System Image Backup Archives - Rick's Daily Tips

Q&A: Should I replace a 4 year old SSD just to be safe?

Posted on July 30, 2022

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Question from Kendra: Hi Rick. I really love your blog, especially the section where you answer questions from your readers.

If you don’t mind I’d like to ask a question of my own.

Back in early 2018 the tech guy I used at the time installed a Crucial 250GB SSD in my Dell laptop and it really made it run a lot faster.

I recently read on another site that all SSDs wear out over time because they can only be written to a certain number of times.

That has me sort of worried because this drive is now four years old and I have a lot of personal files on it that I don’t want to lose.

My question is do you think this drive is likely to fail at some time in the near future? [Read more…]

Q&A: Can I safely rely on System Restore as my Windows backup tool?

Posted on February 15, 2022

Question from Mike: I install lots of free software and I always create a new System Restore Point before installing a program just in case something goes wrong.

I think Windows is great, but as you know, things do go wrong sometimes.

My boss told me that relying on System Restore for my backups isn’t good enough. He said I need to create System Image backups too, but I think that’s overkill.

What’s your opinion on this? [Read more…]

How to create a System Image Backup with Windows 11

Posted on December 9, 2021

If you’ve been using computers for a while you probably know that a hard drive or SSD failure, a horrible virus infection or some other catastrophic event can result in data loss.

If that ever happens you, you’ll need to be able to restore the drive’s contents from a backup.

The question is, which backup software should you use to create your backups?

While there are many good commercial backup software programs available (some of which are free), Windows 11 has an excellent backup tool already built-in to the operating system. [Read more…]

Q&A: Does every Windows PC need its own System Repair Disc?

Posted on August 30, 2021

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Question from Stephanie: I’m the office manager for a medium-sized wholesale floral distributor.

Including myself, we have nine people working in our office, and each of us have identical Dell Business desktop computers.

These computers came with Windows 7 Pro but I upgraded all of them to Windows 10 bit back when the upgrade was free.

I’ve been creating weekly System Image backups for each computer but I just learned that I need to create a System Repair Disc too so if anything happens I’ll be able to boot the PC to the Recovery Options screen.

My question is do I need to create a separate System Repair Disc for each of the nine computers or will the same one work for all of them? [Read more…]

How to create a ‘System Repair Disc’ and ‘System Image Backup’ in Windows 10

Posted on March 1, 2021

Note: The links in this post are affiliate links.

As you probably know, Windows 10 loves to install new Windows Updates at times when you’re least expecting it.

That can be a huge problem if a bad update happens to break your Windows installation in some way.

[Read more…]