Ask HN: What is your backup plan for laptop if you have windows 10 laptop?

29 points by Arthanari 7 years ago | 16 comments

I have a windows 10 laptop and am pretty concerned the unstable updates will one day break my laptop

I want to have some backup plan

Like Alternate OS Any CD or Pendrive which can just boot into a OS when windows breaks?

But i don't see a clear plan available for this. Because when i had a alternate OS installed my previous windows update ruined it and made it inaccessible.

Given its a 1000$ device i really want to keep my laptop functional with or without windows. What do you guys do to prevent your laptop from going waste.

c22 7 years ago |

I have a ThinkPad with an ExpressCard slot. I have a small stack of 64gb "Wintec Filemate" ExpressCard SSDs, each with a different operating system installed. To boot my laptop I simply select one of these, insert it into my laptop and turn it on. All my personal files are stored on two partitions on the internal laptop drive.

Of course you don't need any special slots to use multiple operating systems. As another commenter mentioned, you can install different operating systems to separate partitions. I've noticed that Windows is much less picky about sharing a hard drive than it used to be, but if you are concerned you could get, for instance, a caddy to put a second hard drive in your CD tray, or use USB disks.

JimmyAustin 7 years ago | |

I've always had issues attempting to install Windows on a machine that already has Linux on it, but it's been (relatively) smooth sailing going Windows -> Windows + Linux.

T-A 7 years ago |

1) Follow [1]

2) Do a full system backup using e.g. one of [2]. (I am old-fashioned, so I still like [3]).

Step #2 is the really important one. Even without #1, you can always download a Windows install disk image (to another PC if your laptop is dead), use it to create a bootable USB drive, install Windows, then restore everything from your backup.

[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026852/windows-cre...

[2] https://www.techradar.com/news/the-best-free-pc-backup-softw...

[3] https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

alok-g 7 years ago | |

I also like to follow #3 for a full system backup. Additionally, I take this onto a drive that I can just drop into the laptop and be running again instantly. Some pros and cons of the approach:

Pros:

A. I do not have to trust the restore process. That is an issue specially with #1, where testing whether a restore will actually work is hard [1]. I have had cases when I had successful backups but when needed, the restore gave an instant non-helpful error message and the support staff was equally non-helpful. They already have the EULA set to save themselves under such scenarios.

B. I use two hard disks ideally bought at two years offset wrt each other. Hard disks have a life of typically four years. When the laptop drive fails, I swap it with the backup drive and go buy a new drive to use as backup from that point on.

Cons:

A. Process is time-consuming. It is also error-prone, so presents a large cognitive load. As a result, I always use #1 as the regular backup method, on local drives or cloud.

B. The system would sometimes fail to "boot" from the backup, but this has always been just a matter of fixing the master boot record using Windows disks, stressful and time-consuming nevertheless. Theoretically, Windows piracy prrotection can also trigger from the hardware change, but it never has since there is some allowance for exactly these type of fair situations.

[1] Even with #1, the local backup method I use is uncompressed copies of the files, so that the restore process is plain file copying also. There are many free tools to manage this incrementally like FreeFileSync, Syncback Freeware, etc.

lightlyused 7 years ago | |

Even with a Windows install disk image, if the manufacturer requires drivers and the install disk image doesn't have those (I'm looking at you Acer), than your restore experience is going to be bad.

Spooky23 7 years ago |

Treat the system as disposable.

I only use Windows at work, who provides a solid imaging solution. I consider the device to be disposable, and install any non-standard applications via script and backup software, scripts and user data to OneDrive.

jayalpha 7 years ago |

I am not sure I fully understand your question.

1. You need a backup solution of your data. Online/offline, preferably both

2. If you really want to stay with windows and problems occur:

a) keep the OS on a separate partition and just install over if the OS has problems.

b) it is possible to boot windows from USB and repair things (German only) https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/c-t-Notfall-Windows-2019-417...

You may consider switching to a Unix flavor.

hashhar 7 years ago |

For Windows and Macs I've found Backblaze to be the best there is.

Their $5 a month plan for unlimited storage makes sense if you have more than 1TB of data to store and is a set and forget tool.

If your backups will be smaller than 1TB it's much cheaper to use Backblaze B2 or Amazon S3 for storage.

You can set up an automated full system backup using scheduled jobs via either duplicity, borg, duplicati or duplicacy. All of them are great tools. I've yet to try out restic.

alok-g 7 years ago | |

I am using Zoolz lifetime plan with 1TB space for backup (due to compression, it is handling about 3 TB of data), bought for about the price you have mentioned for year with Backblaze. It is working great so far. Restore takes several hours to start, but works fine. Their desktop app is nicely designed though is buggy.

hashhar 7 years ago | |

Also, make full disk clones using something like Clonezilla or Macrium Reflect. That way you can return to a fully function system without the need to reinstall or re-setup everything on your system.

pcunite 7 years ago |

I've not kept it up lately, but I used to make an "image" of my boot drive Windows installation (I keep data on a second SSD) using Ghost32.exe (from Ghost Solution Suite tools) ran from something like Win8PE_SE.

My data is backed up automatically using FileBackupEX to a local NAS on my network. Then the NAS backs itself up to another NAS offsite.

thebrave 7 years ago |

There is a setting where you can ask Windows (Pro editions and up) to either 1) use another channel where feature (not security) updates are pushed latter or 2) delay feature updates by a configurable number of days. That should be enough to ward unstable updates like the one in late 2018.

Also, backups.

opless 7 years ago |

Boot off usb, especially with a slimline flash drive.

Backup with rsync, onto a network share/ssh server which gets properly backed up.

Alternately take note of how Elliot of the Mr Robot series works if you need further inspiration, the general overview of how he uses his pc is very close to what you suggest as he destroys his workstation regularly to avoid forensics.

JamesAdir 7 years ago |

As mentioned before I'm treating the machine is completely disposable. I'm backing up all my files to a private NextCloud server, and to syncplicity (online service). If everything will blow up I can get up to any computer and just getting into my files from there.

anotheryou 7 years ago |

I use arq for selected files. No full system backup.

Oh and I got burned by the windows file history thing. It can fail silently (e.g. when paths become to long once nested in to the backup destination)

fuzzfactor 7 years ago |

Think of the desired recovery sequence from the anticipated level of failure, then work backward from there to build and maintain the resources & readiness.

To prepare for a complete recovery starting from a blank laptop drive, I like a minimum of 2 small USB 3 pendrives (8 GB) for alternative booting & OS (re)installation, plus a much larger USB 3 pendrive or preferably HDD for archiving. You prepare one pendrive so it's bootable Windows install media, and the other pendrive so it's a bootable Linux live/install-media (like Linux Mint) of your choice.

Either one of these pendrives need to be able to boot your computer whether or not it has a (working) internal laptop drive or not.

Ideally you will habitually always keep all your valuable data, self-created and downloads, on some other drive(s) rather than C:, well organized using your own folder scheme where you can easily confirm the existence and readiness of these non-system backups manually. As long as your laptop is working properly you can copy and paste these folders to as many external or cloud drives as you find suitable.

This leaves only the Windows operating system and installed programs plus all of their various settings alone being the actual residents of your working C: drive at all times. Even though all your programs are always installed on C: you never let your apps default to saving (your) data to C: or the Users folder, always make sure your data goes where you specifically select on a drive different than C:. This has always been a very low-risk approach to Windows disaster preparedness.

So you've got all your valuable storage, creations & downloads on some other volume than C: at all times plus manually copied or synced with other drives like the external HDD or cloud.

Or maybe not, either way what you really need is a good quick backup of your current Windows (and everything else that might be there) on C:, especially if the next day the internal laptop drive hardware has complete failure and needs replacement.

Backup your C: volume as a Windows image (WIM) file;

With the laptop working properly and in readiness for the full C: to be archived, shut down completely then boot to the pendrive having the appropriate Windows setup media. Do not select Install, instead "Repair" and proceed to the command prompt.

Plug in your USB archive storage drive, then using DISM /capture-image create a comprehensive WIM file of your C: volume, placing the WIM file onto the external storage for safekeeping. This file should be named as a snapshot of your C: at that particular time. This file will be capable of being restored to any properly formatted partition, either GPT or MBR.

To recover to a new/blank laptop drive;

Boot the Windows Install pendrive to the command prompt, use DISKPART to partition the laptop drive then format a new empty C: volume. Exit from DISKPART.

Use DISM /apply-image to restore your WIM file from external USB storage over to the laptop's empty C: volume.

Create new boot folder(s) using BCDBOOT (on MBR systems you will need to direct the boot files to a primary partition marked "active").

On MBR systems you will also need to BOOTSECT a partition with /MBR for blank drives which do not yet have anything but a partition table in sector 0.

Some systems will not then boot by themselves so need an additional boot to the Windows setup pendrive for the Startup Repair.

Full volume recovery from WIM files is also useful for migration between different partitions or hardware sizes, and the freshly recovered folders start out in defragmented condition.

The remaining bootable Linux pendrive is in case you need to boot your laptop and get online, with or without any internal drive you could still download the latest Windows install media for instance and save your downloads to the external drive. You could also use it to install Linux instead of or in addition to Windows.