Almost Posted in Gone Home

Jim Palenscar · Post by **Jim Palenscar** » 12 Nov 2017 9:33 am

I have a number of Windows 10 based computers- Home, Work, and laptop for on the road- and all are configured to let Windows update them pretty much whenever the updates come out. All have SSD hard drives with a bunch of memory. The last update- Windows Fall Creators version or something like that would download but get stuck at 75% through the install part- hang up and then revert to the previous version. Friday morning in another attempt the computer was unable to restore the previous version and would not boot at all. Long story short, I probably chose some options that I shouldn't have in my numerous attempts to get it back to booting and am well versed in DOS commands as I've been working on computers since the 70's. All attempts failed after diving deep into restore, recover, etc as none of those options had a target anymore. Finally I copied the hard drive contents w the exception of Windows and reinstalled Windows which I despise doing and am now in the process of massaging the box back to where I'm comfortable again. As it turns out, a number of folks have had this same problem and there were numerous threads on possible repairs - none of which worked for me. A high level tech friend said that there is a malware that has been known to cause this and I suppose that it is possible and that Windows Defender just missed it.

Jack Stoner · Post by **Jack Stoner** » 12 Nov 2017 9:50 am

I do some support on a couple of computer forums including www.tenforums.com Tenforums is for Win 10 issues. I haven't seen a lot of your problem, at least posted. Maybe it could have been "saved" with help from the guru's on the tenforums.

What I do, and preach to the clients I support, is backup, backup, backup. If you would have had a disc image (full drive backup) you could have easily restored to how it was before the attempted updgrade. As I "preach", backups are not for IF they are ever needed, but for "WHEN" they are needed. I use Macruim Reflect for disc image. I have two USB 3.0 external hard drives that I use for disc image backups and I alternate between the two drives. How often to back up?? Depends on the particular machine and application. I was a Network Manager before retiring and we backed up our LAN seververs nightly. You probably don't need to do that, but at least weekly. I don't recommend incremental backups (just data that is new or changed) as it can become a mess trying to do a restore. We found that out with the servers, as we did that in the beginning but after finding out that took longer to restore and the incrementals had to be restored in the correct order, we went to full nightly backups.

I guess I got a little "wordy". Bottom line, do regular and frequent backups.

Jim Palenscar · Post by **Jim Palenscar** » 12 Nov 2017 9:58 am

Thanks for that Jack. I had Restore points and had used them in the past whenever something funky would occur and had Recover CD's however all failed here so that is my lesson. I will be doing new backups frequently on a secondary hard drive as well as a portable hard drive from this point forward.

Earnest Bovine · Post by **Earnest Bovine** » 12 Nov 2017 11:16 am

What program do you all like for incremental backups?

Mitch Drumm · Post by **Mitch Drumm** » 12 Nov 2017 12:42 pm

I'd use Macrium for any type of imaging attempt.

But I'd do incrementals only at gunpoint for the reasons Jack gave.

A "full" image file will be about half the size of the occupied space of the partitions it represents. If your C is 500 GB with 300 occupied, figure about 150 for the image file, give or take.

Drive space is cheap enough that I'd rather buy the necessary drives than take a chance on incrementals for something that important.

I do one a month since my system changes quite slowly over time. 30 occupied on C, so a 15 GB file. Takes about 6 minutes including verification.

Dave Potter · Post by **Dave Potter** » 13 Nov 2017 6:39 am

Been using Macrium for years, and have successfully restored my drives using Macrium drive images several times.

I have it on 4 PCs, and am very pleased with it. Like Jack, I alternate backing up to two multi-TB external USB drives, and make images of my boot drive every day or so.

DG Whitley · Post by **DG Whitley** » 13 Nov 2017 7:09 am

I use Acronis and an external hard drive that I keep in a case that goes with me. All options have drawbacks I suppose. I can live with mine.

Wiz Feinberg · Post by **Wiz Feinberg** » 13 Nov 2017 8:58 am

I use Acronis True Image to save full image backups to one internal and one external drive, on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. But, that's just me! I also have daily backups of personal files and folders to OneDrive for cloud storage.

Robert Leaman · Post by **Robert Leaman** » 15 Dec 2017 5:32 pm

I have always used Acronis (now 2018) and it has never failed me. It backs up to 2TB Fantom external hard drive on USB3 bus. The C: drive (Win 7 Pro) is a 10,000 RPM 1TB Western Digital that has throughput at about 190MB/second and with about 500GB to backup, a total full backup and validation takes around 15 minutes with the i7 4 core CPU running at 4.6GHZ. This may not be up to the forum standards but it is sufficient for me. Backups are made weekly and restores have been needed many times since I like to hack. I built this system about a year ago with some old and some new gear. The 10,000 RPM drives are not cheap but they really do make things go quickly. I suppose the 32GB memory bank helps as well. Fantom hard drives have an OFF/ON switch on the rear panel so after a backup bad things cannot get in.

Les Cargill · Post by **Les Cargill** » 17 Dec 2017 10:49 am

If your style is more "file by file" and you lack any fear of command-line, Robocopy works well enough once you get the options established.

The options I've used are "robocopy /Z /XJ /S /W:0"