FlexControl no longer detected

Mark K0JM

Wise words, Tim. I'm normally pretty obsessive about backups, as well -- and will be even more so now! But due to a series of unfortunate events (a defective USB backup drive) and errors on my part (summer got busy) my most recent backup was two months old. And, it was the backup image that introduced the corrupted file. So the moral of the story is to backup often and to have more than one backup image to go back to.

Also, I wonder what you are using for a backup program that gets the job done in 10 minutes. I use Macrium Reflect to make a complete image of my 1 TB drive and it usually takes about an hour and 20 minutes for a full image (incremental backups are much quicker, of course). I also don't know how you can restore from scratch in 3 hours -- it's taking me more like three days. But I have a lot more than just ham radio software on the machine.

Michael Coslo

I just reset all of our W10 contest stations for a different radio,  and am now going through the update process. Takes most of a day to do each one.  There is a nearly bullet proof OS for SSDR - Windows  7. 

Michael Coslo

Mark - I think that the number of applications  is the issue and why some people have never had a problem with Windows 10. I have a large number of programs on a lot of computers, with a corresponding large number of drivers. And despite my 30 years + of working with computers, something gets bollixed up with nearly every update on one or another of the ones I care for. Except for that one Windows 7 install that I keep around because I trust it.

Believe it or not, I had a computer last week that Windows 10 update corrupted the keyboard driver. Wow. 30 plus years into the PC age  and a doggone keyboard driver gets hosed?

Cloning drives is interesting enough, but if a new update bollixes your system, and you restore the drive from a clone, it might just get messed up the next update too.

N8SDR

Mark as a re seller for Macrium Reflect and other backup applications, I personally do to things, One weekly image with Macrium Reflect and incremental nightly- Non of which take longer then hour and this involves roughly 4 TB with of data, programs and files, I use gigabit network the systems drives are SSD drives, the backup unit is a NAS array in RAID setup with SSD drives, I then push my backups 2 days after the backup to the NAS to my cloud hosted storage, which offer 256 bit encryption and multiple US based redundancy, I keep 2 months of backups on the NAS and 4 months in cloud storage. I also have many of my clients setup in a similar manner its a no brainier and works extremely well given you have good upload speeds for the cloud storage. Large number of applications being the cause for Windows 10 mishaps, I just haven't seen that be the case, I support roughly 170 windows 10 systems as an SaS service provider and I/T Tech. A lot of it has to do with GOOD HARDWARE, not these 200 -300 dollar specials offered in Walmart and the like. You want a good system with good hardware build it or have it built it will last longer, its easier to work on,  becomes non proprietary and upgrades are far less expensive then replacing the whole system. 

Greg N8GD

Amen on GOOD HARDWARE.  The folks who like to roll their own PCs are looking for trouble.  When I ran my own computer repair and consulting business, I started out building my own systems to sell.  After about a year or two of troubles, I switched to a distributor that built systems to spec.  They would only utilize specified motherboards, video cards, power supplies, and accessories that they had tested and were engineered to be compatible and reliable.  If I asked for a video card that was not on their approved list (and the list was short), they would not build the system with that card.  They could supply the card separately, and I could install it myself, but the system was not warranted to work with that card.  I never had any troubles once I started procuring such systems.

N8SDR

Greg, as a IT Guy for some 26 years I have always built my own system, and my clients for the most part about 75% run my custom built PC and server and have had less issues with them,  then using off the shelf systems. I stated off as a hardware guy and have carried that over in my own business now, I know what works with what and what simply does not, as you stated in outsourcing your builds, I still do all mine in house its fun staying up with with the hardware these days esp the video cards (sarcasm intended). So for me Rolling my own isn't and hasn't been an issue, but you got to know components and there drivers/ Microsoft's drivers for said hardware as well.

Oxford English

Hi Mark,

These days I would normally use Aronis True Image version 10, but I am currently testing True Image version 2018.

I use solid state drives as my backup drive and a solid state drive as the workstation main drive and as I said, 10 minutes is all it takes for Acronis v10 to restore a Win 7 plus about 2 gigs of software. 

However, using mechanical drives, that time rises to about 30 minutes.

V2018 takes a little longer, haven't done precise timings yet as I haven't needed to. 

I prefer version 10 because I know it extremely well. When I was still working, I could tell a lot about the health of a hard disk simply by the time taken to do a backup. 

I wish I could still use the software that one of the S&S guys wrote but unfortunately it won't run on a Pentium class CPU, real bummer because it was configurable as to the number of attempts it would make to read a cluster or sector and it could read the header and footer of any or all sectors - very useful.

There are lots of good packages for backup, I have, over the years tried quite a few but I always come back to Acronis, simply because I know it so well.

Tim