I'm sorry to report the death of a close companion. It started in late March with a cough and then a slight temperature. It progressed to wheezing and blackouts. By the beginning of December, it was noticeably getting near the end. On Dec. 6, 2020, my computer died of Covid-19 complications. I know that this virus isn't a laughing matter and I don't wish to be insensitive to those affected by it, but I thought it fit right in with problems many of us are having with this pandemic. Most of my problems are few, and with old age comes health problems, so I shouldn't complain about this, but relying upon my computer to communicate with the outside world (I live isolated off the grid and no phone service) is at times vital to my survival. So, when my computer died, I had no way to let my friends and relatives know I was okay. My sister is convinced my life style will cost me my life, so if she doesn't hear from me, via email, every other day, she calls my friends to find out if I am alive, so having a working computer is a necessity. Like many other things, I have back ups and more than one computer, as living off the grid one can't just run to the store at the drop of a hat, but it refused to "connect" to my Hughes Net modem no matter what I did, so my backup plan didn't work. A quick trip to town and imploring a repair shop for a quick fix got my computer back the next day with a new hard drive. Unfortunately, they were unable to save any data from my dead hard drive. Luckily, I back up to an external drive weekly, so had my data. One might think it would be a simple thing to just transfer all of my data to the new hard drive. Nay, kind sir. Almost every program demanded a password and while I had a printed list of such, none would accept them, telling me they were incorrect. Finally, I started all over and managed to get my system back to what is normal for me. Back in business so I can put my "two cents" in on recent posts. So, my purpose in posting all of this, is to remind everyone to back up their data on a reliable platform regularly. An external drive or the cloud is probably the best way to go, but just do it on a regular basis and save yourself the headaches of loosing all of your data.
I use virtual machines and mount my folders from an encrypted private cloud. I create a fresh VM image from a secured baseline each time I log in. I use a HA server cluster for seamless HW recovery. The VMs are the only machines to touch the internet. Everything else runs on a non-routable VLAN. I use a vWSUS VM to download monthly patches from the internet VLAN, then move the vWSUS to the internal VLAN to serve as its upstream patch server for my next baseline. It seems to work OK.
Wow, I am a former MCSE and still couldn't follow all of that. I simply order my IT department to ensure everything on my home computer is backed up on the company servers, (we have quadruple redundancy there), and don't worry. Luxury of having an IT department report to you I suppose.
FWIW, I'm a big proponent of taking hard drive images. Data backup is fine in it's own right but a total hard drive crash comes with a whole mess of headaches that you might not anticipate. No access to the Operating System software to load onto the new hard drive. Limited or no access to the application software to load onto the new hard drive so you can restore your data from your backups. Hours and hours of time spent getting your system back up and running. I use a Western Digital External USB drive to take periodic images of my hard drive. If you purchase a Western Digital USB drive you can download Acronis software from Western Digital for free. Acronis lets you take a full image of your hard drive and save it to your Western Digital USB drive. You also need to make a bootable CD or USB Thumb Drive so you can boot Acronis externally if you need to restore your image. Acronis can create one for you which you will definitely need. Acronis checks to see if you are backing up to a Western Digital hard drive and it won't run if it's some other brand. Just an FYI: Those of you that have a warranty or a maintenance agreement with your PC's manufacturer doesn't necessarily mean that they will restore all of your data if they replace your hard drive or even some other component. The manufacturer will save your data if they can in a folder on the new hard drive and load a vanilla copy of the OS and the rest is up to you.
Be careful on the restore. If you do this, and many do, you can run into problems if your new system versus old were not identical. Things such as wrong drivers for hardware, etc. A friend did this, and got the new system and transferred it and nothing worked. He could not even access the computer since display drivers were wrong. When I did this myself, (getting old and have people who work for me who do this for me now), I still wanted the original install files for operating systems, if only to ensure I CAN rebuild the OS and build from there if needed. If you only image the hard drive, what if the replacement system is not the same drivers?
Totally agree @medoraman. This image restore is for a hard drive failure which I believe the OP experienced. Restoring an image from one computer onto another hardware platform is just asking for trouble.
