Nowdays, many people realize that keeping a copy of your system or files is very important. Because it can avoid data loss owing to various reasons, such as, mistakenly deleted files, virus, system crash, etc.
However, one backup is not enough to protect your system or files. To be on the safe side, you need to create multiple backups. According to 3-2-1 backup strategy, the best way is to keep at least 3 copy of backups, store 2 backup copies on different devices and 1 offsite. Because all backups will be corrupted when something unexpected happens if you save the image on one place.
In sum, the best way is to backup your laptop hard drive or files with a trust and reliable backup software, then save the backup image to local disk, external drive, cloud drive or NAS separately.
In the following, I'll show you some possible reasons that account for this action.
To backup laptop files in Windows 11, 10, 8.1, 8, 7, XP or Vista, you can use the built-in tool, such as, Backup and Restore, File History. But if you want to backup hard drive for laptop, you need to ask help for third-party backup software. Because there is no built-in tool that can backup entire disk containing system reserved partition, hidden partition and recovery partition in a laptop.
For backup software, you can use Qiling Disk Master Professional. It's popular used by many users in the worldwide, so you don't need to worry about anything. With it, you can backup laptop to external hard drive, portable HDD, USB flash drive, cloud drive, NAS or network share, as long as the device can be detected by Windows.
Next, I'll introduce you some useful features you may need:
For advanced users, Qiling Disk Master offers command line backup and restore. Download the free trial and have a try.
To backup entire laptop hard drive, use the following steps:
1. Connect external hard drive to your laptop via USB cable or enclosure, such as, My Passport, and make sure it is detected. Install Qiling Disk Master and start it.
2. At the main console, click Backup > Disk Backup . To backup laptop files, click "File Backup" as instead.
3. At this window, choose laptop hard drive as the source disk. Click "Disks", select the first disk in the window.
5. Click "Options", "Schedule", "Scheme" and select one or more setting you like. After that, click "Proceed" to backup hard drive for laptop.
Notes:
Except for GUI-based backup software, you can still choose to backup laptop from command prompt. You have two options, using wbadmin or DiskMasterUI.exe. Please follow the steps below.
As covered before, Windows built-in GUI backup utilities cannot backup entire laptop disk. But its Wbadmin Command can do you a favor. Steps to backup a laptop hard drive from command line are:
1. Press Windows + R key, type "CMD" and hit Enter to start Command Prompt.
2. Run following command: wbadmin Proceed -backupTarget:F: -include:C:, D: -allCritical –quiet
This will backup all contents on C and D drives to F drive. "-quiet" means it will back up the hard drive without prompting for extra input, so it will start to backup right after you input the order.
Aforementioned software Qiling Disk Master provides easier command line backup. You just need to start it in Command Prompt and type a piece of command:
1. Input "cd" plus the installation path of Qiling Disk Master in Command Prompt. For example, type: cd C:\Program Files (x86) \Qiling Disk Master.
2. Input command with following format: DiskMasterUI.exe /b new /t disk /s [source disk number] /d "[target location path]" /n "[task name]". For example: DiskMasterUI.exe /b new /t disk /s 0 /d "E:\disk backup" /n "Disk Backup".
So far, there is no accurate answer for the question "what is the best way to backup a laptop?" Because there is a possibility of data loss whether backing up to local disk, external drive, cloud drive or NAS. At last, the 3-2-1 backup strategy was launched to solve this problem. In a word, you need to backup image to 3 different places, 2 online and 1 offline.
Besides, backup software is very important too. After all, a trust and reliable software like Qiling Disk Master Professional can help you backup disk, system, partition, files without any obstacle. At the same time, it may bring you much convenience with its extra features, such as, differential backup, event-trigger backup, etc.
If you want to protect unlimited computers within your company, you can pick Qiling Disk Master Technician. With the inbuilt Qiling Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore system image file on server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over network.