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You're right, I have to do something. I've never done restructuring of my data, so I have couple of external hard drives , which contents are partially copied to others (really awful attempt of backup). So, it's worse than you might think... 
I really appreciated your comment, I got extra inspiration to clean up my messy pile of data and do a proper backup scheme
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Seriously, have a look at AOMEI - it does images, incremental images, and you can load images are virtual drives to restore individual files if you need to, or rewrite the whole HDD from a boot WinPE disk. It compresses, it's got a free edition which does everything you want, pretty much, it's really damn good. The only thing I wish it handled was eMMC so I could image the WookieTab ...
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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I'm downloading it right now .
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OriginalGriff wrote: I'd also recommend AOMEI Backupper - but I may have done that here once or twice before!
I tried it after your tip and I find the software itself nice, but their recovery CD is quite crappy... I have had problems with legacy booting the laptop after using it. I don't discard bad usage from my side, but I think that even I was testing I didn't do anything that bad.
I tried Macrium Reflect after that and it is the way around. The software is not so intuitive (I don't have any problem with that, but my father in law...) but their CD is running like charm. And you can choose the target OS when doing it, I mean it doesn't generate a boot CD depending on host OS.
OriginalGriff wrote: I run several 4TB USB drives, and do a full image every two weeks, with a different drive each time, and I keep a "historic" 8 or so images on each drive. But then, I've been called paranoid before, so it doesn't bother me... 
I am thinking on doing the same. A friend of mine has a very fancy NAS with redundant backups internally and so on (4x8TB HDDs = 3 for data, 1 for backup) but if they get one of those encripting malwares... I am not sure that it will keep them safe. I prefer your system... After all, that you are paranoid doesn't imply you are not being followed
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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second the vote of macrium over aomei, tried aomei first but it didn't play well network shares forwards or backwards (and couldn't restore from a hidden network share: no option to key in a path - must use [their] navigate - how amateurish is that? - and their helpdesk was clueless on that.)
Sin tack
the any key okay
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It worked fine for me, both on my desktop when I did a trial restore, and on a ASUS lappie after a major user failure. My desktop runs legacy bios, the lappie UEFI.
Did you report it to AOMEI?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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OriginalGriff wrote:
Did you report it to AOMEI?
I can't 100% prove it is something wrong on their side, but I did search for similars in the support forum and what I saw was not convencing me. So no... I didn't report it.
M.D.V.
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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OriginalGriff wrote: do a full image every two weeks, with a different drive each time, and I keep a "historic" 8 or so images on each drive. But then, I've been called paranoid before, so it doesn't bother me...
Just lost 2 years emails at work in last November due to poor backup. And yes, your harddrive will not last forever, and yes, losing data does not only happen to others, and, yes, it even happens to the best computer-literated people.
Anyway, one question, is your imaging process automated ? I dream of a good and robust possibility to have backups being done on a regular basis/events, without me even noticing it happens. But I have never ever found a tool that would do this properly - maybe AOMEI is the one.
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No, it's manual, with electronic reminders - otherwise I'd have to leave the physical media connected instead of air-gapped.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Used to do that but would always get reminded at wrong time and which was where last (multiple pc's.)
Even better is silent backup to network drive, daily/regular routine to switch drives - easier handling of multiple machines, no need to drag drives around. (Just stack them up next to the router.)
Worst thing that can happen is forget to switch drive now and then - but for that the backups are set to keep a few generations of full/diff/incremental on each drive so still nothing is lost.
Sin tack
the any key okay
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Lopatir wrote: Used to do that but would always get reminded at wrong time and which was where last (multiple pc's.)
Absolutely! My current backup reminder is on snooze for about three months! 
Piyush K Singh
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I have only one bit to add: DVDs are cheap. Really critical data I also backup to a DVD (or two). That way I know it can never be overwritten or corrupted by a virus.
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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As a matter of interest, do you use the free or pro version of AOMEI?
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I was using the free version, but then I bought it. You don't get a lot of more useful stuff, but if it encourages them to keep working, it's worth it!
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Thanks for that, I have been using FBackup but AOMEI does look better. I'll give it a go...
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OriginalGriff wrote: I run several 4TB USB drives, and do a full image every two weeks, with a different drive each time, and I keep a "historic" 8 or so images on each drive. But then, I've been called paranoid before, so it doesn't bother me...
Is it paranoia if you know something will happen? 
Hardware fails. Software fails. People make mistakes. People do bad things to others. Stuff happens.
My strategy:
- Replace the primary HD every other year to mitigate HW failure
- Use the old primary HD as a hot swap backup inside the PC.
- Use old internal HDs as offline storage (got a cable/power supply for $15 USD that turns any HD [EIDE or SATA] into a flash drive).
- Make system images periodically, when changes to the OS & applications warrant it.
- Use WinZip to automatically backup certain directories nightly, weekly, or monthly, depending on data changes. Backups include a date/time stamp and are placed on the hot swap HD.
- Periodically move backups to one of several external HD, and use old internal HD as long range storage.
- Burn copies of files to DVD on a semi-regular basis. DVD-R has limitations, but it's proof against ransomware, the media is cheap, and it's easy to store.
One valuable feature of zip format is that it's extremely easy to pluck a file out of a backup. While system images are complete restores if a system is hosed ... it's not always easy (or possible) to get single file out without doing a complete restore. [A former employer got burned on a proprietary backup format so I avoid them.]
Flash drives are cheap and easy to use, but the media is volatile, so I don't use it except as very temporary storage.
Am I winning the paranoia contest???
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Prove it. What data did you lose? ![Jig | [Dance]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/jig.gif)
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Wait, I can't show you what I don't have 
In this case I ended up with non-monotonous timestamps ( Screenshots (1) - (299) are newer than Screenshot (300))
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I can definitely say you need some form of rotation on your backups. It's not always easy to automate, there's always some sort of manual intervention required.
Imaging is also a very good idea, but IMO it's for a different purpose than to try and keep your data "safe". It's so you can revert back to how your OS worked before once you fiddle too much and bork it all up.
For me, every time I update / do some major installation I make an image first.
For my data I have 3 externals which I constantly swap around on a daily basis. Call them A, B & C. I've setup a rsync script on my Linux at home that just attempts to copy to a preset folder every time, if it doesn't exist the script just waits a few minutes and tries again. Then when I finally plug in the external the automount places it into that folder and the script does its thing.
In the morning I unplug that drive (A), plug in another (B), take it with me to office. There I unplug C which I left there yesterday and plug in A. Where I use DeltaCopy in Windows to do the same thing there (it's just a frontend for rsync in Windows to compatible with the way rsync works in Linux). It then keeps my data at work synced with the data from home. At the end of the day I take the drive I left at work (C) back home leaving A there. Rinse-n-repeat.
Pretty simple, all I need to do is plug in/out drives. Even if I forget it's just a case of the rotation skips a day.
And since there's always at least 3 copies, such accidental overwrites isn't an immediate problem. Not to mention, since my Linux machine is using BTRFS I've got snapshots to previous versions of nearly all files, at least two of each - which means I'm able to get a previous version even if I've overwritten all 3 externals.
I've twice had to restore due to a HDD failing, and that just meant plugging in so the script itself recreates the folders & files. Accidental deletes were the only points where I needed to manually restore - which entailed all of a normal copy-paste operation ... <sarcasm=on>"sssssoooooo complicated to do isn't it?"
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Reminds me of a company I used to work for many years ago.
Every day a series of automated database backups went to LT02 tapes. Tapes got changed by hand if the operators remembered. On the only occasion that the data server failed we couldn't read the current backup to restore it. Luckily we managed to resurrect the server but management instituted a new data backup policy as a direct result.
Moral of the story, making backups is a great idea but only if they can actually be used to restore as well.
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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You can probably find the deleted files under the
_gsdata_ directory in the target directory.
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I couldn't find such directory in the destination (I've also checked for hidden and system files) and after googling (and binging) it I could only find results related to GoodSync and I used robocopy. So, probably I'm out of luck, but I appreciated your comment. For some folk might be life saver .
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In addition to having multiple copies, keep one copy offsite somewhere. If the worst happens, you don't want all of your backups getting torched or stolen along with your stuff.
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Is a sleepwalking nun a roamin' Catholic?
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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That's a difficult habit to break.
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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