Showing how little I understand!

I have begun experimenting with Paragon Backup Home Edition as it has more features than the Macrium Free. It also has a ton of stuff I don't understand and may never use.
I have started out with the Smartbackup wizard, just to get a clean copy of my system. I am attempting to get a Macrium like System Image of my system drive.
The program asks what I want to backup, and unlike Macrium which showed the drive and the system reserve, Paragon shows Basic Hard Disk Track (with correct model identification) size is disk full size off the My Computer, then as a tree off the First Hard Disk it shows Master Boot Record Type:MBR Size:0 bytes.
A second branch of the Basic Hard DisK Track, it show System Reserved Type:Primary File System:NTFS Size:100 MB.
The third and final branch off the Basic Hard Disk Trach is the Drive Name and letter designation ( C: ) Type:Primary File System:NTFS Size:Full Disk size.
All of the above branches can be checked or unchecked for backup.
My question is if I want a bootable C: drive with all my programs and data and running good, what of the above items do I check to be Backed Up? This has me confused as usual or I wouldn't be bothering you helpful people. thanks for any assistance.
glennc

Ztruker said:

Backup all three. That allows you to replace the hard drive when (not if) it fails and give you the same exact setup you have now.

The first two you only need to do once.

Hello Ztruker,
Thanks for answering the call for for help. Since clicking on the box of the Basic Hard Disk 1 causes all the other boxes to be checkmarked also. That would be backing up all the drive and I could do a System Restore with that. Meaning I could use the recovery disk and Restore that backup and it would get be back to the exact running state of the machine at the time of the backup? I'm a little slow and wan't to completely understand.
If I am reading it correctly you also state that after keeping the above backup, I could do incremental,differential or full backups of just the data, not the System Reserve or the MBR/First Hard Disk Track?
Thanks for your response and more-so if you can water it down for me.
glennc

The only time you may want to reconsider MBR and System reserved is if you have done some repartitioning work to your HDD. MBR contains the disk partition table and system reserved contains the BCD. I also think you should have at least one backup of the current MBR and system reserved.

Ztruker said:

Yes, that is correct. Once you have all three then you only need to continue to backup the boot partition.

Hello Ztruker,
Sorry for the density! Define the boot partition , PLEASE!
Thank you Sir.
glennc

mjf said:

The only time you may want to reconsider MBR and System reserved is if you have done some repartitioning work to your HDD. MBR contains the disk partition table and system reserved contains the BCD. I also think you should have at least one backup of the current MBR and system reserved.

Howdy mjf,
Thanks for joining my learning experience. So far if you don't use big words or acronyms I might figure it out. I got everything you said except the "BCD". Might you define that in less expert terms, also Please?
BTW I don't do anything other than take up disk space if I continue to backup everything? I am currently trying to get my mind around how to make incremental or differential backups with this software.
glennc

glennc said:

mjf said:

The only time you may want to reconsider MBR and System reserved is if you have done some repartitioning work to your HDD. MBR contains the disk partition table and system reserved contains the BCD. I also think you should have at least one backup of the current MBR and system reserved.

Howdy mjf,
Thanks for joining my learning experience. So far if you don't use big words or acronyms I might figure it out. I got everything you said except the "BCD". Might you define that in less expert terms, also Please?
BTW I don't do anything other than take up disk space if I continue to backup everything? I am currently trying to get my mind around how to make incremental or differential backups with this software.
glennc

Acronym soup. BCD = Boot configuration data = important boot data
A bit like the old boot.ini file.

The only point then really is that the MBR and 100MB system reserved partition generally don't change. But one good copy is good to have.

Ztruker said:

By boot partition I meant the partition Windows 7 is on, normally C:.

Hey Ztruker,
Tanx. I had an idea that is what you meant but as they say a little knowledge is dangerous. Now can say, assuming by synapses respond accordingly, that I know!!
Appreciate it dude.
glennc