W10

[Tetge]

You, at the very least, attempted to provide assistance. That's something worth giving thanks for in my book.

I'll do that. It's a good idea, especially with what it takes to get a system configured just so. Costco has a 3-pack for 16GB SanDisk thumb drives for $25. That's a pretty good deal. I'll jump on that. I also have a 1TB HDD as a part of my system, and I'm only using half of that, so there's plenty of room for backups.

I have never backed up to a USB stick, although I have CloneZilla on USB sticks as it boots much faster that way and the stick were very cheap. I always back up to an image, rather than to a clone of the drive, as CloneZilla will do either, but, a clone requires the use of an entire drive that is as large or larger than the drive being copies, while an image is much smaller and can be stored easily on the target drive. So I put the backups on an external HD. I always keep several images from times that the system was working well, and then I make additional backups as time goes by, to keep things current. I even have some solid state 120G external HD laying around as well as large old fashioned platter type external drives, so I have plenty of target space. But, I have six HD's on my main computer, including a couple of large old fashioned platters. So, when I backup my system, I do it twice and keep an image on each of the two big HD's in the case. Every once in awhile, I transfer any image that I feel I should keep to my big external drive, and then I selectively delete some of the images stored on my computer as the last one I made was about 25GB, so, they add up after a bit. But, if time has elapsed, and the system is performing well, one can delete previous backups and only keep the last few without worrying about it.

it doesn't happen very often, but, now and then, Windows has taken a dump due to some critical issue, such a an update that Microsoft rolls out and then discovers that it crashes a significant number of computers. It is easy to simply restore a good image. So, for instance, when W10 rolls out as a free upgrade to W8.1, I will bring the W7 completely up to date and back it up,. I will then restore my image of W8.1 and bring it completely up to date, and update all the utilities and scan it, etc. I will then make a backup of it. And then, I will do the free update to W10. If it goes smoothly, I will immediately back up the W10 install, and then, since I already tried W10 and still disliked it, I will no doubt restore my fully configured W7 and go on my way.

I also use CloneZilla to back up Linux Mint and since 17.1 has been released, I will back up the Mint 17, currently on both my computers, and then do an in place update to 17.1. If it is no bueno, I can restore the 17 easily. And, BTW, CLoneZilla does not use drive letters to identify drives, and neither does Linux, so you have to prepare so that you will know which drive you wish to make an image of and what your target drive is. This is generally not an issue if the drives are all of different capacity, but, it could confuse a purely Windows person.

But, once you are good at making and restoring images, it opens the door to trying alternative stuff on your computer, as you can make a current backup and then simply restore it after trying out Linux, or, in my case, W10.

[SonicVenum]

I will never back up as much as you do, but it is something I should do on occasion, just to be safe. W8.1 has a backup utility built in that allows you to schedule periodic backups of your system. I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works. With Clonezilla being free, and coming highly recommended, I see no reason to not use it.

[Tetge]

I will never back up as much as you do, but it is something I should do on occasion, just to be safe. W8.1 has a backup utility built in that allows you to schedule periodic backups of your system. I've never used it, so I don't know how well it works. With Clonezilla being free, and coming highly recommended, I see no reason to not use it.

I used Norton Ghost for many years so I got Ghost 15 to back up W7 when I first started with W7. But, when W8 came out, I used CloneZilla since by then CloneZilla was working well and I already used it to back up Linux. However, W8/W8.1 also has a hidden built in utility that will permit a full system backup to be made. I have furnished a couple of links about this utility so that you can twist your mind reading about them. They apparently do the same thing as Ghost or CloneZilla, but, I am not sure how large the backup image might be? But, if you have a large enough exterior HD, no harm can be done by backing up to it, I would think, unless the program uses the entire drive to make a backup and erases all the data that you are storing there. But, generally, programs warn you if they are going to format and/or erase your drive......... So, here is some reading. Howtogeek is simpler, but, the other discussion may be more informative......

http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to- ... ndows-8.1/

http://www.eightforums.com/tutorials/89 ... s-8-a.html

[SonicVenum]

So, everything's been running great for the last few days. Except for a few failed updates on the first day, all updates have installed successfully.

I downloaded and installed Clonezilla on a 2GB thumb drive I had lying around, but couldn't get it to boot, so I wound up creating a DVD with Clonezilla on it. I successfully backed up my SSD with the OS on it to a spare 500GB HDD I have in my system. It took about 20 mins. What's weird is now that I've done the back up image, when I look in file explorer at "This PC," the HDD containing the back up no longer appears. It's still there when I look in the device manager, though. Is this normal?

[Tetge]

You need to use a program such as Universal_USB_Installer (freeware, of course) to create a bootable USB stick using the proper .iso of CloneZilla.

My latest W8.1 backup using CloneZilla resulted in the following file on my HD (which still shows up in the explorer as the file was written to a directory that I created on the drive: 102613-W81-img and it weighed in at 6.21GB. These images work very well as I have restored them using CloneZilla and then wiped them away and out W7 back on as I loath W8/8.1.

You can look at the disk management utility, which still is in W8/8.1 to see the format of your HD as well as all the partitions on it, etc. You can also see how much space it has. If you cloned your C: drive, in error, rather than made an image of it, it could explain things. But, who knows what you may have done?

[SonicVenum]

I used Tuxboot, which was listed as Method A for Windows on the Clonezilla Live info page. I think my problem might have been that the particular thumb drive I used has an NTFS file system, rather than FAT. The Tuxboot instructions state a FAT system drive must be used.

As to why I can't see my drive. I must have created a clone. I opened the disk management utility, and it shows that HDD as being offline because of a signature collision with another disk that is online. I guess I'd better figure out how to fix that and try again.

[Tetge]

They all want FAT, except for MicroSofts tool to burn Windows .iso's to a pen drive. It will do it with a NTFS format . I like Universal_USB_Installer, which gets frequent updates to add various distros. I used the MS tool to get W10 onto a pen drive that was formatted with NTFS and it worked perfectly. I never use CD's or DVD's anymore since once I have tasted computer speed and a better way to do things, I never look back.

If you made a clone, it is possible that you could successfully clone it back to your internal drive, but, it is not the way to go since a clone can only be made to a small sized or larger sized drive and it uses the entire drive. If you make an image, it takes a lot less space on your HD as a file, and you can have a series of historical images since in my example, W8.1 was a 6.21GB file. And, I told CloneZilla to save it in a directory that I made on my 2T external HD, which serves as on of my libraries for all my other backed up files. I say one of my libraries, since I make at least three separate backups of anything that I value, such as GoPro video and other material that Is unique and could not be recovered.

So, you can format your external drive as NTFS, and create a directory, and run CloneZilla and make an image and tell CloneZilla to save it in the directory on you external HD. Then you will have room for an occasional image in the future so that you will not lose much if you need to do a restoration. For instance, I back up at least once a month, and, of course, when they introduce W10 as an upgrade, you would want to get W8.1 completely up to date and all virus scanned and then make a backup. That way, if W10 pouched your system, you could restore the image and be right back where you started. And, if W10 worked, you could do an immediate backup of it, so that future changes would not cripple you. it may sound like work, but, in the long run, it makes you bullet proof. Not to mention that if your SSD takes a dump, you can get another and restore an image and be right back in business.....

[SonicVenum]

I used Universal USB Installer, but it turned out that wasn't my problem. For some reason, my USB 3.0 port on the front of my computer doesn't read from BIOS, but my USB 2.0 ports do, so all I had to do is switch the thumb drive to one of those ports, and it booted successfully.

As to saving the image... it took about 15 mins, but at the end, when it does the image check, it came back with an error. It did that yesterday too when I ran it from a DVD. It said something about a problem with the partition. My SSD has two partitions... a 350MB partition the system created, and a partition containing the rest of the available 250GB on the drive. Unfortunately, the bigger partition is the one that the error occurred on. I'll try again a little later.

[Tetge]

You may have to go to the list of things that you wish done and check the box that tells the program to copy sector by sector. I'd have to boot up CloneZilla to see exactly what I checked, and I am lazy. But, the good thing is that CloneZilla boots quickly from even a 2.0 USB stick, and making copies never hurt anyone, so you can experiment. You also should consider making at least a single Windows complete system backup as insurance, although once you figure out how to create valid restorable CloneZilla system images, you will not want to use the Windows utility.

Consider this a learning experience, such as getting an old Kawasaki to run. But, once you master it, you will have a nearly indestructible computer system.

I'd help some more but the info on how to use CloneZilla is out there and I know that you can both read, and figure stuff out. And, one good thing about figuring things out is that it helps to make you more confident and more technically advanced. So, you will thank me later for not just telling you step by step how to do it.

And, I also told you about that stinking hidden partition that W8/8.1 makes on your HD. But, CloneZilla deals with multiple partitions just fine since Linux uses them. However, they are an open part of Linux, not some sneaky hidden partition automatically generated by the OS.

[SonicVenum]

I had an old Kawi running, but then ran into an issue getting it started, and it went back on the back burner. I'll get sorted sooner or later.

I'm sure I'll figure this Clonezilla thing out. Their webpage is a bit of a labyrinth, with links upon links upon links, but it shouldn't be that hard to figure out. If I can manage to install all the programs I have on here, and the dubious ways they need to be installed, I should be able to handle some freeware.