
Ask HN: What is your backup plan for laptop if you have windows 10 laptop? - Arthanari
I have a windows 10 laptop and am pretty concerned the unstable updates will one day break my laptop<p>I want to have some backup plan<p>Like Alternate OS
Any CD or Pendrive which can just boot into a OS when windows breaks?<p>But i don&#x27;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.<p>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.
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c22
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
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.

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T-A
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...](https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/4026852/windows-create-a-
recovery-drive)

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

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

~~~
alok-g
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.

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Spooky23
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
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...](https://www.heise.de/ct/artikel/c-t-Notfall-
Windows-2019-4171098.html)

You may consider switching to a Unix flavor.

------
hashhar
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
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.

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pcunite
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.

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thebrave
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.

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opless
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
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.

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anotheryou
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)

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fuzzfactor
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.

