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I've not been happy with Macrium Reflect Free, and perhaps their paid versions..

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peter.s:
Very interesting insight and speaking from experience, thank you so much again!

As said, Paragon never let me down, but then, my 3 pc's are XP (cf. MilesAhead's post immediately preceding). EaseUS "let me down", but that was a hardware problem (see below). (And yes, I was speaking of home systems (without clarifying), but particularly appreciate the insight into some more elaborate scenarios.)

Above, the "I suggest always backing up two images from two different programs." (Steven Avery) - I think that's a tremendously worthwile idea, and which is absolutely to be followed. (The idea to use two different backup hdd's is quite widespread, for both variants, concurrently and alternatively, but to use several programs for it, on top of that, is as original as it seems to be a real step further.)

My main system got unusable some months ago, and I spent about 60 hours (! I more or less counted them) in order to re-install it all, together with all the settings and all that, so better backup strategies do interest me now.

I lost my (EaseUS) back-up (thus needing this complete re-install) due to a defective (and quite new) external hdd, and/or to many defective sectors over there, right within the backup (which by this went unusable IN FULL, whilst file-by-file backups, on the same hdd, were mostly fine (and the rest of them was fine on my internal hdd).

Why? Well, notebooks lack up usb jacks, so in those times (= would never do that again) I connected the external hdd to a usb hub; can't say/remember if I had been crazy enough to do the last backup that way, the hdd connected to the hub, and even the previous backup, some months (!) before, on the same hdd (! ("!" standing for "don't this this!)) was as unusable - I think for backups, I had connected the hdd "directly", not via hub, but why not imagine those sectors had been damaged at other occasions, "over" the hub?

I'm positive about hubs being able to damage external data: The same hub (quite expensive, 30-dollar-range, not 5 bucks) had also damaged a usb stick, with other data, to the point of me being forced to try almost 20 different data recovery tools

HDD Recovery Pro did NOT do it, for example. Little, free/cheap tools like Recuva et al. (Puran, Pandora, Glary, EaseUS, NTFS Undelete and many more) do NOT it, they are just handy for retrieving (not-yet-overwritten) files that ain't any more in your paper basket. TestDisk is pure hype, as far as I'm concerned: It's free, it's much "advertized", so I spent about 10 hours with it, but it did nothing for me, and there is a "forum", with no help when it comes to real problems. Stellar Phoenix (preposterous name if there is one) did nothing for me (not even Prof. for 99$), but I have to admit that at least, those trial versions show you BEFORE buying they're not able to do it - it's just that for 100 bucks, I would think they DID it. (Recuva is free, after all, so where's the price difference to be found again in delivery?)

Now for that data on my usb stick, how did I get the data back? (I had my data on that usb stick, and, most of it broken, on that backup hdd (in file-by-file synch backup), so I HAD to get to that stick data!)

- Ontrack Easy Recovery (as said above in another context, very successful image transfer: prof. data recovery service, and hence totally overpriced (it's just for a year!) do-it-yourself recovery sw... but which (very probably, I could of course not really try without buying, just saw it rebuilding the directories) delivers

- RecoverMyFiles (as the tool before, this tool as well showed it would do it, and the price is absolutely acceptable, NB: RMF is not UndeleteMyFiles which did not do it)

- Get Data Back (similar to RecoverMyFiles) - I finally did it with GDB (which did an image of the "broken" stick to my hdd (no, not the broken one), so that I kept the broken stick (which is always broken; GDB could very probably have repaired it, but:) in order to test any other data recovery tool, in similar/identical conditions.

So for similar situations, I highly recommend Get Data Back, and also RecoverMyFiles (whilst the Ontrack tool is simply not necessary and will possibly fail whenever the two other tools fail? Of course it may have some hidden capabilities not needed in my particular case?)

After this diversion, back to usb hubs: So my ("active") hub obviously did damage the usb stick (the web is "full" of similar experiences) and very probably my hdd, too, and of course, NO backup whatsoever should be made via a hub. (Well, there are hubs in the 300 dollar range, but I had thought that spending 30 Euro on a hub would get me "quality"... and to say it all, it even was my second such 30 Euro hub, the first losing connection again and again, by this not damaging the sticks and hdds, but the data to be written (but in those situations, I had been notified at least...).

From the above, you can deduct some other advice:

- Don't assume your data is safe if you have a usb stick as working repository and a (single) hdd as backup: If you're unlucky, the stick gets "broken" (and there is no guarantee the next stick "broken" in that way will be able to read from by the above-mentioned three programs), and then your backup (be it file-by-file or in just-one-big-file form: from which many of the above-mentioned backup programs, in their respective paid versions, can derive single files indeed) IS BROKEN, TOO.

- Whenever such a situation arises, working file broken, backup medium/file broken, too, you will be happy to have got a second backup, but which for most people (= for the very few people who have GOT such a second backup, to begin with) will be a more or less ANCIENT version, i.e. in regular backup scenarios, it's very difficult to assure you will have got TWO RECENT file backups; bear in mind, in this respect, that even better synch tools that do "versioning", will normally put less recent versions into neighboring folders of the "most recent version", which means, if the hardware in question "breaks", you will have to be "happy" with a quite old version somewhere else, if there is any. In other words, it's necessary to do file (= not: c: system) backups CONCURRENTLY and on TWO different DEVICES: I'll have a look if

- The problem here is, you would not really want to have hdd's running all day (which also will put them into any danger the pc itself is possibly exposed to), just for 80 sec. of backup in the evening, and to turn them on just for 80 sec. will wear them out in a similar way as if they had been running all day); this would indicate to do your "multiple daily" file backups on two different sticks, and have two concurrent weekly backups, at (almost) the same time, onto two different hdd's you connect just for this.

- If there is a space problem, well, it just occurs to me that you will want, in case, VERY RECENT backup files, but not necessarily within all their file system sub-structures: You could rebuilt that from your weekly, "fully-comparative" file backup. What you really need is a daily replication of all NEW and CHANGED files, and why not into some "DUMP" folder, considering that in 9 years out of 10, you will never need those dumped files again?

At this very moment, I have got my work files on another external hdd (c: being for system files / applications), and I do a weekly backup onto another external hdd, but a daily backup is blatantly absent in my current workflow: Why not "synch new files, and files changed today, to a stick (with automatic rename in case of two eponymous files)"? That should be perfectly possible to automate (since it's not done otherwise) with Syncovery (with which I'm happy indeed: as explained, it was my wrong strategy that caused desaster), and even a quite approximative daily backup that you will really do is so much better than a more elaborate scenario but that is not regularly done, right?

- I've also got to admit that in thunderbolts, IF the lightning was not just over me, I had a tendency to not cut off my pc, and over many years, this did not cause my any problem, but who knows? It's unanimously discouraged to do so, and I consider myself a fool to have taken those risks, since after all, that careless behavior could have been the culprit, too, or then, perhaps the stick was damaged by the hub, and the hdd by it being connected to the pc in a situation where not even the pc should have been running anymore?! (If you call this idiotic, you're right.)

Steven Avery:
Here is another question,

On the simpler backup, the data and config files and documents and stuff like that.  A backup that you independently design and it may be a small quantity of data. (If you have huge volume, like with email, it may get its own special time and method attention.)

There are two main backup places:

a) local drive - Mybook, USB, local server etc.
b) cloud drive - (gazillion spots)

For the local drives, you have inexpensive hardware and solid software easily available, such as:

Personal Backup
Ascomp (nag screen to professional on startup)
Cobian free

And many others.  This allows flexibility (Preference, I would like one allows flexibility in the drive assignment of the target drive, to be overridden at the time of backup.)  Since the quantity of data here is often small you have lots of flexibility in timing, target folder, multiple sets, etc.  In many cases, you can even bypass incremental and simply do full backups of this volatile data.

=================

What about the cloud?  In earlier days we talked a lot about drive mapping, WebDav and tools like ExpanDrive and similar tools.  Now I want to ferget about all those.  Services don't see mapped drives anyway, some of the tools are quirky, some are $$ for multiple puters, etc.  Today, with the cloud sophistication, those could be more pain than gain for the home user.

Let's just find the best tool for user-defined backup to the cloud that has:

a) Good file-by-file backup software design (like Cobian, Backup4All, etc) with include/omits, specified files, folders, scheduling (can be triggered externally) etc.
b) Total Commander style file manager for looking at the target location and the home base.

DriveHQ definitely has (b).  
Question: what web backup has the strongest combination of (a) and (b)?  A is more critical, since it actually gets the data there.

Does not have to be free.  Especially since this is being used for smaller volumes of data.
Does not have to synch in any way, but it can be a synch tool used in backup mode.

In the basic iteration of this question, you are including all Windows Desktop programs. e.g. DriveHQ's excellent file manager is
a Windows download and install.

In another iteration of this question, you wonder if there are any cloud-based tools that can do even a decent job.  

The main purpose of mapping would be allow the desktop tools to be used to the external cloud.  The question here is,
what is the next best way, without the mapping complexities and costs and another set of problems.

Steven

tomos:
^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic, so I'll follow suit:

For small amounts of data, I would love what I would call a manual sync programme - i.e. one that would compare source and dest. and allow you lots of flexibility in what you choose to do/copy/sync, maybe even an option to auto-rename older files. Not sure does Beyond Compare go there (they offer folder compare and sync but I havent tried it).

Preference, I would like one allows flexibility in the drive assignment of the target drive, to be overridden at the time of backup.
-Steven Avery (February 15, 2015, 11:32 AM)
--- End quote ---
yes,
that would be very nice for quick and dirty backups to USB sticks. I dont think Syncovery (my backup programme) offers this.

Ath:
^ I was going to say quite off-topic *and* well worth a new thread, but the thread seems to be already fairly off-topic-tomos (February 15, 2015, 12:19 PM)
--- End quote ---

+1, combined with the rewritten title and small-essay size post made me TL;DR; (again) :huh:

peter.s:
tomos and Ath,

I'm very sorry.

I misunderstood your posts as a "why this thread to begin with?!!!"

Just a language problem, mixed up with bad experience from another forum where a bunch of mean idiots perennially howl for the one and only "meat" contributions being discarded, and this mix having made me make a bad judgment. Sorry.

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