Image your system with free Macrium

alan10 said:

So I gave Windows a 25 GB partition,
and Portable Applications a 4 GB partition,
and my non-portable applications and User data a 10 GB partition.

Alan, our last replies were posted almost simultaneously; With your Windows partition totaling 25GB, that's exactly what I'm talking about. How would an 'average joe' like me go about trimming off 10 gigs?

whs said:

let's me do differential and incremental backups

Differentials are better than incrementals.

The only downside to incrementals I've found is that one has to have all them in addition to the previous full backup present to be able to do a restoration. Incrementals backup only data changed or added since the last backup, be it a full backup or another incremental.

Differentials need only the last full backup and the latest differential to do a restoration. They backup only changes since the last full backup, even if other differentials were done before. The downside to differentials (as far as I can tell) is each one will be larger than the previous differential, eating up more and more disk space and taking more and more time to create.

kado897 said:

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Curious the direction this thread has gone. I mentioned the elusive problem I was having with MR to corroborate how an obscure hardware issue can cause MR to go wonky and now we are discussing the evils of data on the C: drive.

Although this thread is about Macrium it is useful to cover other areas that make imaging easier. Data doesn't really need imaging but an OS and programs do so it makes sense to separate them as much as possible.

While what you say is technically true, imaging remains the easiest way to backup data because keeping track of changes and deletions, as well as new data, is harder when just copying new data over to another disk. If maintaining a data base on a disk that never changes other than additions, then copying files for backups would work just fine and would be similar to cloning (cloning is something else that MR can do).

Frankly, I'm more concerned about losing data than I am the OS and programs. Although tedious and timeconsuming as all get out, an OS and programs can be rebuilt. Data, once gone, is usually gone forever. Being the lazy old broad I am, I prefer backing up everything.

kado897 said:

Generally Differentials get larger with time but I have seen cases where they are not. Don't ask me why, I don't know.

I'm thinkin' it depends on how many changes have occurred between backups. I was making weekly full backups and differentials between but that was taking too much time so I'm switching to montly full backups and incrementals whenever I add new data or make changes I can't afford to lose. The two incrementals I made this morning (I keep duplicate backups on two HDDs at home; a third is kept in a safe deposit box at my credit union and it gets rotated out no less than once a month) took only around fifteen minutes for both. Full backups take almost three hours.

I'm not worried about losing any of the incrementals between backups because I keep each full back up and its incrementals in it's own folder on the HDD it is stored on. I cross reference them with the associated xml file by naming the folder and xml with the date of the full back up (I add an a or b to the end of the date so I can keep the two backups separate). When I need more room on the HDD for another backup, I delete the oldest folder.

bigmck said:

I have a 120 GB SSD for my C: drive. I put my data on a HDD. If I get a new program, I just install to the SSD, no streamlining. My SSD is about 35 GB. It is not that hard unless you just go crazy installing programs.

That's what I will be doing with my SSD (128GB) when I build my next desktop. My current desktop (XP) doesn't have room for a second drive so I'm using an HDD with a separate C: partition (100GB) on it.