Win 10. Backup question. How to?

[Fishrman]

I have always struggled with backing up my computer. For some reason I just don't understand the best way to do it so if something catastrophic happened I could get a different computer or hard drive and get most everything back to where it was before the problem. A couple years ago I downloaded AOMEI Backupper. I don't understand it, frankly. Now, it is my understanding that Win 10 has its own backup program. I am wondering if I should just use it and delete the AOMEI or perhaps keep it? I am also thinking, at the same time, maybe I should go ahead and go with Win 11. I always put off new operating systems as I don't like trying to learn new tricks. Does Win 11 also have a backup program and would you recommend that? I think some do a backup and have it backup to a separate part of their drive or perhaps a separate external drive and have backups made every hour or every day or week etc., keeping it plugged into the computer. To me, this could also cause a problem if you got a bug that wipes things out. I am thinking a separate hard drive should be used but not left plugged in all the time but just plugged in and run a new backup when you feel it is warranted. Any suggestions or help for someone that obviously doesn't know what he is doing is going to be very helpful!

 

[just Tony]

I don't think any one has mentioned it, and perhaps it's obvious to most of us who have been using PCs for a long time, but I think it's worth mentioning that it's a very good idea to keep all your data on a separate physical drive from your system drive.

It makes things much simpler when it comes to backing up, and in particular if things do go wrong.

I’ve kept my data files off of my boot drive for almost as long as I can remember.

• The free version of Acronis that I can download from the disk manufacturer website makes perfect clones of my boot drive without any fuss. I don’t have to bother with proprietary specialized backup files, either full or incremental, I don’t need to add any links in a chain that can possibly fail, in the form of the backup software itself or a USB bootable drive. If there’s a problem I only need to swap in the replacement boot drive which takes about a minute and then get on with my day. Most importantly I’m not down for hours during a system rebuild.
• FreeFileSync works very well for my self-generated content on the drives that are dedicated to that alone.

--
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