System backup

Best solution IMO is to perform full disk mode backups. That allows you to store multiple backups to a single disk, multiple backups from various dates allowing for better backup security. If you cloned, a single clone would occupy the entire drive.

If disaster ever occurs, you'd restore one of the full disk backups to your primary drive (or to a replacement drive if primary suffered hardware failure).

Hi tuttle,
The cone is what I would like to do, but when trying this I get an error (attached) any thought son why this happening

1. You asked the best solution. I gave it to you. Ignore at your risk.

2. if you clone to the second internal drive, you cannot leave it in place afterwards. If you reboot Windows with both drives in place, at least one will be rendered unbootable and it could be your primary drive. Windows won't allow two Windows OS drives concurrently, unless you setup a proper dual-boot system.

3. That looks like a disk error and/or file error. Run chkdsk /r on that drive.
Also run a drive checking utility from the drive manufacturer, as those sometimes catch errors missed by chkdsk.

Sorry tuttle,
I'm a bit slow with sort of stuff, so what do I run for the full disk backup.

again apologies for being a bit thick, but it's a learning curve for me

Check out the many user guides and tutorials in the left margin of this forum, particularly Getting Started and Grover's True Image Guides which are illustrated with step-by-step screenshots.
In particular, Grover's new backup and restore guides http://forum.acronis.com/forum/29618

Note that by backing up to a second internal drive, all your eggs are in one basket. If your PC is stolen, physically damaged or lost in a fire, you'd have lost both your system and your backups. That's why I recommend external hard drives as ideal for backups. They can be removed and stored separately from the PC.

I might invest in external HD, what you say makes a lot of sense with regards to my pc stolen etc.

thanks again

You're welcome.

I'm keen on "portable" external hard drives, such as Western Digital's Passport series. They don't require external power and their portabiliity and small size makes it more likely that you'll take one off-site for safe storage. You could get two: rotate them weekly or monthly, keeping one at a friend's house or in a safety deposit box.

Hi tuttle,
just one more question if I may. when doing true image of your boot drv either clone or backup, does the external drv have to be larger or can it be the same size.

Please, forget cloning. I thought we got past that. We are now discussing backups.

Please don't make up your own abbreviations for things. "drv" is not a recognized abbreviation for hard drive. Call it hard drive, or drive, or if you must abbreviate use the approved "HD". Making up unrecognized terms will just confuse other readers and possibly those of us trying to help.

The external target hard drive, to which backups will be saved, does not need to be as large as the source drive. That's because a backup includes only sectors in use, so would be less than the total drive size, and also will be compressed. You can store many backups to a single external drive.

okay, hands smacked. I have got passed the cloning thingy, just put it in.

Again thanks for the advise

Just looking at True Image Plus pack, what are the benefits of buying this.

Check out the manuals and other resources I mentioned in the margin. Also a forum search is helpful.

Plus Pack allows creation of Win PE based rescue media, rather than the usual Linux-based rescue media. If the usual Linux-based rescue media recognizes your hardware, you likely don't need Win PE.
Plus Pack also allows Universal Restore to dissimilar hardware.

Thanks again, you've very helpful, despite smacking my hands for using abbreviated words lol

External HD backup is definitely the way to go for general backup. Of course, nowadays, there is a good offsite option available to most people now i.e. cloud storage.

How you use it depends on what you want to do. Soem people might back everything. Obviously, this is good for crucial data storage (never include financial details, password etc though!).

Mostly, I work on basic theory if my laptop's hard disk crashes, I use a local external HD backup to recover situation.

However, if my laptop is stolen or physically damaged beyond economic repair, then I wil almost certainly buy a new laptop, and it is highly unlikely due to change of development, it will be same as old PC.

The biggest pain in setting up a new machine is reinstalling all the packages again.

Thus, I make iso copies of all my install disks (including installation codes), and store those in the Cloud (along with crucial data).

This way, even if my install disks get thrashed for some reason (or more easily just lost), I can easily recover. A typical install iso is between 0.5 to 1GB, so you will need a reasonable amount of storage (say 25GB).

Not really reommneded but if you do not have or want a cloud account, you could also attach files to emails and email them to yourself, and a copy will then be stored on your email server (on web somewhere). Yiou would have to make sure yiu do not delete server files when you access via PC client (there is a setting in outlook to do this if you use outlook as your email client). There may be limits in storage though this way.

sorry for the delay in replying, just to thanks for all the suggestion and advise, all sorted out and working fine.

Thanks again guys.