Backing up SP in case of hardware or HD failure

[curney]

Hi,

I perform home inspections and I have always worried about dropping my computer or having it fail from dust or water. With previous machines I have cloned my HD once a month onto the exact same model/size drive that was in my machine so, I could just swap out the bad for the good. If the hardware failed and not the drive, I would just put the drive into a backup machine. Is there a simple way to accomplish the same type of thing with the SP? I searched and read some posts that sounded more greek than English. Is there a way to put the image on a external drive and then restore it to a new SP if this SP craps out? I am not a poweruser.

Thank you!
Curney

 

[DOS]

I have recently used Marcium Reflect which is free for non-commercial use. It also allows you to create emergency boot media which I was able to create a bootable USB (actually a MicroSD Card.)

I recently had to restore the Surface Pro after installing 8.1 (too many network issues for me). All worked fine and I'm back to Windows 8.0.

 

[Ruffles]

+1 for Marcium Reflect. I bought the Pro version and it works great. It found some errors on one of my external hard drives because the image verification kept failing. Without Reflect throwing the error, I'd have never known the drive was toast.

 

[curney]

Thank you for the replies! So, with Marcium, I can put a complete image of my harddrive on to an external and restore it to a new SP if needed? Thanks!

 

[Ruffles]

Yup. It has a utility that creates a recovery USB disk. Then, if you ever need to restore an image, you boot to the USB drive that loads a "lite" version of the Reflect app. Then you unplug the recovery disk and plug in your external hard drive instead. You select your image and away you go.

 

[curney]

Perfect!! Thanks

 

[faisdogg]

Great post I was wondering the same thing

 

[faisdogg]

Does it also save your installed softwares, such as office pro plus 2013 and photoshop CS6?

 

[Nuspieds]

I use Acronis True Image instead of Macrium Reflect, but regardless of what you use, make sure you test the restore! After all, what good is a backup if you can't restore?

These types of apps take a complete disk image so that you get a complete restore--all your installed apps and data. But it is essential for you to test the restore procedure because the last thing you want to find out is that the restore doesn't work when you absolutely need to restore. This is how I recommend you test the restore:

1. Plan a date/time when you will be finished with your day's PC activities and are ready to take a system backup;
2. Assume that the restore will fail and that you will need to re-install Windows. Consequently, backup all the data you will need to reload after you re-install Windows. Whether it is a simple file copy or an actual data backup program, just make sure you have backed up your data;
3. Run the System Image Backup program (i.e., Macrium, Acronis, etc.) to take a full system image backup;
4. Do something visually simple like add/delete an icon or two on your desktop;
5. Reboot and run the restore. The next time you boot after the restore, you should see your desktop as it was when you took the backup.

If the program's restore fails for whatever reason, although you will have to install your apps, at least you will still have your data that you had backed up. Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be the case, but it is best to be prepared.

Finally, one recommendation I have is to always use the backup verification procedure available in your program. Once again, what good is a backup if it won't work when you try to restore? I recommend this because I have been I that situation where the backup worked, but when I tried to restore, I got some sort of backup file data error. I admit that I wasn't running the verification process because I wanted to shave some time off my backup procedure, but in the end this eventually worked against me at a time when I needed the restore the most. So now I always verify the backup.

 

[curney]

I use Acronis True Image instead of Macrium Reflect, but regardless of what you use, make sure you test the restore! After all, what good is a backup if you can't restore?

These types of apps take a complete disk image so that you get a complete restore--all your installed apps and data. But it is essential for you to test the restore procedure because the last thing you want to find out is that the restore doesn't work when you absolutely need to restore. This is how I recommend you test the restore:

1. Plan a date/time when you will be finished with your day's PC activities and are ready to take a system backup;
2. Assume that the restore will fail and that you will need to re-install Windows. Consequently, backup all the data you will need to reload after you re-install Windows. Whether it is a simple file copy or an actual data backup program, just make sure you have backed up your data;
3. Run the System Image Backup program (i.e., Macrium, Acronis, etc.) to take a full system image backup;
4. Do something visually simple like add/delete an icon or two on your desktop;
5. Reboot and run the restore. The next time you boot after the restore, you should see your desktop as it was when you took the backup.

If the program's restore fails for whatever reason, although you will have to install your apps, at least you will still have your data that you had backed up. Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be the case, but it is best to be prepared.

Finally, one recommendation I have is to always use the backup verification procedure available in your program. Once again, what good is a backup if it won't work when you try to restore? I recommend this because I have been I that situation where the backup worked, but when I tried to restore, I got some sort of backup file data error. I admit that I wasn't running the verification process because I wanted to shave some time off my backup procedure, but in the end this eventually worked against me at a time when I needed the restore the most. So now I always verify the backup.

thank you so much for this post. I will give it a shot soon and I will report back. This is exactly the information that I needed.

 

[pratishk]

I know it is not the same as the full backup mentioned here, but anyone tried the File History app in Windows 8 (on the pro)?

 

[starLog]

I use Acronis True Image instead of Macrium Reflect, but regardless of what you use, make sure you test the restore! After all, what good is a backup if you can't restore?

These types of apps take a complete disk image so that you get a complete restore--all your installed apps and data. But it is essential for you to test the restore procedure because the last thing you want to find out is that the restore doesn't work when you absolutely need to restore. This is how I recommend you test the restore:

1. Plan a date/time when you will be finished with your day's PC activities and are ready to take a system backup;
2. Assume that the restore will fail and that you will need to re-install Windows. Consequently, backup all the data you will need to reload after you re-install Windows. Whether it is a simple file copy or an actual data backup program, just make sure you have backed up your data;
3. Run the System Image Backup program (i.e., Macrium, Acronis, etc.) to take a full system image backup;
4. Do something visually simple like add/delete an icon or two on your desktop;
5. Reboot and run the restore. The next time you boot after the restore, you should see your desktop as it was when you took the backup.

If the program's restore fails for whatever reason, although you will have to install your apps, at least you will still have your data that you had backed up. Hopefully that doesn't turn out to be the case, but it is best to be prepared.

Finally, one recommendation I have is to always use the backup verification procedure available in your program. Once again, what good is a backup if it won't work when you try to restore? I recommend this because I have been I that situation where the backup worked, but when I tried to restore, I got some sort of backup file data error. I admit that I wasn't running the verification process because I wanted to shave some time off my backup procedure, but in the end this eventually worked against me at a time when I needed the restore the most. So now I always verify the backup.

I have acronis should I setup a USB stick and boot that to run it, as normal. Then remove and insert the backup USB stick, follow the prompts.