# Best Backup Solutions for Windows 10?



## Jeremy Gillam (Jul 2, 2019)

Hey everyone,

I recently rebuilt my PC an reinstalled Windows 10 Pro and am running into some issues getting File History to work. It said it was backing up but when I go to see previous versions for a file there's nothing there. I've turned the backup on and off in Settings a few times but I can't seem to get it to work, which has me wondering if it's even the best way to go for backup on Windows even if I were able to get it to work properly. I really like Time Machine on the Mac end and would like to find something similarly seamless for PC.

I purchased Paragon Hard Disk Manager to use to schedule a weekly clone of my system drive, but while it seems to work it is infuriatingly slow, a small backup takes days, and I would like to find an alternative.

I use Backblaze for cloud backup and am happy with it. But this piecemeal mess of semi-functional backup solutions has me wondering if there's a better way do it.

It would be great to hear what others are using, what options will have least impact on DAW, etc. Thanks!


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## dougj7 (Jul 2, 2019)

I use Acronis True Image. I'm currently using True Image version 2017, but the newer version should work just as good.

https://www.acronis.com/en-us/


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## DGravel (Jul 2, 2019)

Here is my 5 cents worth. I installed in my PC a quick connect tray that allows me to mount in a few secs a large internal HD. Than I use TeraCopy to perform regular incremental updates. I am using 3 HDs that I cycle in case something goes wrong. So far, this the by far the easiest and fastest solution I've found. TeraCopy is quite fast. Hope this helps.


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## Synetos (Jul 2, 2019)

Jeremy Gillam said:


> Hey everyone,
> 
> I recently rebuilt my PC an reinstalled Windows 10 Pro and am running into some issues getting File History to work. It said it was backing up but when I go to see previous versions for a file there's nothing there. I've turned the backup on and off in Settings a few times but I can't seem to get it to work, which has me wondering if it's even the best way to go for backup on Windows even if I were able to get it to work properly. I really like Time Machine on the Mac end and would like to find something similarly seamless for PC.
> 
> ...



I use Paragon as well. What are you backing up to? How large of drive?

I do my drive images to another SSD that i have in my DAW, reserved just for that purpose. I can backup 500gb SSD to an image that is verifed in about 20 minutes. 

If you are trying to go to USB drive or something, that might be why it is taking so long.

I just image my OS C: drive. Everything else is backed up to 2T USB drives every night using a robocopy script I launch with task scheduler.


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## Jeremy Gillam (Jul 2, 2019)

Synetos said:


> I use Paragon as well. What are you backing up to? How large of drive?
> 
> I do my drive images to another SSD that i have in my DAW, reserved just for that purpose. I can backup 500gb SSD to an image that is verifed in about 20 minutes.
> 
> ...


Thanks. Yeah I'm using a 1TB USB3 drive to clone a 500GB or so system drive.


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## dzilizzi (Jul 2, 2019)

I make a Windows image of my system drive which only has programs. I usually only have to update it when there are changes to the programs. 

Everything else I copy to a backup drive. I used to use bought programs to backup, but too often the programs either don't work after an OS update and I can never access my stuff again or something else goes wrong. I've lost too many backups this way.


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## MartinH. (Jul 2, 2019)

I like "beyond compare" for file-level backups without versioning. Don't have enough faith in images either (except for boot drives obviously). 
Backblaze is way too slow in Germany to be usable (at least it was when I tried and it was confirmed by their support to be a limitation because of the distance to their data center).


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## Dewdman42 (Jul 2, 2019)

I use Veeam Backup, there is a free version. Seems to work very well,


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## kitekrazy (Jul 2, 2019)

dougj7 said:


> I use Acronis True Image. I'm currently using True Image version 2017, but the newer version should work just as good.
> 
> https://www.acronis.com/en-us/



I still have 2010 and it works.


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## steveo42 (Jul 2, 2019)

I use Macrium Reflect, the free version and it has not failed me yet. Been using it for years. What I do is create an image file of my C: drive. I have it set to back up every night and maintain 4 copies. I have a WD USB drive connected to the port on my Netgear router and use that as my back up device. I don't bother with sequential or differential backups because I've been burned by that one before. I go brute strength and a full back up. For my songs and data I just copy to another drive. For my VSTi SSD drives I don't bother backing up as I can just re-install the libraries if the drive takes a crap. I create a bootable USB key with the Macrium program and can restore easily by booting the key and pointing to the back up I want to restore. Easy peasy.


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## Jeremy Gillam (Jul 2, 2019)

Thanks everyone for chiming in. Anyone using File History, not using it because of issues I mentioned or others? I like versioning and OS-level implementation seems promising but my faith in it has been compromised.


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## wst3 (Jul 3, 2019)

So far my experience with File History mirrors yours. I'm not giving up on it, but for now it seems incomplete, and incomplete is a very bad word when one is speaking of backups!

What I do...

I make an image of the OS & Apps drive (C when I make substantial changes to the OS or programs. Not every Windows update, not every program update, at some point you end up spending more time backing up than using. (This is one reason an automated, OS level backup tool - think Time Capsule - would be so lovely.

For data (project files, spreadsheets, etc) I backup nightly to an NAS, and I keep almost all of it in Dropbox.

For content (sample libraries mostly) and product downloads I backup to rotating external drives (different brands even, that might be a little extreme?) and I'm about to add more storage to my NAS so I can back up to that too.

And for now I do back up both the downloads and the extracted libraries - that is probably not necessary, but storage has become so reasonably priced that I figure it can't hurt.

With any luck, if one of my sample library drives dies I can buy another one and just copy to contents form an external drive (much faster than NAS, or heaven forbid, the cloud!)

I check out the backup software on a regular basis, but thus far none of them has caused me to reach for my wallet.


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## Pictus (Jul 4, 2019)

For the boot disk/partition I like to have a system image keeping 3 copies:
1 - Clean pristine system with all the stuff needed
2 - Previous backup
3 - Current system backup, created before Windows Update or installing a new software

I do this manually(Macrium Reflec) from a bootable pen-drive full of tools
https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/sergei_strelecs_winpe.html

For the rest I like to use file/directory backup, one of the best is FreeFileSync https://freefilesync.org/
Check the tutorials https://freefilesync.org/tutorials.php


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## rudi (Jul 13, 2019)

I have used True Image since 2017 for both disk cloning (when updating an SSD or HDD) and for my daily backups.

Currently I use version 2019 with a custom "Incremental" backup scheme - 1 full backup, followed by 6 incremental backups; repeated until I almost reach the full capacity of my backup drive. It works flawlessly on my system.

I also like the way it lets you restore data - select a date and restore the entire backup, or specific folder(s) or file(s). 

The scheduling options are pretty flexible too. 

I also use ROBOCOPY (a utility built into Windows) to backup my important data to a second baclup disk drive here's the command I use:

ROBOCOPY "C:\Users\Rudi\Documents" "R:\Documents" /E /XO /XX /NDL /FFT /TEE /LOG:"C:\robocopy.log"

It only copies files that are newer than the backup files. It's held in a .cmd batch file and scheduled run as a Windows task daily.

I also use ROBOCOPY to copy a copy of my backup to Dropbox...

Paranoid? No, I just worked in IT for a long time!


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## Quasar (Jul 13, 2019)

kitekrazy said:


> I still have 2010 and it works.


I still have 2010 on my W7 computer, but had problems with W10 machines, and learned that there is no official support for W10 until ATI 2015. The web computer I'm typing on now has ATI 2017.

Were you able to get ATI 2010 to work with W10?

But I like Macrium also (perhaps more), and have experienced three successful, hassle-free restorations after hard drive failure using the free version.


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## kitekrazy (Jul 13, 2019)

Quasar said:


> I still have 2010 on my W7 computer, but had problems with W10 machines, and learned that there is no official support for W10 until ATI 2015. The web computer I'm typing on now has ATI 2017.
> 
> Were you able to get ATI 2010 to work with W10?
> 
> But I like Macrium also (perhaps more), and have experienced three successful, hassle-free restorations after hard drive failure using the free version.



I used it to revert to W7 from W10. Plus it was as older system. I also used it copy to a SSD with W7.


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## elpedro (Jul 13, 2019)

I clone each drive in my pc with Acronis, and save an acronis backup on an external USB drive.


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