Skip to main content

Multiple Hdd's and an SSD

Thread needs solution

What is the best way to use ATI 2017 Home when using multiple HDD's and an SSD.  I have only programs on the 500 Gb SSD, photos, docs and email on the 1st 1 Tb HDD and all my music files on the 2nd 1 Tb hard drive.  I plan to backup to a 3rd 2 TB HDD.  If I tell ATI 2017 to backup the entire computer will it backup all 3 drives?  Will the backups be specific to each drive or will they all be put into one large (500GB) backup file?

My system is the ssd, 3 hard drives, Win 10 64X, 16Gb RAM, i5 processor.

Thanks. 

0 Users found this helpful

Jeff, welcome to these user forums.

The choice of method with regard to your backup of your different SSD and HDD drives ultimately is your own to make, where you need to determine which drives require a more regular schedule for backup than perhaps others do.

I would recommend a regular backup schedule for your SSD drive assuming that this contains your Windows OS plus all installed programs and applications.  Ideally this should be backed up in more than one place to give safety in the event of a complete system failure caused by such as an electrical surge which could take out all hard drives etc.

For the remaining HDD drives, how often does your data change, how important is it to safeguard, do you hold other copies of these files in other places already?  All relevant to your decision on how frequently you should backup these drives.

I would certainly recommend keeping the backups for each drive separate from each other, if only for the sake of the size of objects being backed up and for the ease of recovery should it be needed.  Keeping them separate will also make the time needed to backup shorter and will allow the schedule to be staggered, plus it will make problem solving should any issues arise with the backup task a lot easier if only a single source drive is involved.

You should be aware that some file types are already highly compressed and therefore will not show much reduction in size when collected together in a backup archive file, they will also be a little slower to backup due to the same, especially with larger files.

Steve, this is great info.  Many thanks...just what I needed.  Appreciate your advice and counsel.

 

Jeff

Jeff...welcome to the user forums.

Steve has provided excellent information.  Here's some recommendations:

You should acquire external hard drive capability.  Personally, I like the Kingwin EZ dock 3, which allows you to use the standard 3.5 inch HDDs, which are quite reasonable in price.  The external drive, after backups are complete, can be stored in a safe or off site.

https://www.amazon.com/Kingwin-2-5-Inch-3-5-Inch-Clone-EZD-2537U3/dp/B0…

You should backup your SSD (system disk) using disk mode/full partiton list...picture 1 below.  Then, if your SSD fails, or is infected with malware, you can perform a restore which would be a fully operational system disk.  The remaining disks can be backed up in disk mode or partition mode.

Regards,

FtrPilot

Attachment Size
390411-133243.jpg 171.19 KB

I agree that "You should backup your SSD (system disk) using disk mode/full partiton list". Things can and do go wrong. I have had 4 SSDs fail on me (but not before I managed to make one final backup). (Two of them had exceded the claimed life span.) The other two may have been due to faulty power supply on the PC.)  Backing up to stoage that is not permanetnly connected to the syste is also a good idea.

Ian

Thanks Ian and FtrPilot, good advice from all. 

I have created a backup of the SSD using the disk mode/full partition and a backup of each hard drive to a separate external HDD.  In the Win file Explorer, I can see the 3 ".tib" files on the external drive.  I can also see the 3 files listed in the 2017 ATI Home GUI screen.  However, when I click on one of the backups in the ATI GUI screen to check to see the files on the backup, the only options I get when I click on pulldown arrow are "rename, clone settings and delete".  I cannot see any of the files in the backups.  Is this normal?

Jeff...to look at the individual files/folders within the .tib files, you have to "Mount" the .tib file.  To mount the .tib file, you use windows explorer...right click on the .tib file...picture 1 below.   Select "True Image" then "Mount"...picture 2 below.  It may take 30 to 60 seconds, or more to perform the mount.  Mounting attaches drive letters to each partition in the .tib file. You can then use windows explorer to view, copy/paste files in the .tib file.  The mounted drives are read-only.  You can copy files out of the .tib file, but you cannot copy files into the .tib file.  This is the fastest way to retreive individual files/folders from the .tib file.

Note the option below "Mount" is "Validate"....so you can use windows explorer to "Validate" a .tib file.

Regards,

FtrPilot

Attachment Size
390612-133264.png 77.33 KB
390612-133267.png 67.67 KB

OK Folks, looks like the problem was a corrupted install or the upgrade to 2017.  Deleted 2017, clean HDD and reigstry, reinstalled2016, redid the 3 backups in 2016 and could open the ".tib" files in both Win File Explorer and in the ATI Home app.  Upgraded to 2017, all files are visible in both File Explorer and 2017 GUI.  Looks like we can mark ths issue solved and closed.

 

Jeff