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Can I back up Windows...let me explain....

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I have windows 7 64 pre-installed on this computer. After surfing the web yesterday, what I would like to do, with Acronis' help is:

*put just  the system files, (not that I know what all of them are,) on one drive. That way, if I were to get attacked by a virus, it will only find the OS on the drive, and everything else (data and installed programs) will be on another drive. That way, in the worst case scenario, only the OS goes down, while the other drives remain intact.  I'm told most programmers are going after C because most everyting is located there. On the other hand, if there are other drives attatched, i.e. externals, they could potentially be infected; atleast that's what I was told.

Can Acronis separate out just the system files to back up, so that I could then restore them to an another drive?

Thanks in advance,

CotS

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Unfortunately, no.  I don't know of any "backup" software that does this either.  You are backing up blocks of data and not files/folders when imaging the system.  Windows stores files all over the system (user profile, Windows directory, system 32, program data, etc).  Backup programs are based on black file backups.

Now, what you could do is create a full disk backup and use exclusions to remove certain files/folders from that full backup.  Then create a second backup to only include those file/folders a s a file/folder backup.  Additionally, some of the OS embedded folders that can get large (iTunes backups, Outlook or email folders) that live in the user profile under Appdata, can be redirect to other drives using JUNCTIONS.  They will appear to live on the C: drive in their original location, but will actually live elsewhere.  You can then backup that other location sepearately and if you restore the OS, it will not impact the data that lives on the other drive. 

For me, I try to keep my OS install as minimal as possible on a smaller SSD drive.  I rarely keep files in my uesr profile and instead, store them on another drive.  I then backup up the OS int it's entirety and I backup the other drive in it's entirety with another job.  This serves 2 purposes.  

1) If the OS goes haywire, I can just restore it without impacting the original data (pictures, movies, etc) on teh other drive.  The same applies if I need to restore just the data and don't need to touch the OS.  

2) It keeps my OS backup small which makes backup and restore of the OS very quick - about 7 minutes to do a full backup or full restore of the entire OS drive.

 

Thanks for the info. I don't know what I want to do yet.

CotS

Ditto Bobbo here!  Practice the same myself and have for many years and it serves me very well.  Another benefit of this approach is that moving to a new OS with a clean install and having all your data seperate on another drive makes that process much easier!

I am another who tries to limit system drive to Windows and Apps (SSD) and store data on larger mechanical HDDs (usually WD Black). For video edting I use a couple of SSDs (and an old 'retired' WD 10,000 rpm SATA 3 HDD). While I have tried shifting outlook and the like to another drive, with Windows 10 and Office 2016 Enterprise this can sometime result in significan peformance degredation. I have had this happen on one system.

Ian

I'm similar to the MVPs who have posted in this thread, except that my laptop has only a single physical hard drive. To allow for quicker and smaller OS backups and quicker restores, I partitioned my drive. I have C: for the OS, D: for most user data, and E: for music. If I ever have system issues, I can fairly quickly restore just the C: partition.
 

The OP is, I think, missing the point of backups.

I have the operating system on an SSD, while everything else is on an HDD. Backing up the former lets me recover from an OS crash or malfunction. Backing up the latter lets me recover lost or corrupted files.

Both are desirable -- and frankly, necessary -- backups.

Do a complete backup, then create the boot media that let you restore the OS and user files if the operating system won't run. (This is explained early in the manual.) Once this "life saver" backup has been made, you can read the rest of the manual to decide how you wish to customize your backups to meet your particular needs.

That was my understanding.

CotS