What's the difference between an image backup and a files and folder backup?
Hi, everyone. Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com
here's the question.
Recently, I bought a 1 terabyte external
hard drive and Macrium Reflect backup software as you recommend it.
But now I'm very much confused about two features of it,
and that is Create Backup Image Wizard and Backup Files and Folder Wizard.
What is the difference between the two?
What are their respective purposes?
I've googled about this and even searched your site, but I couldn't figure it out.
So I finally decided to write you my first question.
Great first question.
When it comes to backing up, there's a lot of confusion about terminology.
And unfortunately, there's so much confusion that some
of the terms, while they have strict definitions,
don't necessarily mean the same thing to different people.
So let's walk through and clarify exactly
what I mean and what macrmreflect means between image and files and folders.
An image backup, which sometimes people
will refer to as a clone, is a backup essentially of a disk.
By that, I mean everything on the disk.
That would include windows, any programs you've installed,
all of your settings, all of your data, then all of anything else I can't think
of that's on that drive drive that you're backing up.
That's why I like images so much.
There's no thinking, there's no decision to be made.
You are backing up everything on that disk.
Now, you can create an image of a single partition.
Many disks now, many physical hard disks, are being divided into partitions.
You might have a boot partition, the system partition containing your C
drive, a recovery partition, some other partition.
You get the idea.
The only Partition that you normally see, of course, is the C drive.
And most backup software will let you back up just one partition.
While that can be useful,
my recommendation for an image is that you back up absolutely every Everything.
All the partitions,
all the recovery partitions, all the boot partitions,
the master boot record, anything else that's on that disk that is
not only in those partitions, but is used to manage those partitions.
Why Why is this so important to me?
Well, consider what happens if your disk fails.
If your disk fails,
you're not replacing just one partition, you're replacing the entire disk.
So what you want to have is a backup
that has everything that was on the old disk that you can then restore to the new
disk and basically carry on where you left off.
So that's an image backup.
A files and folders backup, as its name implies, backs up only files and folders.
In fact, it backs up only the files and folders that you specifically tell it to.
Now, that can be useful.
Don't get me wrong, there are scenarios,
and I'll talk about a couple of them, where that can be useful,
but it relies on something really, really important, you're getting it right.
In other words, when you're doing a files
and folders backup, you have to be 100% certain
that you're backing up all the files and folders that you want to back up.
Now, sometimes it may seem obvious,
just back up your documents or back up your pictures or whatever.
But so often there are things that are
elsewhere that we don't necessarily think about that is easy to overlook.
The other thing about a files and folder
backup, if it's the only backup you're doing, is that if that hard disk fails,
like we talked about earlier, well, the files and folder backup is there.
It's useful to you. It's got your data, but nothing else.
What that implies then is that you have to reinstall Windows from scratch.
You have to reinstall all of your applications.
You may have to restore or reconfigure all
of your settings in all of those applications.
And then You can grab your files and folders from your files and folder backup.
So you won't lose any data,
assuming you've actually backed up the files and folders you care about.
But if you ever need to use them,
it's going to be a little bit more your work than just restoring an image.
My default has always been recommending a full image backup.
Like I said, it requires no thought.
You are guaranteed to have everything that was on the hard disk.
You didn't have to think about what to include.
However, files and folder backups can have applications.
For example,
you might make more frequent files and folder backup than you do your image
backups, maybe multiple times throughout the day, even.
Backup backups where you really, truly don't need to back up your systems
or apps, and all you really honestly do care about is the data.
Backups of non-system drives and information.
Now, you can back up if you've got, say,
a second drive, you could do an image backup of that second drive.
But since that drive probably only contains data, maybe files and folder
backup would be enough for backing up the contents of that drive.
And of course, backups that require more than just a simple copy of the file.
Now, the macrium reflect style backups,
basically the backups provided by most of the backup tools that are files
and folder backups, all they really do is copy the files.
The reason I bring that up is because, I will admit,
While my machine, my primary machine that I'm using right
now, has a nightly image backup going on, I also use a files and folders equivalent
backup for some of the other things on this machine.
Specifically,
I actually back up the contents of my encrypted drive in its unencrypted form.
But as part of that backup,
I then take that and encrypt it using a different technology.
So it's still encrypted, but now I have my data simply encrypted,
stored somewhere secure, that if the first encryption fails,
I've got the second, and if the second one fails, well, I've still got the original.
Hopefully, that makes a little bit of sense.
But the bottom line here is that when I'm
doing my files and folders backup, it's usually because I'm doing a little
bit more processing than just copying files.
And that's another good scenario for a pure files and folder backup.
Bottom line here is make sure you're covered.
Whatever you do, back up.
The best backup is whichever backup you'll do.
My recommendation is an image backup,
but if you want to do in files and folders backup in addition, that's great.
If you want to do it instead, please think it through to make sure
you'll have everything you need should you ever run into one of the disaster
scenarios that backups are supposed to protect you from.
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I'm Leo Notenbaum, and this is askleo.com
thanks for watching.