I watched Mr Robot. Do you 'clean sweep' every 6 months? What's your emergency BMR app & routine?

My backup is 1 paper folder per year for documents.
Plus iCloud for photos

 

i use free virgin of this on a mates https://www.aomeitech.com/ab/standard.html
& just have incredmental? backup of doc\pics etc to a separate internal drive daily.
you can restore individual files from that.
as he got crypto locked 1 time, that was a nightmare, its worse than any virus, anyway
i love clean installs
if you use macrium reflect free you can make a image & you can make a boot to recovery option in it, no need for a usb

 

If I'm basing IT on any show it'd be silicon valley

Mine is 365 tenancy, basic bitch user powers. I only backup personal data. Reinstall of windows will auto reinstall action1 agent...that'll then deploy latest steam, chrome, discord, bambu, betaflight etc depending on what policy the device has assigned.

Older photos exist on multiple types of physical media in mums safe but ill dump those into something else soon for her to mess with and the originals can go back into storage, it's low temp/humidity.

 

Backup 3-2-1 just do it.
https://www.backblaze.com/blog/3-2-1-backup-best-practices-using-the-cloud/

 

+1 for onedrive (cos i have it free with o365 fam sub)

 

Ok - the end of my backup story.

I'm a complete newb with this stuff - but I've just started using *Rescuezilla* to burn a complete 'Bare Metal Recovery' Disk Image of my C Boot Drive, and then use Duplicati for my personal data D Drive with all the family movies etc.

It's not an issue for me using 2 apps.

Rescuezilla is a once a month manual Disk Image of my 250 Gig C Drive, and Duplicati automatically backs up all my data on my 2 TB D drive.

They both use the same external SSD - just different folders.

2 questions:

QUESTION 1: HANDLING KLUDGE FOR THE LONG TERM?
The awesome thing is I took a full Disk Image (just in case) then did my first SYSTEM RESET in like 7 years.
I'm nearly done setting everything up to take my first "Vanilla" Disk Image - without the kludge.

I'm wondering what would happen if I wanted to do a "Mr Robot" clean sweep every year back to this Vanilla Disk Image, and then download all the updates in one go? How long would that be viable? Until say W12 comes out? What issues? (I guess keeping a meticulous log of any new apps I need would be a bummer - but after the fresh Vanilla reinstall I could just take a new Image with all the system downloads and new apps included. Vanilla 2.0 as it were.)

QUESTION 2: PARTITIONS IF I GET A BIG BOOT DRIVE?
Because I love the idea of getting my drive up and running asap, and then letting Duplicati slowly reinstall all the other stuff - I'm thinking that if I ever get a massive C boot disk, I might install a partition? Does anyone know how that works with backup software? Again - the goal is Rescuezilla doing a Disk Image of mainly the OS, apps, and settings, and Duplicati looking after all my data.

 

not that I do clean starts any more, but when I did, I never installed any software until I actually needed to use it, you find pretty quickly, you have a lot of crap you used once yonks ago, and have just kept around 'because'. Going around and installing everything again after a clean start is counter-productive.

 

I started watching Mr Robot but when some guy said "it's not a ddos it's a rootkit" I immediately stopped.

Even before that Rami Malek's eye sockets were making me want to watch something else.

 

Can be even easier; 2 separate drives.
1 is windows OS and all programs are installed ot it (C:/)
1 is a storage drive where files are actively stored, even the steam library etc can be there (D:/)


Been doing it for years (and had unraid for years where i keep other stuff i don't really need locally at all)

 

Partitioning a drive is not a good idea. If you reinstall windows, then chances are it will wipe the entire drive.

Notwithstanding this, Windows now puts a boot sector and recovery sector (or similar) at the beginning and end of the windows partition, so resizing partitions is now harder and relies on other external tools to do this.

The best and safest option is to always use a separate disk. Don't waste your time or risk partitions.

 

What would be the point?

Your pretty much only need a browser, office and steam.
With that you only need to backup the user directory and the steam games directory.

If you want to stuff around with weird programs do it in a vm and restore the checkpoint afterwards.

 

I hear you about only needing a browser & office (and at the moment I try not to game. Addictive personality!)

Hmmm, yes - I'm appreciating this community.
I often over-think and over-stress things.
Great feedback all!

On partitions - I think I've done something along the way in my upgrades from (possibly?) W7 to W10 and now W11. Just the other day I noticed my C boot drive has possibly too many?

Is this normal? Looks wrong...