Does HP have a product similar to Apple's Time Machine?

[cinnes1315]

Apple has a product known as "Time Machine" which backs up the entire laptop in case of a crash or some other type of accident. Is there a similar product which does the same function for HP laptops? I have an HP Pavilion cc-100tx and I know one day it's going to give out and I don't want to lose everything I have on this laptop.

[WAWood · Accepted solution]

@cinnes1315 

Yes there is -- a free third-party tool known as Macrium Reflect.

I personally prefer to use third-party Backup solutions as they tend to be both more flexible and more reliable than any built-in solutions.

Macrium Reflect (MR) provides a FREE version that can be used to image and restore partitions or entire drives.

What I recommend is the following:
1) Download and install Macrium Reflect (MR) from here: http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
2) Run MR and choose the option: "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" to write a full backup to an external drive or USB stick
3) Use the option to create a boot USB stick or CD

My experience is that MR, when using the High Compression option, typically can compress the saved image file to about 50% of the USED space in the OS partition. This means if you have an 80GB OS partition, and 40GB is used, MR only needs about 20GB to store the image file.

I use this all the time and it typically takes less than 15 minutes to do the image backup and about the same time or less to do a restore.

Plus, MR has the option to Add a Recovery Boot Menu entry. This allows you then to boot into WinRE, and you can then use that to do a restore -- when you can't boot into Windows!

NOW, you have the means to restore a full working system from the external drive or USB stick in only a few minutes.

[cinnes1315]

Very helpful, thank you!