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Advice needed for backup settings

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Hi there

I've been using Acronis for a few years now, and it's saved my butt several times. Great software.

I used to have two SSDs and 2 hard drives in my PC. SSD1 was my Windows 10 system and programs, SSD2 was sample libraries for music production, and hard drive 1 was my documents. 

I used Acronis to backup the SSD1 to hard drive 2, another internal hard drive (smaller and older). Easy to restore the whole drive if Windows ever went kaput (which it did a few times over the years).

My new system has 1 nVME drive in place of the 2 SSDs. It's partitioned in 2 so one drive is my C: drive and the other drive is my D: drive for my sample libraries. 

In Acronis, instead of backing up the whole drive, I only need the system drive part. But of course, in reality there are 3 partitions including the main C: drive, Recovery Partition, and EFI System Partition. Should I be backing up all 3 partitions or do I just need to backup the C: drive partition in order to restore Windows?

Thanks

Neel

 

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UEFI booted system MUST have all 3 partitions included in a backup and during a restore process to produce a bootable disk.

Neel, because you now have both C: and D: on the same NVMe SSD, you actually have 4 partitions. Is this correct? Is the Recovery partition at the end?

A restore could be from either a failed SSD (unlikely) or a Windows corruption (more likely). I don't know the effects of doing a restore when you don't have the D: partition included in the backup. It may not be a big issue, but I suspect there may be things to consider on how to restore.

Perhaps Enchantech can chime in on this?

Neel,

I see where Bruno is going here.  Your post does suggest that you have combined what used to be 2 disks into a single disk partitioned to represent the old 2 disk setup you were using.  The best way to understand what is needed is to understand the difference between physical disks and partitioning.  The UEFI/GPT partitioning scheme uses a minimum of 3, visible by the user, partition and these all need to be included in a single backup file so that when that file is recovered the result will be a usable, bootable disk.  If this disk contains additional data partitions then these would need to be included in a single backup as well due to the fact that a disk failure would mean that your potential loos would be all data on the disk.

Best advise is to create a Full disk backup of all partitions on any single disk so that recovery will restore all contents of that disk.

Thanks for the notes guys. The thing is, the D: partition rarely gets modified or added to, but it is rather large (188 GB at the moment) so I don't see the need to back it up regularly.

The other 3 partitions (C:, EFI, and Recovery) are obviously more mission critical, and modified on a daily basis, as I install programs, change settings, etc. 

So I've now added 2 separate backup schemes: daily differential scheme for the 3 partitions, and a monthly full backup on the D: partition. If I install a new sample library, I'll just run the backup manually, but it'll also happen monthly anyway.

I think this makes more sense in having less disk activity, and making a restore of Windows and Programs (the most likely failure) will be quicker to restore 160 GB for that rather than 278 GB for the whole drive.

I had to verify that restoring from the rescue media USB stick if I can't get into Windows and run Acronis works to restore just the 3 partitions rather the whole disk. I ran it yesterday and made sure it could be done this way. I didn't actually execute the restore, just went to the last step to see how it could be done.

Neel

So Enchantech, are you saying that the way I have it setup now, as I described above, means I won't be able to restore just the 3 partitions needed for Windows if Windows goes kaput?

No, I am not saying that.  What you will have to do though is manually set your partition C: and D: sizes which in your case I think is not a big deal.  Other less experienced users may have difficulty with that but given your posts here I think you will be fine with it.

 

Just to add a comment here: I have my own Samsung 970 NVMe M.2 SSD divided into 2 partitions and make separate backups of these, i.e. OS backup including the hidden / system partitions (EFI & Recovery + MSR) and a separate Data backup of the second (G:) partition.

I also make a full disk backup of the whole drive in a belt & braces option to an external drive so as to have maximum recovery options.

Note: on the occasions when I have replaced the source drive, I have used the rescue media to create a full disk backup to restore to the replacement drive.  (I have 2 of the Samsung 970 drives, one installed and one spare).