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Partitioning Primary Boot Drive and/or Backing Up Only Essential Windows Files


Sammy

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I want to back up my essential Windows Files for recovery of Windows itself and installed programs and settings.

 

I probably should have partitioned the 1Tb m.2 drive when first setting up my system but I didn't.. I found EaseUS Partition Manager the preports to do this for me and I downloaded it and ran it, only to find out the free version only supports up to 6 drives. Short of unplugging half the drives in my system to perform this task, is their another way to do this? I'd like to reserve, say 200Gb, for the system and put the rest on another partition for ease of backing up essential Windows Files for Recovery.

 

Alternatively, how to back up just the critical files so I can recover windows and all programs with their settings if needed? I think I did it with Macrium Reflect by selecting just "Create an image of the partition(s) required to backup and restore Windows" but that is a little vague as it may only do Windows itself and not other installed programs.

 

Any suggestions?

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PenkethBoy

If you are brave - you can use DiskPart to partition drives and other things its part of windows - no hand holding or safety net but works fine

 

As for backup and restore - search for Veeam - works with windows/ linux/ free / and can do a bare metal restore if you cock up that bad

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If you are brave - you can use DiskPart to partition drives and other things its part of windows - no hand holding or safety net but works fine

 

As for backup and restore - search for Veeam - works with windows/ linux/ free / and can do a bare metal restore if you cock up that bad

 

I think I can do this in Disk Management.

 

  • Leave all but the essential Windows stuff, Program Files, Program Data, Users, etc in the drive C:/ .
  • Temporarily move things like the Emby Cache, Transcoding, MCEBuddy Archive and Recordings to another drive.
  • Shrink the volume on C:/ to just the essential Windows stuff.
  • Create a new partition in the newly created un-allocated space.
  • Move the Emby Cache, Transcoding, MCEBuddy Archive and Recordings back to the newly created partition.

 

Backup the boot drive with Macrium Reflect and set up a schedule for it. I think this software is maybe a little easier to use than Veeam, which seems to be more targeted to VM's or am I missing something?

Edited by Sammy
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PenkethBoy

Veeam is easy to use and although it does do VM as they are just files - can restore files or whole disks even if they are unformatted - or anything in between

 

Disk Management is not the way i would do it - i suspect it uses diak part in the background anyway

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If you are brave - you can use DiskPart to partition drives and other things its part of windows - no hand holding or safety net but works fine

 

As for backup and restore - search for Veeam - works with windows/ linux/ free / and can do a bare metal restore if you cock up that bad

Can I fix the unmovable file issue I'm having with DiskPart in an elevated command line?

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

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yes it has (should) be run elevated for all options to work

I found instructions to move / remove the unmovable files. I'll give it a go first.

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

Edited by Sammy
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you have a good backup - just in case i hope :P

Yeah. I'll do one first, no matter how long it takes!

 

Sent from my SM-G960U1 using Tapatalk

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Backing up what is now only 128Gb using Windows Backup and Restore > Create System Image. Next I'll do a redundant backup with Macrium Reflect.

 

THEN I'll move/remove these ridiculous hidden files that are probably just remnants of the MCEBuddy Archive Folder I moved to another drive to make the backup not be some +600Gb.

 

Hopefully then I can create a separate drive, leaving about 320Gb for the primary boot partition.

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I decided that it is silly business to shrink this drive so I just parsed my backup to import Windows stuff and programs. I can afford to loose 14 days of MCEBuddy recording archives if the drive crashes. That makes the backup much more manageable. 

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