I finally sat down and gave the back up software a test run.
Every time I started the program a box came up asking if I wanted to make a recovery media. So I formatted a thumb drive in FAT32 as per the instructions and let it do its thing. It advised to test it right away so I rebooted and went in to the boot manager. I selected the recovery device and let it boot up. I hadn't made the image so all it saw was the back up windows is doing every Sunday per my settings.
I booted back up in windows and open the program again. This time the window did not show up. I checked the gigs used on the C: drive to compare to what the program had found. They matched so I was a little more comfortable with proceeding.
Next I moved everything off one of the drives that didn't have much on it. A WD 500gig Black drive. Went back to the program and selected the entire C: drive to be imaged and put on the 500gig drive.
Took all of 4 minutes to finish. Then I rebooted in to the recovery media and checked to make sure it could see the image. It did.
One other thing I'm not real warm and fuzzy with is it used a medium compression to make the image smaller. I've had the worst luck with compressed files not blooming back out properly and winding up being useless. So I'm hoping this breaks the streak of bad luck.
Now I have my sights set on my laptop. I'd like to make an image of how it sits now because w10 is nagging me to proceed with the upgrade.
Every time I started the program a box came up asking if I wanted to make a recovery media. So I formatted a thumb drive in FAT32 as per the instructions and let it do its thing. It advised to test it right away so I rebooted and went in to the boot manager. I selected the recovery device and let it boot up. I hadn't made the image so all it saw was the back up windows is doing every Sunday per my settings.
I booted back up in windows and open the program again. This time the window did not show up. I checked the gigs used on the C: drive to compare to what the program had found. They matched so I was a little more comfortable with proceeding.
Next I moved everything off one of the drives that didn't have much on it. A WD 500gig Black drive. Went back to the program and selected the entire C: drive to be imaged and put on the 500gig drive.
Took all of 4 minutes to finish. Then I rebooted in to the recovery media and checked to make sure it could see the image. It did.
One other thing I'm not real warm and fuzzy with is it used a medium compression to make the image smaller. I've had the worst luck with compressed files not blooming back out properly and winding up being useless. So I'm hoping this breaks the streak of bad luck.
Now I have my sights set on my laptop. I'd like to make an image of how it sits now because w10 is nagging me to proceed with the upgrade.