Devs have several spare clones so they can afford to fuck up a clone or two.

 

Drive Snapshot can do that, check it out. Has a fully functional demo too.

http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/

 

i obviously ment the devs of the mentioned backup apps, not dev users

 

Absolutely yes, many apps do that.

In past I was using Paragon, now I switched to Macrium, never had a problem.
For restoring of images, I boot to Win 10 PE and run Macrium from there, but you can create the bootable iso/key directly from the app, usually almost all of them allow that.

 

I've heard good things too about Terabyte. I'm even more interested in this boot manager than in the main backup program since I'm happy with Aomei. And I'm a hopeless geek/techie so... bring it the crazy low level features! I know, I'm a masochist...

I have to clarify this at least when it comes to Aomei Backupper. When you restore a system backup in the running system partition what it does is:
1. Installs a very light version of the restore part of the program in a system partition. This effectively replaces the need of a USB boot device
2. Asks you to restart
3. Boots from that system partition, the tiny restoring program loads fully into RAM
4. Then it restores the system backup (including system partitions)
5. Restarts again

 

with acronis you create a backup and then decide to do anincremental backup to update the data, it does it in background on a set date that you decide.Then you create a bootable medium that will allow you to load the backup incase you can t access the OS ,otherwise you can restore directly from windows, it will reboot and will restore to the date you decided

 

Same here!

 

I have been using Miray HDClone for years now, never had any problems and I believe that 40 euros for an ad hoc backup copy are well spent (free edition available too)

 

Yes, this is basically the same principle for all imaging sw.
Still, I do prefer to restore from a bootable key.

 

just did a backup of my sys drive 336GB with Macrium Reflect. It took 19 minutes. restored to the same drive while running it took 12 minutes.

 

It has nothing to do with what the devs can afford or have. LOL WTF are you talking about?
What they CAN'T afford is a bunch of pissed-off customers and a bad reputation.

 

Of course this is their main concern, but they also have several cloning disks, i worked in a big tech company.
An average user can usually afford only one cloning disk, so for the AVERAGE user THAT IS an issue.

 

What about a bootable 'clone' (including OS and all installed applications) to a different drive? This is what I'm personally interested in. Even if it lags behind a bit its much better than starting from scratch on everything. Admittingly I'm a bit overwhelmed with all the suggested options out there so far ;).

 

Yes, I did it with Hasleo Win to Usb.
Choose iso, install it on external USB hdd/sdd/key and then boot it. Then install drivers, software, everything like on normal internal hdd.

 

You can create bootable media USB cd etc with Macrium. i currently have around 1800 plugins, multiple daws and gfx apps suites installed. it will backup everything. be forewarned that a lot of plugins base their keys on Hardware IDS so if you change too much you may need to re-authorize some apps. backs up everything into a file I have restored to same hardware machine with no problems.

 

I use Drive Snapshot for Backup my OS Drive, you can use it while working on the PC.
It's small and quick.

 

I agree in the sense that always should be an option. No matter what method you use, having an external bootable USB or similar is a must.

There's that WinToUsb option that orbit mentioned.
I'd still use a system backup/restore program. Once you have a system backup, you can copy (restore to another drive) it to another disk. If you have a lightning fast USB3 drive use that. External Hard/SS disk, you name it.

Personally I always have the last rock-stable backup in another internal drive as a dual boot. That's what so good about incremental backups.

 

I do not like incrementals for the reason that they rely on a chain of backups.
If any one of those in the chain gets corrupted, all is lost.
I like having full backups going back some months, in case something really bad gets uncovered after some time.
I keep a spreadsheet of installs for all DAW-related software (and various other non-DAW programs,too).
I keep that in a folder on the OS drive along with generated keys for software and a few other info items.
That makes it easy to open the spreadsheet and see exactly what version of everything that was installed on that backup.

My method relies on having a program to read the backups, so i am relying on Easeus's program for any access and ability to recover my system.
So, i make sure to have multiple copies of their programs backed up as well
And i used to always boot into a flash drive for recovery, but lately I have been booting into my other OS SSD and restoring that way.
I do not often want or need to restore in the past couple of years, but i worry about the amount of wear i put on my SSDs from 2017 to 2019.
My method of uninstalling something was to restore the system! Just kidding but it is true that for any major stuff I would use that method when my OS was still pretty new.

 

Absolutely yes.

Not only: think if you want to start over again with Windows, you grow up with no hurry the new system on the external drive bit by bit, intall everything you need, av, firewall, daws, vsts, and when it's ready you convert it from wintogo to local, then you clone it over the internal drive.
It works, I did it.

Right, I do differentials only, and when the size becomes too big, I start a new whole backup.

You could use shadowing sw, it creates a system sandbox (not local like sandboxie) that is deleted at reboot.
Of course, it has the limit that you can't install stuff that requires reboot.

 

Now I get your point. Yes, that seems very useful. Haven't tried that because don't have a really fast USB drive.

Yep, that's a good point. I use incrementals because there're faster.
Anyways, when there's more than two and everything goes right I consolidate them into one. Or start a new full one like @orbitbooster said.