Windows 10 Pro And Macrium Reflect Free, Dumb Question

Yeah, my beloved Win 7 Home with 500 GB died and thus purchased a new HP Pro PC Desktop with 1 TB HD. It's not a tower. A technician set it up, transfered some files etc. and it's working OK, just looking like a maze to me now, frustrating in how to find things.

I have a Seagate 10 year old external HD with 500 GB which used to be great to backup the entire drive of Win 7 GB and because of the compression that Macrium used, I could make more than 1 entire backup of the C Drive.

Question: Do I need to purchase a bigger external HD of at least 1GB or more to make a complete backup or more of my new PC?

 

The space required is dictated by how much data you have rather than by the size of the hdd but you could try it, there's nothing to lose. I would partition the disk - 1tb is impractical Imo.

 

Sounds Great, I never knew that! I'll try it out, but first I need to download and install the latest Reflect. On Win 7 I had an old version of Reflect and never updated it. As far as I can see, it has changed a lot. Also, I have no CD/DVD drive on this new PC so I will have to use a USB Flash Drive. I got one which is 8 GB, is that enough?

PS: I really don't know how to partition a drive and don't think I would need it for anything else. Additionally far to complicated for this old lady who has been diagnosed with memory and cognitive impairments.

 

I DO have a DVD writer, it's just hidden and have to go to This PC and then have to click the DVD there and the door to it will then open sideways automatically.

 

OK, get Version 7 and install it and before you do anything else create the rescue media, for which your 8GB flash drive is ample. Forget about creating a CD/DVD, USB is fine (the rescue media creator is on the menu at the top under Other Tasks). Be sure to test your rescue media by booting to it. Clean any old Win 7 image files off of your external drive and you are ready to create your first Win 10 image which you can do either using the installed program or while booted to the flash drive, it makes no difference.

Good luck with it

 

Success!! Installed Reflect and and created an image and rescue disk/USB. Gotta love USB2 which I got and never knew and just assumed it would be USB3 in the front. It took 1 hr and 12 minutes to make the image. On my previous Dell PC of 500 GB it took 25 minutes to create an image. Image used 92 GB on my Seagate External HD of 500 GB, so still some room to make some more. What a relief! No, definitely won't go into the rescue media to try it out. Never did it before either and never had to use it. When/if it comes to that I will call for a tech to do it for me.

Earthling: Thank you very, very much for your excellent advice and guidance!

 

Humour me - just boot to the rescue flash drive and up will pop Reflect, just as it does from the Start menu. With the Seagate connected it will list your backups, or backup rather, and give you the option to restore it. You don't need to go any further as that's pretty well all there is to restoring an image, apart from waiting.

Something else to think about - if you were to restore your all-of-disk image you would replace any current stuff of your own with how it was when the image was created. So you need a separate backup routine for your personal files so you can recover them after restoring your image. This is really important as you could always replace the OS and software but personal stuff like photos, letters etc are irreplaceable without a current backup.

 

Thanks Earthling. I do have USB Flash Drives for Docs, Pics, Music and Videos which I use for weekly updating.

 

Don't forget your bookmarks!

 

With Pale Moon (default) browser I use their backup tool: https://www.palemoon.org/backuptool.shtml which of course includes the bookmarks. With Firefox Quantum, which I installed from scratch, I just copy the profile folder, both of which I use/do several times a week, so I think that I am covered.