Yes, I know this well. I don't DL anything anymore that I know I will never have a use for. Just living by this credo alone has saved much $$ and time in acquiring additional storage to save stuff that is useless to my endeavors.

When restoring the images to the physical drives make certain to restore the original drive signatures if/when re-imaging - as in, avoid using a new or automatically generated signature when restoring. Use the signature from the original backup (truimage records the original disk signatures automatically on backup, with other tools your mileage may vary...). This can help mitigate issues that would arise with apps that register themselves with hardware ID's and disk signatures, etc.

 

Last edited: Sep 12, 2025 at 2:32 AM

I'm in favor of a full backup of the C:/ drive to a second hard drive. I had a frozen screen twice and had to pay Bitcoins, so I completely restored my system using Norton Ghost and the emergency boot disk.

I had Acronis and another backup program, but unfortunately, they didn't restore my system twice. It took me three weeks to reinstall everything. You should always keep in mind that restoring the C:/ drive can also fail.

Now I've bought a product from another company, created an emergency disk, and hope that the recovery will work in an emergency.
Therefore, I back up important files separately on Blu-ray and an external SSD. I even have a fireproof case containing important items/papers/photos, which should also help against water ingress.

If you have a company, you also store your company contacts, contracts, etc., outside of your office and in a safe at home.

 

This could be very valuable info. Thank you for sharing.

 

Systems are backed up on my NAS couple times a year using rescuezilla over the network.

 

but what does that help with all the problems a bunch of unsorted data causes, except that you have a backup of the chaos?