I have a NAS drive on my network, but in a different building from the DAW. I backup with Acronis and also mirror directories using Synctoy. I also back up critical data to USB drives, so I should have three copies of the most critical stuff.

Synctoy is pretty good unless the folder contains a lot of files, it then takes a long time. Plus point is it a straight copy and needs no special software to read the backup.

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.

The Macrium Reflect Free version DOES allow restoring an image to a drive other than it's original source. I used the WinPE recovery stick.
 
As I stated earlier, I would attempt a system restore to an alternate drive using Macrium Reflect Free v6.3.
 
I am breathing easier now, because everything worked as hoped.
 
I took a backup image of my SSD drive (system) and restored it to a secondary internal HDD, then booted my Win 10 system from that drive. 
 
I used the WinPE 10 USB stick that I had created after installing Macrium to boot the system into recovery mode.
 
Then just selected the image to restore from, and then selected the target drive.  Everything worked fine.
 
Macrium Reflect Free has my recommendation!

That is odd, I am using 6.3 as well and booted from the DVD, but am on Win7. I will have to revisit this, since my system was still remembering the removed SSD until the system said "System Recovery is turned off." When I checked options in there, it had two C drives listed, so I removed the old and set it to the new one.
 
I did just check Reflect, and the images of the old drives are now valid, so I suspect the system remembering that drive may have been a part of it.
 
Initially the new SSD was also not formatted, so when I get a chance will boot off the DVD and see if I can see all images now.

mettelus
That is odd, I am using 6.3 as well and booted from the DVD, but am on Win7. I will have to revisit this, since my system was still remembering the removed SSD until the system said "System Recovery is turned off." When I checked options in there, it had two C drives listed, so I removed the old and set it to the new one.
 
I did just check Reflect, and the images of the old drives are now valid, so I suspect the system remembering that drive may have been a part of it.
 
Initially the new SSD was also not formatted, so when I get a chance will boot off the DVD and see if I can see all images now.

I will also add that I am on a UEFI BIOS and my 250GB SSD system drive is GPT partition style.
 
Macrium allows you to choose from several WinPE versions, so I went with the latest which is WinPE 10, which is the default for Windows 8 and higher.  It looks like Windows 7 may be limited to building one of the older versions.  I see that Windows PE 3.1 rescue media is based on Windows 7.
 
The HDD that I restored to is a WD 1TB 7200 rpm SATA drive.  It had two MBR partitions, which I had to delete before beginning the restore.  After the restore, I had my GPT boot partition on my WD drive, and was easily able to select it for boot directly from my BIOS.  Windows 10 booted, and even showed that is was still activated, so it didn't even blink. 
 
However running my system from a spinning drive was noticeably slower, so I couldn't wait to get back to running from my SSD! 
 
I was about to upgrade to the full version of Macrium, so I'm glad this test worked for me!

abacab

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.

The Macrium Reflect Free version DOES allow restoring an image to a drive other than it's original source. I used the WinPE recovery stick.
 
As I stated earlier, I would attempt a system restore to an alternate drive using Macrium Reflect Free v6.3.
 
I am breathing easier now, because everything worked as hoped.
 
I took a backup image of my SSD drive (system) and restored it to a secondary internal HDD, then booted my Win 10 system from that drive. 
 
I used the WinPE 10 USB stick that I had created after installing Macrium to boot the system into recovery mode.
 
Then just selected the image to restore from, and then selected the target drive.  Everything worked fine.
 
Macrium Reflect Free has my recommendation!

I was using ATI when I did my first conversion to SSD.  It failed flatly.  I loaded Reflect FREE and completed the process without problems.  Shortly thereafter, I purchased a Reflect 4 pack.
 
I like the interface and workflow in Reflect better too.

BobF
 
I like the interface and workflow in Reflect better too.

Bob, I gave to agree.  I have used several other imaging programs over the years, and I have to say that I like Reflect the best so far.  For one, they have the most complete user guide and knowledge base that I have seen.  Another is that the included WinPE build wizard is painless to build the recovery environment with.
 
I have Reflect set up to image my SSD system drive once a day to an external USB 3.0 drive.  That takes less than 30 mins, and I can keep on working as it runs in the background.  I also have it scheduled once a week to image my secondary drive partitions, which includes all of my Cakewalk content, my sample libraries, and archived installers.

abacab

BobF
 
I like the interface and workflow in Reflect better too.

Bob, I gave to agree.  I have used several other imaging programs over the years, and I have to say that I like Reflect the best so far.  For one, they have the most complete user guide and knowledge base that I have seen.  Another is that the included WinPE build wizard is painless to build the recovery environment with.
 
I have Reflect set up to image my SSD system drive once a day to an external USB 3.0 drive.  That takes less than 30 mins, and I can keep on working as it runs in the background.  I also have it scheduled once a week to image my secondary drive partitions, which includes all of my Cakewalk content, my sample libraries, and archived installers.

I have scheduled backups that run every night:
- Weekly full system image, incrementals each night between fulls (USB3)
- Weekly full non-system image (includes projects), incrementals each night between fulls (USB3)
- Additional Weekly full Project image, incrementals each night between fulls (NAS)
 
I manually kick off an image of my Samples tree when I feel like I need to
 
The Recovery image is on a thumb drive, periodically tested for integrity.  It lives in a fire box inside a fire safe.
 
I rotate drives thru the dock such that I have at least 3 months available.  When I recycle a pool drive, I copy the newest images from that drive to another drive that lives inside a fire box, which is inside a fire safe.
 
The rigor and consistency were implemented after reading bitflipper's horror story.

Now that sounds like a plan, Bob!

After my recent format and reinstall I set up Acronis and bought a 5TB USB3.0 drive. It creates drive images with incremental updates (keeps the last 5) of all 3 of my internal drives (C: OS, D: Samples, E: Projects) as 3 separate scheduled drive backups... I haven't looked at it since it started... I'd like to assume it's working haha. Eventually I'll get some solution for backing up my backups. (I love computers).

polarbear
After my recent format and reinstall I set up Acronis and bought a 5TB USB3.0 drive. It creates drive images with incremental updates (keeps the last 5) of all 3 of my internal drives (C: OS, D: Samples, E: Projects) as 3 separate scheduled drive backups... I haven't looked at it since it started... I'd like to assume it's working haha. Eventually I'll get some solution for backing up my backups. (I love computers).

It never hurts to at least make sure that you can test boot into the standalone recovery environment, and access the stored images.  If you can't, it's easier to fix now before your computer breaks and you really need those images.
 
It is also a good idea to actually perform a test restore onto a spare drive, just to make sure that it works as planned, and you know the process before you really need it in a crunch.
 
I don't bother with incrementals, because it complicates the restore process.  I stick with full images only, which is simple if you have enough external drive space.  That way you only need one image file to complete a restore with.