A quick note on Macrium Reflect I just found out replacing an SSD. The FREE version does NOT allow restoring an image to a drive other than its original source. The retail version does. Although I have always restored to the original disk without issues on the free version, that loophole makes the image worthless in the event of catastrophic failure of the SSD using the free version.

Luckily I did a preemptive strike on the SSD failure and Samsung's Data Migration worked like a charm, BUT that requires the source disk in tact. All authorizations and junctions took (Win7), even though only the two SSDs were connected to the computer.

mettelus
A quick note on Macrium Reflect I just found out replacing an SSD. The FREE version does NOT allow restoring an image to a drive other than its original source. The retail version does. Although I have always restored to the original disk without issues on the free version, that loophole makes the image worthless in the event of catastrophic failure of the SSD using the free version.

Luckily I did a preemptive strike on the SSD failure and Samsung's Data Migration worked like a charm, BUT that requires the source disk in tact. All authorizations and junctions took (Win7), even though only the two SSDs were connected to the computer.

Are you saying you that could not restore to a replacement drive with Macrium Free after a drive hardware failure?

 
I took a few days to get all my projects backed up to Carbonite (750Mbps/750Mbps fiber optic here). After that I set it to backup once daily (while I sleep). Ya, worst case I could lose a days worth of work. That is a whole lot better than losing it all. On heavy DAW days I could "resume" the backup while I take a lunch or dinner break. 
 
I do full C: drive backups with Acronis on all 5 of my machines to my NAS with one week of incrementals. I keep two full weeks of that at all times. For my DAW that means all new programs and VST/VSTi installs are backed up daily.
 
I just need to get those on Carbonite too.
 

+1 for Acronis True Image 
 

abacab

mettelus
A quick note on Macrium Reflect I just found out replacing an SSD. The FREE version does NOT allow restoring an image to a drive other than its original source. The retail version does. Although I have always restored to the original disk without issues on the free version, that loophole makes the image worthless in the event of catastrophic failure of the SSD using the free version.

Luckily I did a preemptive strike on the SSD failure and Samsung's Data Migration worked like a charm, BUT that requires the source disk in tact. All authorizations and junctions took (Win7), even though only the two SSDs were connected to the computer.

Are you saying you that could not restore to a replacement drive with Macrium Free after a drive hardware failure?

Correct, and it seems to be baked into the image as well. I pulled the old SSD, put in a new, and there is an option to apply the image but only in the paid version. I am not sure if there is an out to that if the SSD is already gone (both the image itself and recovery disk seem to have "free" baked into them). After cloning the original, Reflect says the last two images done with the old SSD do not match the installed hardware.
 
I am not sure if it is possible to upgrade Reflect after the imaged SSD fails.

mettelus

abacab

mettelus
A quick note on Macrium Reflect I just found out replacing an SSD. The FREE version does NOT allow restoring an image to a drive other than its original source. The retail version does. Although I have always restored to the original disk without issues on the free version, that loophole makes the image worthless in the event of catastrophic failure of the SSD using the free version.

Luckily I did a preemptive strike on the SSD failure and Samsung's Data Migration worked like a charm, BUT that requires the source disk in tact. All authorizations and junctions took (Win7), even though only the two SSDs were connected to the computer.

Are you saying you that could not restore to a replacement drive with Macrium Free after a drive hardware failure?

Correct, and it seems to be baked into the image as well. I pulled the old SSD, put in a new, and there is an option to apply the image but only in the paid version. I am not sure if there is an out to that if the SSD is already gone (both the image itself and recovery disk seem to have "free" baked into them). After cloning the original, Reflect says the last two images done with the old SSD do not match the installed hardware.
 
I am not sure if it is possible to upgrade Reflect after the imaged SSD fails.

Well, crap, that's bad news if it's true!  Think I'll try wiping my D: data partition on my 1TB WD SATA HDD today (already have images of that for backup) and see if I can restore my C: system SSD image to that with Reflect Free. 
 
Will report back with my results.  Yikes!

Just remember what they say about free. You get what you pay for.

bapu
Just remember what they say about free. You get what you pay for.

Well I have already paid for a LOT of great freeware so far, that meets my needs.  Just saying ...

I ended up trying something called GoodSync. Bit of a corny name, but after trying it for a few backup "jobs" I quite liked how it worked.
 
It was recommended by a photographer who I have been taking advice from (via YouTube event videos) regarding software called Lightroom, which is for organising and adjusting photographs. I liked his general attitude and he is quite a good teacher, in my opinion, so when I found out he uses GoodSync to back up his hundreds and thousands of photographs and general data I thought, "yeah, I'll check that out."
 
I paid £32 for two licenses (I'm going to use it on my wife's computer too). So, not free, but not all that expensive either.
 
It has a few bells and whistles but I only use it to create a one way backup. I also don't bother with doing checksum checks and rely on the software spotting differences in date/time stamps. For some reason a lot of my existing backup files had different time stamps... Some out by just a minute or two, some out by a whole hour and some out by random amounts. This meant it took me quite a while to get everything back into sync, but now that is done I can backup any changed files quite quickly.
 
I have also got it writing a particular set of data to my Google Drive and that works well too.
 
Should have done this a LONG time ago...
 
Regarding imaging my system drive... I'm still sitting on the fence about this one. When I imaged my 240gb SSD system drive a couple of years ago Acronis worked fine so I may still use that. First, though I have to go get some more USB3 hard drives.
 
If my system drive does give up the ghost I may well take the opportunity to install stuff from scratch. Sometimes a fresh install works wonders for blowing the cobwebs out and getting rid of stuff you just don't use anymore.

dlesaux
Here's what I do! I have a 1TB USB drive where I installed my OneDrive directory. I use a free program call FreeFileSync that allows me to mirror my project files to my USB drive which in turn mirrors to OneDrive. Initial backup takes a while since it's mirroring the whole drive but afterwards, it only updates files that have changed. I backup every day and it takes about minute.
 
I've always followed the rule, if your data doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't exist. This method meets that intent.
 
As usual, YMMV..

+1 for FreeFileSync.  I use this to make copies of document and project files/folders to an external USB drive, in between images.  That way I have a copy of the most recent file versions, even if my image is a day or two old...
 
The image is still good for full system recovery, but this way I don't risk losing a day's work either!