Can I use the subject USB hard drive to create a rescue disk and then add my backup to the same disk? If I can how do I create the "Plan."

Manually create a 2 GB FAT32 partition on your disk and copy Rescue Media files onto it. Then verify that your system supports booting from USB HDDs as opposed to just flash drives. Rescue Media Builder currently doesn’t support building directly to targets initialized as GPT, which a 4 TB disk would be.

+x

 

jphughan - 12 April 2023 10:42 PM

Manually create a 2 GB FAT32 partition on your disk and copy Rescue Media files onto it. Then verify that your system supports booting from USB HDDs as opposed to just flash drives. Rescue Media Builder currently doesn’t support building directly to targets initialized as GPT, which a 4 TB disk would be.

Would it be easier to just use a flash drive for the rescue media and then backup all the files to the 4 TB USB GPT hard drive (using win 11 - latest update as of today)?

That's what I would do.  I've done similar for years.  I've also used USB SSD's in conjunction with flash drive Rescue Media.  I've also used larger sized flash drives like 256 GB and 512 GB for Rescue Media and put image files on those.  When you update the Rescue Media in Reflect that has image files on it, the Rescue Media Builder does not delete the files on the flash drive. It just replaces and updates the necessary files for the Rescue Media.


I would recommend you test booting your Rescue Media flash drive and that once it's booted, you check to make sure the 4 TB USB HDD is recognized by the Rescue Media.  You don't want to come into a situation where it isn't recognized but you only find it out after you have an emergency where you need access to the images on the 4 TB USB HDD.

I have a 512 gb card. if I create an image file for my c drive and put it on the rescue disk, I should have an emergency backup - is that correct? All other drives that contain files and folders could be backed up to the cloud. Is that the approach that would work in keeping my system working in case of failure? Any thing else I should do?

There's always the rule of 3, which is a backup and 2 redundancies.  One redundant backup should in best practice be kept safely off site somewhere else.


My scenario is I have a 20 TB USB HDD.  This device contains my data as well attached storage for backing up all the partitions.  Then, a 2nd USB HDD is used to make another backup of all that data onto it.  I also have various other redundant backups on whatever device I can find with the free space that is the fastest.  So, it's a mixture of USB flash thumb drives, USB SSD's, and USB HDD's.

+x

 

dbminter - 13 April 2023 1:57 AM

There's always the rule of 3, which is a backup and 2 redundancies.  One redundant backup should in best practice be kept safely off site somewhere else.


My scenario is I have a 20 TB USB HDD.  This device contains my data as well attached storage for backing up all the partitions.  Then, a 2nd USB HDD is used to make another backup of all that data onto it.  I also have various other redundant backups on whatever device I can find with the free space that is the fastest.  So, it's a mixture of USB flash thumb drives, USB SSD's, and USB HDD's.

OK, Thanks for that. I will review my files and folders which I think will easily fit on a 4tb USB HDD. I have a second one that I can re-purpose for the second backup. All my important documents and downloads can be backed-up in the cloud  and I can eliminate any duplicate files that I have collected over the years. The final question is - should I be backing up the partitions on my other HDs or just the files and folders. For example, I have one drive that is exclusively music and one that is images - I see no need to backup the partitions for those drives unless I have missed something. Your thoughts?

Cloud backup should not be too heavily relied on.  WD's MyCloud hack was recent proof.  I think it's still down and people can't access their files.  I wouldn't backup anything to the cloud that you can't access in some other way.  In other words, I wouldn't rely on it for mission critical backups.


A partition backup is faster than a file one.  Plus, they're, in generally, "easier" to restore.  And you can mount a partition backup as a virtual drive and essentially restore it as a file backup.


But, if you store everything in one place, you might want to consider file backups and just backup specific folders in groups.


I created partitions for individual types of files.  For instance, there's one with nothing but install files.  One for photos and video files.  One for audio files.  And a few others for various things like "live data," which has my e-mail and web browser client data on it, text files, PDF's, left over MS DOS applications, showing how long I've had this partition set up, etc..

+x

 

dbminter - 13 April 2023 2:55 AM

Cloud backup should not be too heavily relied on.  WD's MyCloud hack was recent proof.  I think it's still down and people can't access their files.  I wouldn't backup anything to the cloud that you can't access in some other way.  In other words, I wouldn't rely on it for mission critical backups.


A partition backup is faster than a file one.  Plus, they're, in generally, "easier" to restore.  And you can mount a partition backup as a virtual drive and essentially restore it as a file backup.


But, if you store everything in one place, you might want to consider file backups and just backup specific folders in groups.


I created partitions for individual types of files.  For instance, there's one with nothing but install files.  One for photos and video files.  One for audio files.  And a few others for various things like "live data," which has my e-mail and web browser client data on it, text files, PDF's, left over MS DOS applications, showing how long I've had this partition set up, etc..

Once again, thank you for that very valuable information. I will review all my drives for data, and if I have to purchase a new drive just for backups. Like you I have numerous legacy programs that I use infrequently and those need to be reviewed. Clearly, I have some work to do on this issue.

When making an image, do not make an image of only the C drive. Make an image of the entire disk that contains the C drive, i.e. including the hidden partitions. You can omit any partitions you may have manually created if desired, but do not omit something simply because you don't know what it is and assume it isn't relevant. Hidden partitions often are. Reflect has an option in the upper-left corner of the application that reads "Create an image of the partitions necessary to back up and restore Windows", which does exactly what its name suggests by opening the image backup wizard with the appropriate partitions already pre-selected.