Backing up

[Hawthy]

Last year, I installed a Solid State Drive and kept my existing hard drive. Today I used CCleaner to identify duplicate files (photos, documents, etc.) and I have reconciled all those files (plus anything put on since the change) into just my old internal hard disk drive. So now I have an SSD (C Drive) that has my operating system on it, an internal HDD (G Drive) that has the operating system (probably outdated) plus document and picture files. I have been backing up the C Drive to an external Hard Drive (H Drive).

What I would like to do, is back up the operating system on the C Drive to the G Drive and then back up just the document/photos/video/music files from the G Drive to the external H Drive. This way I would have a backup operating system if the C Drive fails and a back up of my files if the G Drive fails.

I can't figure out how to configure the Windows 10 (or Windows 7) backup to do this. Do I need to buy something like Casper 10 to do this? Any advice would be appreciated.

[John King]

Syncback is your friend for all your data files.

Windows Backup can create a copy of your operating system and programs (etc) from your SSD to a HDD. It's called a system image. I recommend that you keep this up to date. HDDs tend to fail gracefully; SSDs tend to fail catastrophically ...

[Hamster]

Synctoy is another I used to use on Windows. A simple, free, Microsoft app. Line up your folder pairs (from-to) and hit go every time you want a backup.

[Hawthy]

I downloaded a trial version of Acronis True Image 2018. Very intuitive and simple to use. Great for my purpose which is a cascading backup of multiple drives with different things being backed up each time. The $69.99 price gives pause for thought but it seems to be a good solution so I will probably buy it. Thanks for the advice.

[John King]

Hawthy, after 40+ years in the computer business, I am more than just wary of any and every proprietary backup system.

[Tannin]

I am not a fan of backing up the operating system. It seldom achieves much and is fraught with gotchas.

Nine times out of ten, the reason you want to restore the OS is that you've screwed something up, and eight times out of those nine, the damage has been gradually growing, like an undiagnosed cancer, and your backup of it won't be anything like as perfect as you think it is.

Besides, all of the OS backup programs you can use are opaque, proprietary, and unpredictable in detail. Computer professionals have a specialised term for this: they suck.

Reinstalling an operating system is simple, routine, and perfectly straightforward. Don't bother backing up your OS, it's pointless. Backup your data. That's the stuff that masters.

What you do need is three things. (1) a copy of your data. (2) Installation media. (3) Keys and codes.

Then you can reinstall from scratch any time you need to, with a perfect result every time, and with a minimum of fuss or bother. Make a must-have toolkit. This should contain copies of your important programs (but don't bother keeping copies of anything that you can just re-download), and - very important - a record of all the product keys and install codes and passwords you will need. A simple folder on a thumb drive, an external hard drive, or a writable DVD can save you endless hours of frustration.

[Hawthy]

That makes sense, thanks Tannin. I have all the product keys stored and a copy of Windows 10 on a DVD, etc. A lot of the software that I have is subscription (Adobe CC for example) Just backing up the data files will make the process much shorter. Thanks to you both. Just saved me $70 bucks.

[ameerat42]

I am not a fan of backing up the operating system....
Reinstalling an operating system is simple, routine, and perfectly straightforward. Don't bother backing up your OS, it's pointless. Backup your data. That's the stuff that masters.
...
...

Good points. Some months back (last such effort) we had to change a MB on an
old XP machine. No trouble reactivating the OS with a key from MS(oft). Ran out
of uses for the one on the side of the case... But then the HDD began to fail, and
we didn't get all the data off...

Data loss stings way more than anything.