What backup & relocation strategy for User profiles and Program Data

adri123 · 17 Nov 2013

Kari said:

adri123 said:

Kari, I see, it keeps the SSD not too full. BUT, as I wrote in my first post, I don't want to have to image my whole data partition just because the users folders are located there. If I properly understood your post, both Windows Backup and third party programs will have to image the whole data partition too ?

Let's summarize:

Using Windows Backup & Restore to image your system, all partitions / drives including system folders are included. If Users and ProgramData are relocated to another drive, it will be included.

Third party tools let you deselect partitions, not include them even if they contain system elements. However, as Users and PrograData are system folders they should always be included in a system image.

Thank you Kari, this is what I understood, therefore it confirms my thought that I would have to image the WHOLE data partition just because of these two folders being there. Which I personnaly find not practical.

Question 1: Appart from SDD related AppData size reasons, why would you move these folders to a separate partition?

Question 2: Your AppData is almost 30 GB ? Mine is not even 2GB. Yet I have several softs.
30 GB seems huge only for application data.
What kind of software do you use? I mean we all have some media reading software, office, maybe image/video/music editing, "system tools",...
but what else could make that difference between you and me? What do you think an average size for AppData is? Cause if the average is around 5GB, then maybe keeping it the OS partition is OK. If average is 30GB then I can see a reason why moving it, in the case the OS disk is an SSD, therefore expensive, or just a small HDD.

Lady Fitzgerald · 17 Nov 2013

[QUOTE=adri123;2598007]

Lady Fitzgerald said:

adri123 said:

I'm curious what that empty 25GB Primary partition is doing there. It's not hurting anything but you might want to look into getting rid of it and adding that space to your D: partition. That would be a topic for another thread after you are comfortable with getting your backups working. Or, you could keep it for a test partition.

The 25GB is the ASUS factory restore partition. Somewhere I read that it's not being given a name so that it's "unusable". Meaning, accessible only for the recovery.

That makes sense.

whs · 17 Nov 2013

If Users and ProgramData are relocated to another drive, it will be included

Kari, that is only true if you use Windows 7 imaging (who wants that). Here we are discussing free Macrium. It images partitions individually. If you have relocated system files, you have to take care of them yourself.

adri123 · 17 Nov 2013

Lady Fitzgerald said:

Considering that you have a bit over 60GB on your C: partition, it would be interesting to know how large your AppData folder is unless you have data also stored in the data folders still on the partition.

I'm going to reinstall the whole thing from scratch. That's why I ask all these questions. To see what strategy I'll use this time. All ideas are welcome.

So, now, my ProgramData folder and Users folders are both on the data partition. I did this two years ago and created an image of C(OS) but not of D(data+these two folders). Only thing I did at that time was to back up these two folders manually.. so yesterday.. I put back my OS image on the C drive and copied pasted these two folders to the D drive, but of course it created problems with overriding, ownership and these kind of things. So now i'm rethinking my whole thing. :)

As for my AppData size:
data partition\Users\myname\AppData is 3GB.
I have no data stored on the C(OS) partition. It's 60GB full and still has 40GB free.
I didn't get what you meant..

Kari · 17 Nov 2013

adri123 said:

Question 2: Your AppData is almost 30 GB ? Mine is not even 2GB. Yet I have several softs.
30 GB seems huge only for application data.
What kind of software do you use? I mean we all have some media reading software, office, maybe image/video/music editing, "system tools",...
but what else could make that difference between you and me? What do you think an average size for AppData is? Cause if the average is around 5GB, then maybe keeping it the OS partition is OK. If average is 30GB then I can see a reason why moving it, in the case the OS disk is an SSD, therefore expensive, or just a small HDD.

My AppData is quite normal, not counting the about 10 GB taken by various programming tools. For instance mostly due to space needed by Visual Studio and Windows Phone SDK, the Microsoft subfolder in AppData\Local takes over 6 GB disk space:

What backup & relocation strategy for User profiles and Program Data-2013-11-18_005206.jpg

whs said:

If Users and ProgramData are relocated to another drive, it will be included

Kari, that is only true if you use Windows 7 imaging (who wants that). Here we are discussing free Macrium. It images partitions individually. If you have relocated system files, you have to take care of them yourself.

I have all the time repeatedly mentioned this (see for instance this post): using Windows native imaging all partitions including system folders are automatically included, using Macrium or any other third party tool they can be excluded although I personally recommend including all partitions with system files or folders.

IF you had quoted the whole post of mine instead of just that one misleading sentence, you had noticed it. Here's the whole post, not only that one sentence:

Kari said:

adri123 said:

Kari, I see, it keeps the SSD not too full. BUT, as I wrote in my first post, I don't want to have to image my whole data partition just because the users folders are located there. If I properly understood your post, both Windows Backup and third party programs will have to image the whole data partition too ?

Let's summarize:

Using Windows Backup & Restore to image your system, all partitions / drives including system folders are included. If Users and ProgramData are relocated to another drive, it will be included.

Third party tools let you deselect partitions, not include them even if they contain system elements. However, as Users and PrograData are system folders they should always be included in a system image.

Kari

Lady Fitzgerald · 17 Nov 2013

You're correct 3GB is enough to worry about although even that seems a bit big.

What I'm wondering what is causing your C: drive to be taking up 60GB. That seems to be a bit on the big side, like by almost 100%

Lady Fitzgerald · 17 Nov 2013

It would be interesting to see how big the AppData files of other users are. I've never seen one as large as Kari's.

whs · 17 Nov 2013

Kari, I did not want to critisize your post. I just wanted to make sure the difference between Windows imaging and free Macrium is understood. Sorry.

Before you joined the thread, there was only talk about Macrium - not Windows imaging. The OP has obviuosly a lot of questions. So it would help to keep things simple.

Kari · 17 Nov 2013

No hard feelings Wolfgang :). I just felt I need to mention it, as that one sentence out of context gave a misleading idea of the content of my posts.

adri123 · 17 Nov 2013

Lady Fitzgerald said:

You're correct 3GB is enough to worry about although even that seems a bit big.

What I'm wondering what is causing your C: drive to be taking up 60GB. That seems to be a bit on the big side, like by almost 100%

You meant 3GB is NOT enough to worry about, right?

I ahve no idea why C is 60GB. And also I don't know how much it's supposed to be as an average size.. ?
Here are some sizes, maybe one is extremely big and you will see it directly?

Windows: 24 GB
Program Files: 1,58 GB
Program Files (x86): 4 GB
pagefile.sys (hidden system file): 3,90 GB
hiberfil.sys (hidden system file): 2,90 GB

NVIDIA: 285MB

That makes around 37 GB..strange..i can't see where are the other 20 GB used.. i didnt mentions some other folders/files cause they are really small.. and I have all the hidden folder shown... any idea?