Computer Backup

If your c drive software is less than 50 gb…

Ah OK, makes sense.

My C drive is 85Gb and I had an idea to use a 128Gb USB stick to store the system image. However, even though I have formatted it to NFTS, Windows tells me “The drive is not a valid backup location”. Anyone know why?

If you just want to clone your system drive you can use the free version of Macrium Reflect. I’m pretty sure you can create an image from it. Of course the way that works is that if you have a problem you need to read off of that disk and write onto a new, clean drive to restore the system. But that’s at least one way of doing it.

Thanks. I have a rule of not loading more software than necessary on my music computer and as Windows has the backup facility I thought it sensible to use it. However, I still don’t understand why it does not like a USB stick as opposed to a separate hard drive.

It says in the web that the windows backup tool does not support usb flash drives

Hmm. I wonder why?

Experts recommend the 3-2-1 rule for backup: three copies of your data, two local (on different devices), and one off-site. For most people, this means the original data on your computer, a backup on an external hard drive, and another on a cloud backup service

I understand that, and indeed I use that rule for backup of my projects. But for saving an image of the C drive (which of course if necessary can be reconstructed using the original software) I just want the simplicity of cloning the image, albeit locally.

However, I still can’t find a real reason why Windows allows backup to a separate hard disc but NOT to a separate USB stick.

I gave up a long time ago to want to know everything… learned to accept it and just move on.

You can back them up on either an External Hard Disk Drive or a cloud drive. Cloud is the safest way to store your data, as they keep multiple copies of your data. And if you’re going to try to restore it on your own personal computer, you won’t be able to get your data back when it crashes.
If you have an external USB hard drive, using the built-in backup functionality of your computer, you can just back up to that drive. Use File History on Windows 10, and 8. Use Windows Backup, on Windows 7. Using Time Machine on Macs. Occasionally connect the drive to your computer and use the backup tool, or leave it in when your home is plugged in and it will automatically back up

For backing up DATA the clouyd is just fine, or an external USB Drives/flahs drive.
For a C-drive-systemcopy however I personaly would never use the cloud, way too slow for uploading compared to a HDD/SSD.
I always have an internal HDD drive for making systemcopies of the C Drive (after that a make a copy on a external USB drive and put this out of my house).
You end up with about 1 big image file (mine is about 125Gb).
Sending that to a cloud will take ages. The making of the systemcopy takes aboput 20 minuts, and restoring my C drive back again only takes about 15 minutes (Windows 10, W7 systemcopy function). How simple and fast does one need…
I restored my C drive allready about 50 times, always 100% perfect result. Very handy when the next Cubase/W10 update does have troubles and I wanty to go on with my work.

Well what people have been recommending in this thread is to keep one copy on-site and one off-site. Backing up to the cloud is by definition off-site. So really it isn’t necessarily a matter of either one or the other. Besides, a lot of people get lazy, and so actually backing up to a portable drive and always carrying that with you to some off-site location often doesn’t happen.

Secondly, at least in my case, I have waaaay more “data” on other drives than on my system drive. Like, it’s not even close. Once I’m done adding up all the sample and effects libraries in addition to just project data it’s far more.

Lastly, I just tried Backblaze and it took me roughly 3.5 days (not including nights) to backup my system drive plus my primary work drive. That’s about 350GB of data in total. And that’s with a fairly new work drive which means I don’t have a lot of stuff on it yet. But the thing is that good backup software backs up incrementally, it doesn’t do full backups every time. So last night when I did a new backup to the cloud it took me less than an hour and a half (because I went exercising and it was done when I got back). That’s absolutely manageable.

I think I’ve restored my C drive like once or twice, plus a test.

The thing is that the cloud backup is in addition to the one on your drive. So it’s easy and fast to restore from a drive and really using the cloud is just for when the crap really hits the fan and you lose the data on your on-site physical drive as well as the primary system drive. That’s when could makes sense.

And at least download speeds tend to be faster than uploads.