Poll on Backup software

hdmi · Sep 9, 2022

pparks1 said:
I work in IT and have for a long time. So, I've always got a work laptop for that mobility aspect. The only laptop that I have ever actually bought for myself was my MacBook Pro that I bought back in 2014 as I wanted to get some experience with the Mac.

I tend to go for desktops because I like the ability to easily add and change hard drives for testing and such. And the biggest reason is that I do game a fair bit, so being able to run an actual video card is crucial here.

I have a bunch of machines in the house. My daughter has a win10 desktop that was a hand me down from my son. She also has a new MacBook Air that she uses for school work and portability. My son is an avid gamer, so he has a Windows 10 desktop. My wife has a Windows 10 desktop that she uses for everyday stuff and gaming. I myself have my desktop (windows 10 for gaming and virtual machines), a Beelink mini-pc (for Windows 11), and a 2020 M1 Mac Mini (for using Mac OS).

I entirely quit gaming well over a decade ago and haven't had my own desktop PC anymore since, but can still borrow my dad's Core i5-10400 machine if need be (also not for gaming, it doesn't have a GPU card). Gaming with discrete graphics is actually more than doable on an Asus ROG Flow laptop with the external Asus XG Mobile GPU enclosure, though, albeit it is rather expensive compared to a desktop gaming rig of similar games performance.

Back when I graduated in IT the problems of consolitis and online multiplayer games being typically flooded with cheaters and various other lame kids were still virtually nonexistent. (Basically I could play Quake III Team Arena online in Capture The Flag mode each night till sunrise.) But a few years later things had started to change, online gaming had lost its initial appeal which became a downward spiral to me, Vivendi bought Blizzard and World Of Warcraft had turned into Power Rangers so finally I decided to become a J2EE software dev. I absolutely don't care for anything from Apple, in fact I am allergic to it, just like I am allergic to gaming consoles. (I can only game with a mouse and the arrow keys on a keyboard so I can't play with WASD or a game controller.) I still have my movies/music collection, but other than that there's not much personal files that I need backups of. I have abandoned more than one hobby because I got bored eventually, but when it comes to having quit gaming I don't blame myself much. These days it's all just P2W (pay to win) anyway─and about boring DLC.

pparks1 · Sep 9, 2022

hdmi said:
I entirely quit gaming well over a decade ago and haven't had my own desktop PC anymore since, but can still borrow my dad's Core i5-10400 machine if need be (also not for gaming, it doesn't have a GPU card). Gaming with discrete graphics is actually more than doable on an Asus ROG Flow laptop with the external Asus XG Mobile GPU enclosure, though, albeit it is rather expensive compared to a desktop gaming rig of similar games performance.

Yeah, you can certainly game on some laptops. As you stated, they can be expensive. And they are often prohibitively heavy with abysmal battery life.

I like building my own boxes. This way I get exactly what I want. That's one downside to the laptop space, you just cannot pick and choose the parts and assemble it.

Bree · Sep 9, 2022

pparks1 said:
I like building my own boxes. This way I get exactly what I want. That's one downside to the laptop space, you just cannot pick and choose the parts and assemble it.

With the prices I can find for nearly new used laptops I can afford to pick and choose each one to suit my various needs. My most recent purchase was a Dell Latitude 5410, i7-10610U, 32GB RAM, 512GB ssd, Windows 10 Pro, that I bought at just 9 months old and about 15 hours of use by the previous owner (at least, that was the 'power on' hours for its NVMe SSD). I even inherited the Dell ProSupport for it which runs until 2024.

I clean installed Windows 11 Pro and it now runs all my Hyper-V VMs, all at the same time, should I want to.
.

GCG1000 · Sep 9, 2022

In Feb., I mentioned Hasleo's free back-up suite. I was remiss in not providing a link for this app. You can find it at: Windows To Go, Windows Backup & Clone, Data Recovery, BitLocker Solution, PC Utility or on the "Major Geeks" web site.
Regards.
GCG

TraderGary · Sep 9, 2022

Bree said:
With the prices I can find for nearly new used laptops I can afford to pick and choose each one to suit my various needs. My most recent purchase was a Dell Latitude 5410, i7-10610U, 32GB RAM, 512GB ssd, Windows 10 Pro, that I bought at just 9 months old and about 70 hour of use by the previous owner. I even inherited the Dell ProSupport for it which runs until 2024.

View attachment 38816

I clean installed Windows 11 Pro and it now runs all my Hyper-V VMs, all at the same time, should I want to.
.

How did you find how many hours of use your Dell Latitude 5410 had?

Bree · Sep 9, 2022

TraderGary said:
How did you find how many hours of use your Dell Latitude 5410 had?

I've edited my post now to say how. I looked at the SMART data 'Power On Hours' for its SSD with CrystalDisk Info when I first received it, and checked its Service Tag on Dell Support to make sure that this was the same drive it was originally supplied with. Unless the drive was swapped out for an identical one I can be fairly certain that was also the working life of the PC.

Code:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskInfo 8.12.4 (C) 2008-2021 hiyohiyo
                                Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
    OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 19041] (x64)
  Date : 2021/10/08 19:27:18
(snip)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
 (01) KBG40ZNS512G NVMe KIOXIA 512GB
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Model : KBG40ZNS512G NVMe KIOXIA 512GB
        Firmware : 10410105

  Power On Hours : 15 hours
  Power On Count : 29 count
      Host Reads : 244 GB
     Host Writes : 768 GB
     Temperature : 30 C (86 F)
   Health Status : Good (100 %)
        Features : S.M.A.R.T., TRIM, VolatileWriteCache
       APM Level : ----
       AAM Level : ----
    Drive Letter : C:

hdmi · Sep 10, 2022

pparks1 said:
Yeah, you can certainly game on some laptops. As you stated, they can be expensive. And they are often prohibitively heavy with abysmal battery life.

I like building my own boxes. This way I get exactly what I want. That's one downside to the laptop space, you just cannot pick and choose the parts and assemble it.

The 2021 ROG XG Mobile must be connected to a power outlet to operate, as it has an integrated 280 watts power adapter. It can support up to an Nvidia RTX 3080 Laptop GPU clocked to 1810MHz at 150W with ROG Boost. So, you do get a little bit of future upgrade capability with it if you choose not to go for the RTX 3080 right away. But it's still fairly expensive and yeah, aside from having a few different compatible models of ROG Flow laptops to choose between─each model having different specs─picking and choosing the laptop's own parts in future upgrade paths also is limited to SSD and RAM so still not being able to upgrade the CPU is still a weakness, as is the power outlet requirement to get the eGPU to work. Then again, it does give the easy ability to move from one power outlet to the next and not have to worry about claiming too much space at times when other members of the household would ortherwise start to complain about turning the whole kitchen table into a camping lot with your big desktop case, a big monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and too much cable spaghetti. As for getting exactly what I want, my current laptop is exactly what I want. I bought it new on 30 December 2020 at 599 Euros and I have upgraded both the SSD (to the 2TB Samsung 980 Pro at 229 Euros) and RAM (to 2×8GB G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4 3200MHz 22-22-22-52 single rank at 57.86 Euros) before the end of last year so only 885.86 Euros was spent in total. On topic: backup space hasn't really been a problem to me in recent years so I quit buying additional storage more than a few years ago, in total I own 37TB of external HDD storage.

Badger · Sep 10, 2022

WAI said:
You can create a image backup to any drive. At least that's what I have. I've extract the image and no viruses found LINK

Create with Rufus

Active@Boot Disk is a pretty cool multi-util. I tested its backup and restore function and it worked fine. I was surprised to see how quick both the backup and restore were. Will have to check out all the other utils it offers. Nice find WAI. My testing was done with version 22.

Wynona · Sep 10, 2022

man00 said:
We can always hope for the return of the Iomega 100mb zip drive (click click click)

I still have a Zip Drive and disks to go with it.

I haven't checked Windows 11, but it works fine with Windows 10.

WAI · Sep 10, 2022

Wynona said:
I still have a Zip Drive and disks to go with it. I haven't checked Windows 11, but it works fine with Windows 10.

The kernel is the same so should work I think

Wynona · Sep 10, 2022

WAI said:
The kernel is the same so should work I think

I'm thinking probably so.

bikemanI7 · Sep 10, 2022

I still Game on my HP Omen Gaming Laptop 15_ce019dx, sure the specs aren't top of the line nowadays, but still decent for secondary machine. Intel I7 7700HQ, 8GB of Ram( i need to somehow get the cover open and the memory upgraded) 128gb M.2 SSD--must upgrade storage sometime as well, , and 1TB storage, and Geforce 1050TI 4GB.

Though most of the time i'm using my Primary Gaming Desktop

SlicEnDicE · Sep 11, 2022

bikemanI7 said:
Intel I7 7700HQ

This CPU is more than fine for most tasks. Not on Windows 11 supported lists but still a very decent CPU.

bikemanI7 said:
8GB of Ram

Yeah, 16GB would be the sweet spot

bikemanI7 said:
128gb M.2 SSD

Depending on how you arrange your userprofile and where you install your apps, this may not need an upgrade. You could move everything (including user profile) except system files and drivers to the secondary storage.

bikemanI7 said:
1TB storage

If this is a spinner HDD, you'd benefit from an SSD upgrade.

bikemanI7 said:
Geforce 1050TI 4GB

This GPU is decent for light gaming, especially for more advanced titles from 2014 and older. Slow though for modern AAA games. For desktop acceleration and desktop 3d usage it is decent.

I still have my old laptop with an i5-2410M CPU online. It works as a low powered server on my network.

bikemanI7 · Sep 11, 2022

If Only bottom cover on this HP Omen Laptop was easy to remove, but Macrium Reflect backup software works perfectly for my needs!!, gonna probably do a incremental backup shortly on the systems or at least Monday on Desktop and Laptop machines!, as Tuesday is Patch Tuesday i believe lol, Then possibly 22H2 for Windows 11 Desktop the next week if releases then, haven't decided if doing a clean install or just upgrading this install

cereberus · Sep 11, 2022

bikemanI7 said:
If Only bottom cover on this HP Omen Laptop was easy to remove, but Macrium Reflect backup software works perfectly for my needs!!, gonna probably do a incremental backup shortly on the systems or at least Monday on Desktop and Laptop machines!, as Tuesday is Patch Tuesday i believe lol, Then possibly 22H2 for Windows 11 Desktop the next week if releases then, haven't decided if doing a clean install or just upgrading this install

If you have properly maintained your Windows installation, there is no need to do a clean install.

In any case, simple logic dictates do upgrade first and try it as this will be the quickest operation. You can always clean install afterwards if any issues.

All the "clean install" brigade claim they can reinstall apps quickly BUT they never tell you how long it takes to fine tune all app settings back to your personal preference.

bikemanI7 · Sep 11, 2022

Yes i properly maintain my installations, Maintenance done like disk clean up weekly, only install the applications i really use, system image backups with Macrium (thankfully haven't had a need to reimage a drive as yet, drivers and all Windows Updates installed, and Uefi bios updates when released.

So think Windows 11 Desktop properly maintained

TechnoMage2021 · Sep 11, 2022

When I built my first PC, back somewhere around 1980, there was NO such thing as a Laptop. The OS of the day was DOS 2.0, and I wrote a batch file, to copy data files to 5.25" floppy disks. That was my backup!
Those were good times for computer Geeks. But, there was also a lot to learn, like DOS, Basic, DBase III, Lotus 123 and many other programs that only ran in DOS.

But even in those ancient days of computer history, I recognized that so many things could happen to a computer, from theft to Fire, or even a hard drive Crash, that backing up data was very important. I set up backup schemes for individuals, several businesses, and even one Bank.
Backups got a lot easier, when 'Central Point Software' came out with "PC Tools", that contained a really great Backup Program.

The great little floppy disk was the only removable media, of the day.
I did a lot of Floppy Drive alignments in those days. (On the Commodore 64's 1541 disk drive too)
The IBM Full Height floppy disk drives were a real hoot to work on. They also made great Door Stops! :ROFLMAO:

A 1 gallon mayo jar, in a hole in the back yard, makes a great SAFE for data storage. (for the deed to the farm too)

Cheers mates!
TM

TraderGary · Sep 11, 2022

cereberus said:
All the "clean install" brigade claim they can reinstall apps quickly BUT they never tell you how long it takes to fine tune all app settings back to your personal preference.

I suppose I'm a member of your "clean install" brigade.

The app that I use to make my living is Interactive Brokers Trader Workstation. It is highly customized. When I close Trader Workstation, 100% of all my customization is saved and stored in my Interactive Brokers account. When I load Trader Workstation for my next workday, it loads exactly like I left it with all customizations intact. None of my "fine tuning" needs to be done again even after a clean install.

My Adobe Lightroom remembers all the fine tuning I do. The only thing I need to do after a clean install is load my catalog and all is just as I left it.

My Microsoft Edge saves all my fine tuning in my Microsoft Account and when I reload Edge, it is exactly like I left it.

I keep all my data and photos in OneDrive, the moment I log in to my Microsoft Account, all my data is instantly there, just as I left it.

I keep my email account on GoDaddy and all I need to do is log in to Outlook and everything is there, just as I left it.

I use LastPass, and as soon as I log in to LastPass, all my passwords are there for all my accounts.

When I do a clean install, I'm up and running in less than an hour. Period. I've done it many dozens of times.

Bree · Sep 11, 2022

cereberus said:
f you have properly maintained your Windows installation, there is no need to do a clean install....

....All the "clean install" brigade claim they can reinstall apps quickly BUT they never tell you how long it takes to fine tune all app settings back to your personal preference.

My System One has never had a clean install. It can trace it's upgrade history back to an OEM Windows 7. I've documented its upgrade history here.