Please back up your computer with win 7 backup on an external drive.

johnwhelan

Well-known member
Recently I've come across three cases when having an external backup would have been helpful.

One was a hard drive crash. One of the others was a Malware problem. One major problem when recovering is configuration. All the short cuts and preference settings you've made over time and here a system image really pays off.

There are other solutions but the Win 7 backup found in Win 10 is simple and robust. Also you don't need any special software when you can't access your computer. The win 10 recovery USB stick doesn't always allow you to recover if the hard drive dies. I learnt that the hard way and a fresh copy of Win 10 isn't cheap.

You need a Win 7 system image, and backup and a recovery disk. Win 7 backup requires an external drive of greater than 1 TB. I'd go for a 4TB WD but that is a personal preference. You can back up more than one machine on an external hard drive.

If you machine doesn't have a DVD burner to create the recovery drive then something like a Lite-on external DVD writer works well, its just plugs into your USB port. Go mad and burn two copies of the recovery disk in case one doesn't read.

Once you've made your backups unplug the external drive so if you happen to get your machine encrypted with ransomware your backups will be safe.

An external hard drive can also be used to transfer large files and folders from one machine to another. ie TANE etc.

The hope is you'll never need a backup but if you do then they are invaluable.

Cheerio John
 
Yup! Excellent system there!

I backup critical data to my external drives - Trainz content, and documents, pictures, and the like.

I have made bootable DVD images of the Win10 install. using the Media Creation Tool.

http://www.tomshardware.com/faq/id-2745957/create-windows-installation-usb-drive-dvd.html

This works in case your machine needs a fresh install and you are going back on the same hardware you have installed on in the first place. If you lose your license you can always contact Microsoft and they will assist you with creating a new one on the same machine. I ran into that recently when I replaced a motherboard. In this case I had to show them some receipts for the replacement motherboard and RMA references.

John
 
I do similar except I also burned a set of DVD's (Actually three sets one for each PC) in case the backup disk fails.

Plus I have disk images of each system drive done with Paragon.
 
Last edited:
Once you've made your backups unplug the external drive so if you happen to get your machine encrypted with ransomware your backups will be safe.

I can't stress this enough. Also, multiple backups are essential. Ideally, at least one on-site and one offsite. I upload a copy of my can't-replace stuff (routes, Blender files, etc.) to Google Drive. A complete system image is far too large for this kind of service, but I have copies of Windows, Trainz, and license keys. You can always reinstall that stuff if needed (in fact, it's not a bad idea to reinstall Windows from time to time anyway) and the only thing you'll lose is some time and maybe a little sleep. But, yes, if you have a spare drive to do so, a complete system image on a physical disk isn't a bad idea, in addition to an off-site backup.
 
This is definitely important, and trust me losing stuff can and does happen even to us that are technically savvy. Trust me or not, I thought I was so smart and hadn't backed up my computer in months due to many reasons. Then I had a power supply failure which shorted out the +24V line. This line is split between the various voltages and stepped down to +12V for the hard drives. I powered up my computer one day and there was a flash of sparks inside the case, which I could see through the window on the case. I suppose these windows have their advantage! After the smoke cleared, I powered up again and there was nothing.

Okay, PS was hosed so I thought. I got a new one and powered up again. The machine powered up but the fans turned really, really, slow and there were flashing lights all over. Little LEDs I never knew were there.

In the end I ended up replacing all the components to get the machine up and running.

What happened to the data?

The boot drive was a dead frozen block. The drive wouldn't even spin up. My data drive spun up okay, surprisingly so I decided to backup what I could on to my bro's computer. I plugged the drive into the external drive bay - one that takes standard hard drives called a BlacX by Thermaltake. The system saw the drive and I could see the directories and data. I started the copy and saw that it would take 186,000 hours to do the copy so I went to bed. The next day there was a BSOD and after the reboot, the drive was empty then it wouldn't be recognized. It too died along with just about everything - all my documents, email archive since I was using Outlook, contacts, some Trainz data, though I did have a recent backup of that so that was mostly saved. Everything was gone to bit heaven with no recovery. Well I could have sent the drive out for recovery, but being unemployed that was out of my budget.

Live and learn as they say so now I backup and backup my backups. I should have known better as an IT guy who was responsible for backing up servers on a daily basis. Shame on me!

John
 
Back
Top