Installing Windows 8

[royw]

Hi Ted and thanks. To be absolutely clear about backups, I backup every partition with the latest (paid) version of Macrium Reflect. If and when the occasion arises I will boot from the Macrium Rescue CD and set it to restore either the Win 7 or Win 8 partition, as applicable.

Am I misunderstanding you or does my strategy make sense?

Please advise.

Regards,Roy

[Medico]

Makes perfect sense. When you commit to a backup strategy then you just have to keep at it. I either Image my drives by themselves or include both OS Drives in a single Image. Either way works fine. I just ensure I name the Image so I know what it contains, i.e. Ted_LaptopWin7Win8RPDualBoot@date (The last is the app adding the date to the Image. This way I know what the Image contains and when it was created. The most important thing for me is that I recreate Images regularly so the Image is very Up To Date. This way when I restore, my Image is as close to the OS as it was when the failure occurred as is possible.

I do back up my data partition differently because my data might change every day. It would seem somewhat redundant to Image every day, so what I do is regularly (2 or 3 X per week) so what I do with my data is to back it up to the other 2 PC's in our network. My feeling is that the chance of all 3 PC's failing at once is remote (house fire, etc.)

[DrWho]

For those Quickie daily data backups, it's hard to beat a simple Batch file, using XCOPY to back up your latest data files to a Flash Drive, more or less permanently plugged into a USB port on your PC. (A second internal Hard Drive works too.)

I'm doing that with a 16 gig Flash Drive, in a rear USB port.

The line in the batch file that backs up everything in "My Documents" is:

xcopy "C:\Documents and Settings\MyName\My Documents\*.*" "K:\My Documents\" /s /y /H /R /D

In this case I've replaced my own name, with "MyName" and my Flash Drive is drive K:

I do have several additional lines in the batch file, to back up other folders containing Data Files.
The XCOPY switches, assure that only files that are NEW or that have been changed since the last backup, will be copied.
The average time to do my daily backup is less than five seconds.

For a bit of automation, I could add this batch file to my Startup folder or to my Shutdown routine.
Either would work for an automated daily backup.

As for doing the Whole Drive backups, I'm with Ted, on doing them on a regular schedule, so if you must do a restore, you don't loose too much in the process.
There are many FREE backup programs, so which one to use is strictly up to the user.

I hate having to do a restore, for a customer, and having to use a Backup File that's a year old. So much is lost in the process.

Cheers mates!
The Doctor

[Medico]

For the amount of data I'm talking about, just a sinple drag and drop works well for me. If this were a work PC that changed daily, then a good scheme such as DrWho uses would be ideal for me, but with such a small amount that actually changes, I just find my method is very easy.