the last versions that supported Windows 7. This is the bane of using an unsupported OS. Over time, more and more software will follow suit and stop supporting abandoned OS.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

storm5510 said:


> I tried another backup/restore product called "Paragon" a couple of years ago. It seemed to work alright, but I was not comfortable with it. Currently, they are nearly exclusive to business and database products.


I can't, and wouldn't, attempt to speak to anyone's comfort level with any given product, as that's entirely a personal thing.

But I will say that you are incorrect about Paragon's target markets. They have produced, and continue to produce, Paragon Backup & Recovery Community Edition, which is free to use for non-commercial use in both Windows and Mac versions.

I like EaseUS To Do Backup best for those who want the simplest user interface (which is a number of my clients), but Paragon Community Edition is up there on my list for those who want more control, along with Macrium Reflect Free.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

britechguy said:


> ...I like EaseUS To Do Backup best for those who want the simplest user interface (which is a number of my clients), but Paragon Community Edition is up there on my list for those who want more control, along with Macrium Reflect Free.


One of my peeve's about Acronis is too many "bells and whistles." I only used the verification feature. I did not work the way I wished. It simply read through the backup image to see if it was correct. It did not do an actual compare with what was on the source drive.

I am going to try EasUS. I looked at the pages on their site and it seems straightforward enough, yet not an overload. When it comes to something like this, I would prefer more simple than what I have been using.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

storm5510 said:


> One of my peeve's about Acronis is too many "bells and whistles."
> .
> .
> .
> I am going to try EasUS. I looked at the pages on their site and it seems straightforward enough, yet not an overload. When it comes to something like this, I would prefer more simple than what I have been using.


I believe you will like EaseUs To Do Backup Free if simplicity of use and user interface is high on your list.

I know exactly where you're coming from on the "too many 'bells and whistles'" front. For most users (and I include myself) I want a backup that's simple to set up and forget, other than my having to run it on a routine basis. In this day and age of ransomware, I do not ever keep a backup drive connected to any computer unless I'm in the process of taking a backup or doing a restore. The last thing you want is your backups encrypted and unusable. I know there are some backup and recovery suites that claim they will prevent this from happening, and probably do, but I do not consider it an onerous task to pull a usb connector, and it's absolute insurance, or as close as you can get.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Cloud backup is a somewhat step against Ransomware. External unplugged media is best. If a user also has an internal, changing the extension of important files is a small step, but the "bad guy" could just reformat the thing.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

I decided to go with EaseUS. Before doing so, I installed it on one of my Windows 7 machines and had it make a recovery disk ISO. The CD booted alright on that machine. I tried it on my Windows 10 system. Again, no boot problems. It took on the appearance of Windows 7, which was not an issue. So, it's installed on all four machines now and I have backups of all on the external HD.

The one caveat, for me, is the brilliant white background. It makes it difficult to see and read. Because of that, I didn't do the first backup right. I did a "disc" backup when I should have done a "system" backup. Its compression is excellent and went fast on the desktops. The laptop took more time. The Windows 7 systems seldom change so I won't need to run it on them very often. Anyone running Windows 10 knows it is in a state of flux almost on a daily basis. I always run a backup after a major update. These are the ones which a restart is required to finish. 

Acronis was not hard to uninstall, but it left a lot of footprints behind. Getting those cleaned up took some time, but I got them all.

About the external HD. I swapped the drive out with a different model. The original drive in the enclosure was a WD Green 500 GB. I have a utility called _CrystalDiskInfo_. It displays all the SMART data in a somewhat easier to understand format. It reported that drive had one reallocated sector. This was a red-flag to me. It didn't have a hundred hours on it yet. I replaced it with a 1TB WD Blue which I had stored away. It didn't have any problems of this type and I had used it on-and-off for several years.

I am considering getting a large capacity USB Sandisk. I can get a 250GB for about $35 USD. I could run the backups directly onto it, and then copy them to the external HD. I am a big believer in redundancy.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

Redundancy is good.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Stancestans said:


> Redundancy is good.


Very good.

That being said, if you're taking backups on removable media (and a USB backup drive is removable), and storing copies on more than one device, at least one of those devices should ideally be stored somewhere that the computer, the source of said data, is not.

Heaven forfend one should have a fire, flood, tornado, or other calamity in one's home or office, but if you do, and all your backup media is stored there along with the source computer(s), you've then likely got nothing.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

britechguy said:


> Very good.
> 
> That being said, if you're taking backups on removable media (and a USB backup drive is removable), and storing copies on more than one device, at least one of those devices should ideally be stored somewhere that the computer, the source of said data, is not.
> 
> Heaven forfend one should have a fire, flood, tornado, or other calamity in one's home or office, but if you do, and all your backup media is stored there along with the source computer(s), you've then likely got nothing.


The reason I mention the large capacity Sandisk is that I have a safe. It is thick and heavy. It requires both a key and combination to open. It is designed to resist temperatures up to 1,200°F. It weighs over a hundred pounds so it would take a pretty powerful storm to move it very far. I keep all my important documents in it. Birth certificate, auto title, and so on. This way, I know where they are. I also keep all my OS install compact discs in it. The safe is about 1.5 cubic feet inside, so storing a standard size external HD is not really practical. Something else would have to come out, and I won't do that. The Sandisk could go into a small jar with some other things I keep in it.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

I had to go to Wally-World this morning to get Cat Levi some food. While I was there, I decided to check out their Sandisk collection. They had only one 256GB Cruzer Glide. That's what I needed.

Keeping the Sandisk updated will be a bit of a chore because the write speed is rather slow. The Windows 10 backup is 30 megabytes long. I started copying it. The status indicated it would take 1 hour and 25 minutes. To verify integrity, I wrapped the backup in an uncompressed WinRAR archive. It calculates a checkum and stores it in the archive header. I think doing this will be an evening TV watching job so I won't sit and stare at it. All three of the Windows 7 backups are far smaller. The stick had a FAT32 format. I did a quick format to NTFS. I couldn't copy anything to it with FAT32.

I nearly forgot. I put a 14" lanyard on the stick. I won't be confusing it with two other smaller capacity ones I have which look identical.


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## xrobwx71 (Oct 24, 2019)

Most "stick" drives are now formatted with exFat in which is compatible with anything and doesn't have any limitations.
I just acquired one of these and it's fast.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

xrobwx71 said:


> Most "stick" drives are now formatted with exFat in which is compatible with anything and doesn't have any limitations.
> I just acquired one of these and it's fast.


It seems that the file system format on all flash media varies widely depending on exactly who made it, when, and how long it's been sitting around on the shelf.

Most of what I've purchased recently (which is some months ago) was coming in as FAT32.

It doesn't really matter what it comes in as, since you can reformat to exFat, which is a very good idea since that can be handled by Linux, OSX, and Windows 10 (and I think 8, but I'm not sure about 7).

Personally, I do not like using flash media for any kind of important backup. It's not that I find it fails frequently, as I have ancient drives that still work fine, but when it fails it tends to fail without warning and, if any recovery is needed, it's much more difficult (you generally need a pro) compared to a good, old-fashioned spinner. I feel the same way about SSDs as backup media, too, for the same reason. I've never had a HDD fail without giving many indications that something is amiss, and usually over an extended period, before it finally croaks. Speed is not of the essence for me as far as either taking backups or performing restores, but long term stability of data and lack of unpredictable failure in the backup media are really important.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

britechguy said:


> ...Most of what I've purchased recently (which is some months ago) was coming in as FAT32.
> 
> It doesn't really matter what it comes in as, since you can reformat to exFat, which is a very good idea since that can be handled by Linux, OSX, and Windows 10 (and I think 8, but I'm not sure about 7).
> 
> Personally, I do not like using flash media for any kind of important backup. It's not that I find it fails frequently, as I have ancient drives that still work fine, but when it fails it tends to fail without warning and, if any recovery is needed, it's much more difficult (you generally need a pro) compared to a good, old-fashioned spinner. I feel the same way about SSDs as backup media, too, for the same reason. I've never had a HDD fail without giving many indications that something is amiss, and usually over an extended period, before it finally croaks. Speed is not of the essence for me as far as either taking backups or performing restores, but long term stability of data and lack of unpredictable failure in the backup media are really important.


Every stick I have ever had started out as FAT32. Some of the larger ones, I formatted. The smaller ones I left as is. I really didn't know what exFat was so I never used it. A guess is that "ex" is short for "extended."

I just formatted the 256GB stick I got yesterday as exFat using Windows 7. My Windows 10 system had no problem recognizing it when I plugged it.

I had one hard drive drop dead without warning two years ago, but it was not a typical drive. It was a portable 2.5" which got it power from the USB port. I had used it for six months. I've never gotten another. It was a Seagate. My sister has one similar which is a WD. She's never mentioned any issues with hers.

As a general rule, failing drives do so over longer periods. I had a pair of Seagate 500 MB drives which had 40,000+ hours on them. Each slowly began to accumulate reallocated sectors. I supposed it was when each had a bad sector appear in the MFT or boot area, they quit. I believe i used them about seven years. As a comparison, I have a 250 GB WD drive in my Windows 10 system which is a secondary for the SSD. It has 51,000+ hours on it. No reallocated sectors and does not run hot.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

When it comes to external HDDs, I don't touch Seagate, WD, Toshiba and Samsung built ones! I have had the highest failure rates with those brands. I haven't had the same issues with Transcend built ones since I switched over a decade ago, which do use WD blue HDDs in them. I have no problem with internal WD drives though, in fact, they are my #1 brand. Transcend's external drives have some shock-proofing which is extremely handy in external HDDs. Alternatively, you could buy a good enclosure and a 2.5" HDD then build your own custom external HDD. Enclosure options are many.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Everyone's experiences with HDDs, mixed together and taken as a whole, would probably result in them all being the same (with the exception of certain models - we all know that there have been occasional problems).

Toshibas are far and away my favorite, and I've never had an issue with a single one until they failed either from age or accident (I'm talking external here).

The Wikipedia article on HDDs is a good (long) read. But one of the key points is no matter what brand you love, several others are from the same maker. HDD manufacture is much like department stores - the May Company owns most of the names we here in the USA are familiar with. Brands were bought for their name recognition, but the entity behind several brands is the same. The Wikipedia article on the History of HDDs covers the mergers of the various makers into the current "big three" in blow-by-blow detail, with timeline.

This is the most telling bit:


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

Something I just remembered from many years ago. I bought an off-the-shelf HP from Staples in 2004. This was back in the Windows XP days. The hard drive was a Maxtor 345GB. Yes, an odd size. It had a Pentium 4 CPU.

It ran well for the first six months. I was doing a lot of video back then so the system using the swap file was common. The drive activity light would come on and stay on for several minutes at a time. At the time, I didn't think much about it.

This went on for quite a while longer. I noticed the system performance was slowing. One day I was writing a MS Word document, if memory serves. I click the save icon at the top and the screen goes black. A message: "General failure error writing to drive C:" or something similar. 

I cut the power and laid the case down on its side. I removed the side cover. The amount of heat coming out was rather amazing. I touched the hard drive and it burned my fingers. I used an oven mitt to get it out. I had to lay it in an aluminum pan on my kitchen stove. The drive had baked itself to death.

The next day I took the top cover off the drive. The spindle hub was discolored. One might think that reaching in and turning the spindle would result in it spinning a short time. In this case, about five revolutions. The spindle was too tight. So, the motor had to work harder to keep it going. Thus, the heat. I never bought another Maxtor drive. The first computer I ever bought had a Seagate drive, so that's what I went with for years.

Currently, I have seven WD drives ranging in sizes from 250GB to 2TB. How I ended up with so many, I am not sure. Two are boot drives in my Windows 7 systems. Two others are in external USB enclosures. There is one in my Windows 10 system acting as an auxiliary to the SSD. It is blank. The WD Green is a secondary in a Windows 7 system. This is the one with a reallocated sector. I suspect it came from the factory this way. I've been working it pretty hard to see if the reallocated count goes up. So far, it has not. This is probably a function of time more than anything else. I think I will let this go and remove the drive into a storage box.

Edit: All the WD drives I mentioned above are standard internals. Two have been placed in enclosures by me.


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## Sally78 (Jun 1, 2020)

Stancestans said:


> When it comes to external HDDs, I don't touch Seagate, WD, Toshiba and Samsung built ones! I have had the highest failure rates with those brands.


In my opinion,Toshiba and Samsung are doing well.


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## xrobwx71 (Oct 24, 2019)

britechguy said:


> Everyone's experiences with HDDs, mixed together and taken as a whole, would probably result in them all being the same (with the exception of certain models - we all know that there have been occasional problems).
> 
> Toshibas are far and away my favorite, and I've never had an issue with a single one until they failed either from age or accident (I'm talking external here).
> 
> ...


This is also an informative study on HDD failure rates. https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

xrobwx71 said:


> This is also an informative study on HDD failure rates. https://www.backblaze.com/b2/hard-drive-test-data.html


Years ago, manufacturers would use MTBF, (Mean Time Between Failure). That was measured in hours. Now, they use a percentage. There is an ambiguity here as I don't really know what this means or how it is applied.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

storm5510 said:


> Years ago, manufacturers would use MTBF, (Mean Time Between Failure). That was measured in hours. Now, they use a percentage. There is an ambiguity here as I don't really know what this means or how it is applied.


Hardly matters since a bad HD can be useless the first day or last 15 years.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Corday said:


> Hardly matters since a bad HD can be useless the first day or last 15 years.


Not to mention, in my experience with not only HDDs, but computers in general, if they are going to fail it will only be in the tails of their functional life: almost immediately (defective) or many years later.

It is a very rare failure at, say, 6 months to 10 years, unless something like a surge hits or you have a static discharge.

I think that one of the reasons it's so difficult to get many to understand how critical taking backups is is because HDDs became almost bulletproof over the decades. They certainly fail now at a rate and with a frequency far lower than they did in the 1980s through early 1990s. And most fail from "old age" or are defective straight out of the box.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

I am going to go off-topic here just slightly. What about SSD's? I have a Samsung EVO Plus 970 250GB in this desktop. I've seen lists of "don'ts" regarding these. Don't defrag. Don't wipe free space, and so on. I must clear the browser trash several times a week. If I didn't, all of that would simply take the device over, eventually.

I really feel Windows 10 was written to be ran from one of these. Run it from a mechanical, be prepared to wait several minutes. With the SSD, the login screen appears in just a few seconds. Complete load is less than 30 seconds.

I has functioned flawlessly since I put it in this past February.


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## Corday (Mar 3, 2010)

Please read up on the differences among Defragging, Wiping (Bleaching) and Erasing. It will help you understand what's happening.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Corday said:


> Please read up on the differences among Defragging, Wiping (Bleaching) and Erasing. It will help you understand what's happening.


Also, reading a couple of articles of the "HDD vs SSD" type will help to clear up the differences between the two and why certain practices (specifically defragging) which are needed secondary to exactly how a HDD stores and retrieves data, and which involve read/write heads seeking blocks, simply do not apply to SSDs.

I am presuming that Erasing and "Deleting everything" (or just deleting) are synonymous. It tends to be very hard to get many to understand that deleting something does not remove all traces of it, and it can be reconstructed until the space that was used to store it happens to get assigned for storing something else and is overwritten.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

britechguy said:


> Also, reading a couple of articles of the "HDD vs SSD" type will help to clear up the differences between the two and why certain practices (specifically defragging) which are needed secondary to exactly how a HDD stores and retrieves data, and which involve read/write heads seeking blocks, simply do not apply to SSDs.
> 
> I am presuming that Erasing and "Deleting everything" (or just deleting) are synonymous. It tends to be very hard to get many to understand that deleting something does not remove all traces of it, and it can be reconstructed until the space that was used to store it happens to get assigned for storing something else and is overwritten.


I found one article on PC Magazine's web site. It didn't tell me much that I didn't already know. It still made for good reading though.

There is one item I know as fact from personal experience. If a person looks at the properties of both a mechanical drive and a SSD, Most likely, the file system will be NTFS for Windows systems. Restoring a system drive image from a mechanical to a SSD does not work. I know because I tried when I installed the SSD I have now. The image was written without any problem, but the system would not boot. Just a black screen. Sector Zero? Perhaps. The boot record was probably not right. So, I had to do a quick format, and reload from scratch. I doubt there is a workaround for this as the boot record and MFT are a critical part of the image.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

storm5510 said:


> I found one article on PC Magazine's web site. It didn't tell me much that I didn't already know. It still made for good reading though.
> 
> There is one item I know as fact from personal experience. If a person looks at the properties of both a mechanical drive and a SSD, Most likely, the file system will be NTFS for Windows systems. Restoring a system drive image from a mechanical to a SSD does not work. I know because I tried when I installed the SSD I have now. The image was written without any problem, but the system would not boot. Just a black screen. Sector Zero? Perhaps. The boot record was probably not right. So, I had to do a quick format, and reload from scratch. I doubt there is a workaround for this as the boot record and MFT are a critical part of the image.


It does work, just not always. Also, it depends on how a system image is taken. Typically, a system image backup includes the Windows partition and the system partition as a minimun for Windows to boot, and even with those included, sometimes the BCD store needs to be updated to point to the right boot device. Some backup utilities have an MBR repair function to fix non-booting systems after the image restoration is complete. It has nothing to do with the drive type though (SSD vs HDD).


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

storm5510 said:


> Restoring a system drive image from a mechanical to a SSD does not work.


I'm not arguing that it didn't work for you, in this specific instance, but the blanket statement that it does not work is inaccurate.

There are very few people who have both SSDs as their primary system drive and external backup drive(s). It's common practice to take system images from SSDs to conventional HDDs, and those images can be successfully restored from.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

There is another option which may work better. Cloning. EaseUS has this option. As an experiment, I may try it. The SSD is 250GB. The standard I have in mind is 500GB. This may, or may not, pose a problem.


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## britechguy (Dec 6, 2019)

Cloning is a perfectly fine solution if you have drives to spare. You cannot use a cloned drive for anything else.

There's a very good reason that system imaging became the norm, and that's because it maximizes the storage potential for external backup drives. I have both a 2TB Toshiba Canvio and 4TB WD external backup drive, both of which are used in alternation as the backup media for 5 separate computers.

I don't have 5 drives to spare, and particularly ones that would be plug-n-play for all of the different systems (one desktop and four laptops) lying around that I could, or would, want to spare.


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## xrobwx71 (Oct 24, 2019)

Stancestans said:


> It does work, just not always. Also, it depends on how a system image is taken. Typically, a system image backup includes the Windows partition and the system partition as a minimun for Windows to boot, and even with those included, sometimes the BCD store needs to be updated to point to the right boot device. *Some backup utilities have an MBR repair function to fix non-booting systems after the image restoration is complete.* It has nothing to do with the drive type though (SSD vs HDD).


It's one of the reasons I use Macrium as it has this function and has worked for me many times in this very situation. :smile:


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## Rich-M (May 2, 2007)

thomasjk said:


> The Acronis versions that come with various hard drives are also usually several versions down level from the current full version.


Like there are such huge differences between all these Acronis versions?
As long as it works with your version of Windows, an image file is an image file. I don't use Acronis much as I prefer Macrium Reflect but when I do my 2016 does everything I could ever want it to do with Windows 10.


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

I was successfully able to clone my SSD onto a mechanical. I changed the boot order in the BIOS to attempt to boot from the mechanical. After 10+ minutes of waiting, I pressed the reset button. I used the WD Green drive. After doing some checking, I found that this particular model is designed for a CCTV security type system. I should have read the fine print before I ordered it. It worked fairly well in a USB2 external enclosure. So, it may go back to that use.

I repeated the clone experiment on a much faster WD Blue drive. SATA3, 7200 RPM. The boot was around six minutes. Too long. I've gotten use to the sub 30 seconds with the SSD. All of this is a confirmation of what I wrote earlier about MS designing later releases of Windows 10 to be ran from a SSD device.

I found something in _EaseUS_ which further sold me on it. On the main screen, it displays the current backup set. In the "Advanced" drop-down on the right side is an option, "Check Image." This is a feature _Acronis_ has. Having a backup image is useless if it will not restore properly, or boot properly when it is restored.

Something in _EaseUS_ which does not seem to be flexible. Example: If my SSD is 500 GB and my target device is 250 GB, it's no go, even if the actual amount of data on the SSD is 25 GB. _Acronis_ would do this. If my target device is larger, _EaseUS_ will create the exact partition size as the backup and leave the rest usallocated. I learned this while working with the "green" drive. It is 500 GB. 99% of the time, I would replace a failed drive with another of the same capacity.

This brings up something else. Actual drive capacities. My SSD is advertised as 250 GB. The system info says 232 GB, and 249,382,825,984 bytes. I guess Windows does some rounding as the byte value divided by the GB value does not divide evenly. If I had to replace the SSD, and I chose another brand with a slightly smaller byte count, The restore probably would not work. 

I looked at a review of _Macrium Reflect_. When I came across something which seemed to indicate that it does not create bootable partition images, I stopped reading. How accurate this is, I do not know.


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## Stancestans (Apr 26, 2009)

storm5510 said:


> I was successfully able to clone my SSD onto a mechanical. I changed the boot order in the BIOS to attempt to boot from the mechanical. After 10+ minutes of waiting, I pressed the reset button. I used the WD Green drive. After doing some checking, I found that this particular model is designed for a CCTV security type system. I should have read the fine print before I ordered it. It worked fairly well in a USB2 external enclosure. So, it may go back to that use.
> 
> I repeated the clone experiment on a much faster WD Blue drive. SATA3, 7200 RPM. The boot was around six minutes. Too long. I've gotten use to the sub 30 seconds with the SSD. All of this is a confirmation of what I wrote earlier about MS designing later releases of Windows 10 to be ran from a SSD device.
> 
> ...


Six minutes is too long even for an HDD. Before I switched to an SSD on my 2013 (3rd gen) ProBook, i used to get about 2 minutes, from power button press to idling on the desktop, and that was on a WD Blue 5400rpm drive. A link to that review would be helpful in vetting that claim. If you image the Windows partition only, then that system won't boot until further action is taken to create a system partition and populate it with the necessary boot configuration data. In other words, on a typical Windows installation, you need not just the Windows partition, but the system partition as well. The system image backup option in most backup software is meant to automatically identify the Windows partitition and the system partition and select them for imaging, so that less advanced user wouldn't face the hassle of figuring out which partitions should be imaged to ensure the target drive is bootable upon restoration of the image.


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## joeten (Dec 4, 2008)

There has been a lot of changes made to win 10 with the latest update https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/whats-new/whats-new-windows-10-version-2004
Including some improvment for HDD's https://www.guru3d.com/news-story/p...ter-after-windows-10-2004-feature-update.html


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## storm5510 (Mar 26, 2009)

Stancestans said:


> Six minutes is too long even for an HDD. Before I switched to an SSD on my 2013 (3rd gen) ProBook, i used to get about 2 minutes, from power button press to idling on the desktop, and that was on a WD Blue 5400rpm drive. A link to that review would be helpful in vetting that claim. If you image the Windows partition only, then that system won't boot until further action is taken to create a system partition and populate it with the necessary boot configuration data. In other words, on a typical Windows installation, you need not just the Windows partition, but the system partition as well. The system image backup option in most backup software is meant to automatically identify the Windows partitition and the system partition and select them for imaging, so that less advanced user wouldn't face the hassle of figuring out which partitions should be imaged to ensure the target drive is bootable upon restoration of the image.


As I mentioned earlier, maybe not here though, I skipped the Windows 10 18xx series. i ran the 17xx series on a standard internal HD. Bootups were fairly fast. Two to three minutes, on a guess.

I am still a Command Prompt user for my heavy math. Just to see, I did a folder change to the Windows folder and did a "dir /s" call. It took a minute or so. 161,440 files in 120,114 folders using just under 21 billion bytes. The file count did not include the hidden and system items. There are around 600. I had to alter my criteria to find these. I have only two devices which require driver installation. A printer and video adapter. All of this other, Windows itself must generate. This is all off-topic in the context of this thread. I was just curious.

Back to SSD's. I did a search to find what an expected life-span would be. One article mentioned using _CrystalDiskInfo_, which I have installed. It said to look at "Total Host Writes" which is measured in bytes. Mine is at 4195GB. The article talked about a person needing to think about a replacement somewhere below 700TB. What I have is less than 1% of this. A time period of 10 years, or more, was also mentioned. This would definitely outlive a "spinner." My old WD 250GB which has 51,000+ hours on it was made in 2012. I am pretty certain that this is rare.


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