macrium reflect SSD and harddisk

[Deleted695]

When you have a Laptop with an SSD and a Harddisk and you want to take a whole image must you take 2 images: 1 with the SSD as source disk and 1 with the harddisk as source?

 

[fireberd]

If you want complete (full) backup, yes you need to backup both drives.

 

[ignatzatsonic]

When you have a Laptop with an SSD and a Harddisk and you want to take a whole image must you take 2 images: 1 with the SSD as source disk and 1 with the harddisk as source?

If you had one hard drive that had a C partition for Windows and a D partition for data, you could make one image file containing both of those partitions.

But I don't think you can make a single image file that contains a partition from this drive and a partition from that drive. You'd need to make 2 separate image files.

Leaving aside the issue of whether an image is necessarily the best way to back up your stuff. It probably is for the partition containing Windows, but maybe not for a partition containing personal data.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

If you have a boot drive that contains only the OS and programs, you could back it up by cloning but that limits you to only one backup per backup drive. Imaging is the only other way to backup system partitions or an entire boot drive because it can be used to restore the original drive to the state it was in when imaged. Imaging is superior to cloning because it can be used to backup and restore single and multiple partitions, is more compact, and multiple images can easily be stored on another drive. For imaging, I much prefer Macrium Reflect (there is a free version) over Windows imaging.

However, imaging is not the best way to backup data drives. The images are generally too large to easily store multiples of and it takes too long to make the images. A folder/file syncing program, such as FreeFileSync (the one I prefer and use) or SyncToy (both are also free) is far, far faster and efficient once the initial backup has been made. Unlike images, a backup made with a folder/file syncing program can be used as is without an additional restoration step and intermediate drive.