How would I back up entire hard drives to one large drive?

Hi,

I currently have no backup's for anything (naughty boy).

Things I would like to backup

My 1TB SSD
My 2TB HDD
My 3TB EX HDD

I was considering buying the 8TB EX HDD (seagate) and just plug it into my PC, copy my hard drives over to it overnight or something. But I don't know how to. Ideally I would simply have 3 labeled files on the new 8TB EX HDD that are copies of each of the drives. I don't need access to any of the content individually on the new 8TB back-up. Just copies of the hard drives should they ever fail. Can you do this? Can this be done that simply? Trying to keep it simple as possible.

beany_bot said:

Ideally I would simply have 3 labeled files on the new 8TB EX HDD that are copies of each of the drives.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure what you mean by "labeled files"?

If all 3 drives are currently connected to the PC, why don't you just plug in the 8TB in as well, create 3 folders named to which folder corresponds to which drive then use something like Unstoppable Copier to copy the files/folders you need.

That seems the easiest?

What you want is a Disk image. Windows can do this for you but im not 100% if you can schedule it.
I believe marcium reflect can though.

Sorry if I'm not being clear. What I mean is. I want to end up with on the new back-up hard drive 3 files. each one an exact copy of one of my disks.
Schedule not important. I can set a reminder on my phone to do it once a month or so.

Ideally it would only copy/change the changed files after the first time, that would make it much much quicker, but If I have to copy them all everytime then so be it.

Are they all data drives? Or is one an OS drive?

If one is an OS drive, then you need something like Macrium Reflect.

Lets say your drives are C,D,E and new external drive is Z.



You can set Macrum to take disk images on a daily basis (ie, FULL image on a monthly basis, then INCREMENTAL images on a daily basis -only changes are copied in incremental)

You would set it so C image is saved in Z:\C-backup\, D image in Z:\D-backup\ etc etc.

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Or , if they are all data only drives, you can just use Robocopy.

This would copy the folders 1:1, first run will do everything, every run after that would only be changes.

-but you should only use Robocopy for subfolders, the root of a drive.

The SSD is my main drive with windows 10 and steam games etc.
The 2TB HDD is my old main drive with windows 7 and all my FSX stuff on it.

(I use these both as bootable and usable "PC's").

The 3TB EX HDD is purely file storage.

I really, for simplicity would like to just end up with 3 files on the new drive. C: D: E: or whatever. That I can use to revert should I ever need to.

From what im reading macrium is the way to go. £47 seems good value for a back-up of all my stuff!

I use Image for Windows from Terabyteunlimited to create images of 2 Windows 10 PCs on a NAS.

This produces a single file for each PC on the NAS for the full image and additional files for each incremental backup.

Works well for me.

Gotta say I use Macrium Reflect for all of my backup requirements, and the scheduled backup templates are really easy to use. Give the free version a go.