Ghosting strategy?

Hi guys. This one is for ghosting specialists. Be advised that I have NO experience in ghosting. Thanks in advance

I now have 2 x 2 TB M.2 SSDs in my desktop PC.
- SSD 1 is my system drive. It has Windows 11, Apps, Games (data is on a separate HDD). Currently the occupied space is 250 GB, so there's about 1.38 TB free (+ overprovisioning).
- SSS 2 is my backup drive. It's empty right now.

I'd like to to backup (well, ghost) SSD 1 onto SSD 2, and keep SSD 2 bootable at all times in case of SSD 1 failure. Currently I have no secondary boot solution at all.

At first I thought of RAID 1 (mirroring), but I figured that if I ever get a malware on SSD 1, SSD 2 would immediately get infected too.

So I'm rather thinking of automatic ghosting once a week or so. That way if I get something on SSD 1, I could quickly boot on SSD 2 and ghost it back to SSD 1. I will have lost less than a week of Windows, Apps, Games (no data).

My other concern is wear and tear. Ghosting 250 GB per week on a SSD is already "not great" (especially if only a few files have changed). But 250 GB is only the current state. Once I start installing games, the occupied space is going to go up dramatically. Ghosting 1.5 TB per week would be even less reasonable, my SSD 2 wouldn't last very long.

Bottom line: what would you do? Thank you.

If you are going to use Ghost to perform an exact clone of the original drive, then you need to be cautious of getting a signature collision as a result of two drives having identical signatures.

As for the wear on the SSD, I think that you may be overthinking it.

Let's take an example:

I have a 1TB SSD that has a 1,600 TBW rating. So if I were to write 250 GB to that drive once a week that would give me 1600TB / 250GB = 6,400 backups. With 52 backups a year that gives us 6,400 / 52 = 123 years worth of backups. At 1.5 TB per week you would still be able to accommodate 20 years of backups. NOTE: Yes, I realize that you would need an SSD larger than 1 TB to accommodate the 1.5TB of data, but that would also give you an even higher TBW rating. Check your specific SSD. Different models have different TBW ratings.

Some possible alternatives:

I have not used Ghost Solution Suite in years, but with many disk imaging programs you can instantly boot a backup so there is no need to do a full image every time. Do your full backup, then do a series of differential and/or incremental backups and eventually do a new full backup. That would make your backups much faster and require a lot less data to be written.

Even if the solution that you use does not allow for instant boot of a backup, since you are using SSDs both as source and destination, you should be able to restore a backup within minutes and be up and running again.

Thank you @hsehestedt . OK, please explain to me like I'm a complete beginner in this.

You say that there's no need to do a full image every time. Well, I'm all for that! My first thought was about differential or incremental backups (for wear and tear reasons, but also for speed and efficiency reasons since only a few files change between two backups).

But I've been told that if I do that, my backup drive wouldn't be bootable anymore. Is there a way? I would be very happy if you or somebody else could recommend an imaging software capable of achieving that!

I really am lost here. I already have the backup drive installed, so I'm looking for the best way to use it.

Personally, I cheat.
I keep the used space on my C:\ drive under 40gb.

Then... a full backup takes me only a minute and a half.
Full restore from bootable rescue media, takes two minutes.

Most folks have to get into complex methods because the used space on the C:\ drive is so big, and backups take forever.

I install large games and large programs on a storage drive, and back those up randomly.

I use Karen's Replicator to copy Disk 1 to Disk 2.

Jose Hidalgo said:

Thank you @hsehestedt . OK, please explain to me like I'm a complete beginner in this.

You say that there's no need to do a full image every time. Well, I'm all for that! My first thought was about differential or incremental backups (for wear and tear reasons, but also for speed and efficiency reasons since only a few files change between two backups).

But I've been told that if I do that, my backup drive wouldn't be bootable anymore. Is there a way? I would be very happy if you or somebody else could recommend an imaging software capable of achieving that!

I really am lost here. I already have the backup drive installed, so I'm looking for the best way to use it.

Click to expand...

People here use various backup solutions. My personal favorite is Macrium Reflect so I'll just comment on that one.

Reflect uses something called Viboot to run your backup as a Virtual Machine. You can read more about it here:

@Ghot Oh boy. I have no idea how you do that, but OK

@hsehestedt Aside from the fact that I can barely understand anything on your link , the fact is that I'm trying to imagine the worst possible scenario here. In my head, that scenario could be my PC crashing and not wanting to boot anymore on SSD 1 because of a drive failure. In that case, I need to be able to boot on SSD 2 instantly, because I won't have access to Windows anymore: no Macrium, no nothing. That's why SSD 2 needs to be directly bootable.

BTW, here's my current C: drive according to WizTree, if that can be any useful.

Here's ten points for filling out your computer specs.




Here's my C:\ drive...

Jose Hidalgo said:

I need to be able to boot on SSD 2 instantly, because I won't have access to Windows anymore: no Macrium, no nothing.

Click to expand...

Every disk imaging program allows you to create "rescue media". This is a bootable CD, DVD, thumb drive, etc. that will allow you to recover if the OS is not bootable.

Imagine for a second that you own only one computer. You do your backups regularly, but what good are those backups if your computer fails to the point where Windows is no longer bootable? That is where the rescue disk is used. You boot from that disk and it runs Macrium Reflect (or whatever program it is that you are using). From there, you can access all of your drives, including the location where your backups are located. You can now restore your backup to either the original drive or a different drive.

If you need more info about this, just let me know.

I get what rescue media are. Booting on a USB flash drive, etc. And yes, I can create a rescue media for me in the near future.
But I was envisioning a different case with this topic. "SSD 1 doesn't work? OK, let's just boot directly on SSD 2".
If I didn't want that,I wouldn't have bought a second 2 TB SSD just for that purpose.

At the very least, here's what I think I could do (please confirm):

• Ghost entirely SSD 1 on SSD 2, so that SSD 2 is bootable
• Then using my backup software (SyncBackPro), backup regularly at least my user folder (the rest of C: hardly ever changes). Only backupping my user folder shouldn't affect the bootability of the drive, right?

Or if it's all too complicated, then I can just mirror SSD 1 (RAID 1). That won't protect me against malware or data corruption, but it will solve everything else, right ?

The ideal for me (which doesn't exist presumably) would be "Delayed RAID 1": RAID 1 with a 24h delay. That would be perfect for me!

Jose Hidalgo said:

Ghost entirely SSD 1 on SSD 2, so that SSD 2 is bootable

Click to expand...

I would suggest doing it slightly differently:

Perform a full backup and then restore that backup to the new drive. Why? Because if you do a clone operation directly you will end up with two drives that have the same signature causing a possible failure to be able to boot.

As an alternative, you could still do your clone but then leave the second SSD disconnected.

Jose Hidalgo said:

Only backupping my user folder shouldn't affect the bootability of the drive, right?

Click to expand...

Sorry, forgot to answer this one in my last post.

Yes, you can backup your user data separately with no problems.

'Perform a full backup and then restore that backup to the new drive". I can do that Well, at least for now. I can backup my SSD to my HDD if it's only 250 GB, but I won't be able to backup it anymore once it's 1.5 TB.

I'm surprised though: don't full backup apps have any option to "not have the exact same signature" on the backup drive to prevent that kind of issue? Ghosting has been around for quite a long time now.

Jose Hidalgo said:

I'm surprised though: don't full backup apps have any option to "not have the exact same signature" on the backup drive to prevent that kind of issue?

Click to expand...

Bingo - that is precisely the point. Doing a backup and restore does exactly that while perform a CLONE creates an exact duplicate including the disk signature.

Again, it has been years since I used Ghost solution suite - there is a possibility that it does it differently. You would have to consult the documentation to be sure.

Yes, I have to admit that I have trouble understanding the difference between a full backup and a clone.

My point is that I need the backup drive (SSD 2) to be bootable, that's all. It should be simple to achieve, I don't know why it's so complicated.

Jose Hidalgo said:

Yes, I have to admit that I have trouble understanding the difference between a full backup and a clone.

My point is that I need the backup drive (SSD 2) to be bootable, that's all. It should be simple to achieve, I don't know why it's so complicated.

Click to expand...

Maybe a good way to simplify this is to just try it in your environment. Clone the drive as you originally intended. Reboot. Does it cause any problems? If not, great. If it does, power down and disconnect that second SSD temporarily. You can then simply change the disk signature on the drive.

But be cautious and make sure that Windows is really running from the drive that you expect it to be running from.

Bottom line is simply to test your ideas carefully to make sure it all behaves as expected.

Given the relatively low price of disk storage, I think all the gymnastics of keeping your boot drive artificially small is just a bit pointless. I also make only full images of my boot drive when I do my weekly backup, and I keep seven images so I can go back in time up to seven weeks in my images. My data drive is backed up daily using a differential backup, and I have daily images that go back four months.

But wait... I also have two off-line backup drives that alternate every two weeks and does a backup of everything on the system to a 4TB drive. So, I have two copies of everything that are the most two weeks old that go back for seven months! The data drive backup on each of those goes back in time as well.

For the record, I need a bootable backup drive because my Windows 11 is heavily customized. I have spent a lot of time to tune it just right for me, so it would be way too much work (possibly weeks) to reinstall it and get it to the same point. I need to backup it "as is" while it's perfectly stable, and be able to boot from the backup drive. Maybe I should have mentioned that from the start.

As for disk signatures, I have learned that it could be very easily fixed with Disk Management utility. Right-click on the disk, if it's offline turn it online and Windows 10/11 will automatically generate a new signature. If it's online, turn it offline then back online just to make sure its signature changes. And voilà. :)

Jose Hidalgo said:

I need a bootable backup drive because my Windows 11 is heavily customized.

Click to expand...

Making your other disk bootable or not has zero bearing on this. You can make a backup, or series of backups, and when restored to either the same or a different drive, that drive will be bootable with all your customizations in place. There is absolutely no benefit to making the destination bootable other than it will save you the few minutes to do the restore, but that comes with the risk of causing more problems than it solves if you don't know what you are doing by making two bootable drives with potential signature collisions.

There is a reason (in my opinion) why so few people do it that way and why I have never seen that as a recommended best practice for any backup schemes.

I'm not trying to tell you not to do it that way - just want you to have all the info.

There is a lot more that I want to say but I fear that I may overload you by unleashing it all in one shot.

Best advice I can give is to research the issue (which you are doing here!) and do some testing. If you have the resources to do so, maybe setup Windows to a VM and test your backup ideas that way.

I like the fact that you are looking for info because so many people throw together backup plans with no testing only to discover the flaws when it is too late. I personally worked with a major bank years ago that had a huge flaw in their backup plan. That flaw cost them several million dollars when they could not recover lost data.

BTW, just out of curiosity, what version of Ghost Solution Suite are you running?