Is there any way to back-up the Pavilion 15-cs2064-st computer internal to the computer?

[computerfixer99]

I want to back-up my computer but there does not seem to be any thing on the computer that will back it up. Any help with this would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Jim Hammond

[WAWood]

@computerfixer99 

Let's talk about TYPES of backups, first.

There are basically two: Image and Files.  The first makes a Image of your boot drive and OS drive, compresses that image, and stores it -- usually on an USB stick or external drive.  This image contains everything in your boot and OS drives including your settings, your personal data, and the OS and drivers.  You can use this image to restore the current state of your PC should it become corrupted, or should you need to replace the hard drive.

The second is files and folders -- and as that implies, only backs up SOME of the stuff on your PC.  It can be done simply by plugging in a USB stick and then using File Manager to drag-and-drop the files and folders you want to save to the USB stick.

In  BOTH cases, you need something to backup TO -- and a large USB stick or external drive is the best choice.  And no, you can't back up the PC to itself.  You CAN reformat the drive by shrinking the OS partition, creating and new partition, and writing the backup image or files to that, but that risks corrupting the current setup by partitioning work, and if the drive fails, you've lost the backups as well.

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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.