I want to purchase something to back up my laptop to. I have no idea what I need.

[ALP303]

I want to purchase something to back up my laptop to. I have no idea what I need or where to begin. I don't have a ton on it but would hate to lose it. I have photos and documents saved in the cloud but I'm sure there are other things I would want. Thanks!

[Paul_Tikkanen]

Hi:

I would use the popular and free Macrium Reflect backup utility.

I use this to make a system image of my PC's hard drives and usually make a new image monthly.

The software will also have you make bootable rescue media that you boot from to access the system image you stored on your portable USB hard drive.

Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free

[WAWood]

@ALP303 

I heartily second what @Paul_Tikkanen recommended as I use MR every week to do image backups, and in years of using it, it has never failed me once!

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.