Bill wants to know how to back up his programs when he backs up his data. Leo says don't. It's problematic and rather difficult to do that, plus it'll take up a lot of space. What Leo recommends is to image the drive and use that as a backup. He can then blast it back onto the hard drive whenever he needs. Here are a few imaging programs to try:
John has an iMac and he wants to be able to make a bootable image. For the Mac, Leo uses SuperDuper for that purpose. For free, there's also EaseUS. Here's a complete list:
Imaging options -
Bird has 15 Macs at work that he has to set up. He wants to know if he can do a net install to create a setup when connecting the Mac to the network? Leo says that Apple has a Net Install option through the System Image Utility. It's a simple google search. There's also a company called JAMPH that can do it for you. They are the leaders in network Mac management.
Matthew uses Skype and says that the Chrome Helper Agent may also cause sync problems when using Skype video. So he dumped it for Firefox.
Imaging a hard drive is basically creating an exact mirror copy of the hard drive. The copy is bootable and can be blasted onto the same or new hard drive fairly quickly. Of course, it can get out of date since the image is "frozen" in time, so making an image every month is a good idea. However, it is also smart to make a file-by-file backup procedure for extra peace of mind. It is recommended to use both backup methods in order to conserve important media and files.
Steven wants to know if it's better to image a drive or make a backup of everything. Leo says that imaging a drive makes for a quick reinstall that he can put back onto the hard drive quickly. But it's frozen in time and goes out of date quickly. That's where an incremental file backup comes in handy. Leo uses both and recommends that.
Jason bought a new HP laptop and wants to know how he can back it up while it's still pristine. Leo says he can create an image using imaging software and save it to a USB key.
Imaging options:
Rob has set up a new computer, and he wants to clone his hard drive before he does anything else, so he'll have a backup. Leo says that's a great idea. Windows 10 has its own imaging utility under backup. But there are other solutions:
Sean has four hard drives on his computer. He then removed all the bloatware by reinstalling Windows. But now he has a full SSD and wants to know how to migrate all his settings, bookmarks, temp files, etc. to a larger drive. How can he do that? Leo says it's nontrivial to do this. The key is to make a perfect copy of his home directory. The problem is his Windows Registry. He can't just move that over. Settings for programs and logins are stored there, and he will lose those.
Paul upgraded to a Samsung 1TB SSD, but when he ran his cloning software it wouldn't clone because of the size difference. Leo says to look to see if the drive came with software (he may need to download it). Samsung Data Migration Software for Consumer SSD. If it doesn't get hung up on sector by sector cloning, he should have no problems.
