I bought one of the Seagate external drives that are not compatible with Windows Backup and Recovery. Now looking for a different method.

Help.

I'm not sure why it wouldn't be compatible with the built in utility. Formatted correctly?

But tagging for recommended programs since I just use the Win8 one and curious if it's best.

Acronis True Image.

I haven't found a way to circumvent the issue with 4kb physical sectors' compatibility with Windows Backup.

Don't.

 

This.  Save everything that matters and reinstall if it pukes.

windows 7 and up has a built in program to create an os image.
in addition to the windows back up function.

I disagree about having to reinstall once in a while. I have several machines that I image off periodically and have used the same machine with the same install on it for well over 5 years now, with no need to reinstall.

I have even moved the image to new machines with no problems. (other than having to install new drivers. )

you do need to back up other data and plan ahead on how some files are stored in order to still have them if the os crashes or has some issue.

typically, I set outlook to store the pst file on another drive instead of the windows os drive.
I have my downloads set to another drive as well.

then if you install new software on the os, you have to have the disipline to create a new image.

I am bad and only do it about 1 time a year, when I should be doing it qtrly.

but no matter what, my mail and downloads are still intact.

May be a stupid question, but how do you backup software installs?

That

Back up your data. Be prepared to do a OS system rebuild.

you can't back up the "install"
you can back up changed data from the install, reinstall and then add your data back in.

so for instance quicken has a backup file you can re-import if you have to reinstall.
saved games would give you the same kind of file you could save off.
most important software has a feature like that

That makes more sense.

I'll just go against the grain here and say that I image my PC regularly.



I had a HD crash a few weeks ago. All I had to do was boot from the rescue disk and load the image. Problem solved. I use Acronis and EaseUS as my imaging programs, but Macrium is good to go as well. You can even enable the feature where it installs the rescue information on the drive so you don't have to worry about dealing with a rescue disk unless the entire drive goes bad like mine did.



I have learned over time how to take care of Windows so it runs well. It's a PITA compared to linux, though. You need to use CCleaner and Glary Utils or similar software on a regular basis. You need to do a registry cleanup often with those programs. Finally, if you have a regular HD (not SSD) then you need to defrag AND "Optimize" your drive regularly.  The optimization is what really make the OS run faster, however you don't have to do that with a SSD: just CCleaner and Glary, etc.



I should note that I keep superfluous programs installed on a separate partition so if something did go nuclear, then it won't be a big deal to reinstall those. All of my important programs get installed in a special directory on the C: drive. I don't like to put program data in "Program Files" with all of the other MS bloatware crap they have in there.



Static files like movies, videos, pictures, music, etc sit on an external HD or a separate internal HD.

Acronis is good, I prefer EaseUs TODO.  You won't go wrong with either software.

This is what I use.



 

I tried using this a long time ago and I could NOT get the restored image to boot/work properly. I gave up and wound up having to format and reinstall (which is usually my standard procedure when "refreshing" Windows).

I played with the free version of Crashplan last week. It seemed pretty good I just don't have a big enough HD right now to run it so I'm just manually doing backups. (Bad idea I know).

This is pretty good advice for a consumer level user.  Pretty much all PC systems ship with a recovery partition.

I'm OCD and mirror my OS drive, and have multiple "restore points" available but I'm weird like that.  

Acronis is running a 40 percent of sale on True Image 2014, get it while its hot.



http://ti.acronis.com/wLsNRbuIx000092N30U2i0A

WE HAVE A WINNER!

Just formatted my desktop yesterday. Acronis has proved to be extremely useful.

I have used the Windows 7 System Image backup a few times and it has worked perfectly; literally up and running again in less than an hour.

One really nice thing about it is that it uses the VHD format which you can just mount to your filesystem.  So if you do want to just grab a few files from a previous backup you can just mount the backup image as a drive and copy over files.  Done that a few times also.

As mentioned before, I would recommend just backing up your personal files like Word docs, pictures, videos, etc. and let Windows decide its own fate. You can always reinstall Windows and programs, but some personal files cannot be replaced. I use Crashplan in addition to an external drive to backup my computers. I do have an image of my drive that gets updated every day just in case I need to boot from it temporarily, but I would reinstall Windows and my programs shortly after on my main drive.

Edit: As far as programs, Windows Backup should handle local backups fine. Might want to get an online backup solution like Crashplan, though, too. When it comes to backups, as with many things, one is none and two is one.

It was only a file backup. I like the clean, fresh feeling you get from new install.