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Avast signature unticked! Ta.

Sadly my version of W11 pro does not line up with on line explanations of how to back up data other than by using their cloud:-(

My other discovery is that team viewer is an expensive activity (£15/month).

Back to screen swop devices!

That would be for commercial users.

Do you really need to use that? It's mainly of use for accessing PCs remotely over the internet. Having Teamviewer on your own machine is a magnet for scammers, I routinely remove it if I find it on a machine where the user is not au fait with computers and I don't need it to support them.

There are other programs for access across a local network.

If you've got the professional version of Windows 7, then you can allow remote connections and use mstsc.exe (Microsoft Remote Desktop Client (Remote Desktop Connection)) from your windows 11 machine.

If only you have the home edition, probably you'll find someone with a spare windows 7 license key to easily convert that edition into professional.

or there are many other applications.

TeamViewer is better because it allows file transfer between the local PC and the remote one that you are accessing. I'm not sure how many different remote PCs you can access in total (not simultaneously). But their commercial use detector is a bit too sensitive. I just use TemaViewer to access my mum's PC to help her with computer problems, but several times I've had my account suspended because they think it's commercial activity. Each time I fill in the declaration and they restore activity very quickly. But it's a pain.

I tend to use RealVNC which doesn't have the file transfer but I;ve never had problem with remote access being seen as commercial and therefore outside the terms of the free licence. But... the free version only allows you to connect to three different computers (it used to be five). And accessing a remote Windows computer within the LAN (because I'm too lazy to wall to the other end of the house) needs external access and so uses up one of your three permitted computers. It's a shame that they don't allow access between computers within the LAN to be direct TCP connections, without needing to go via RealVNC's cloud. The exception is Raspberry Pi computers: their Raspbian or Raspberry PiOS has a built-in RealVNC server which *does* allow TCP connection so a) it's faster and b) it is in addition to the three cloud-connected computers.

There is something a bit surreal about being able to access my RasPi at home (via cloud connection) while I am at sea on a cruise. Data rate is appalling over satellite internet, but sometimes all I want to do is to add a new TV programme to be recorded on my RasPi video recorder or check that the freezers are still working properly.

Way beyond my needs!

I am hoping to avoid cloud connections. I see a risk that once they have my data, the commercial opportunities will overcome any moral scruples:-( I have been struggling to find a route to save files to a plug in hard drive with no success. There are plenty of intructions available but they do not seem to match my particular installation. Another day tomorrow. At least I still have the W7 data.

Disk Management is the application to use:

Start : Run : diskmgmt.msc # If you can't find the icon in the start menu

Right-click Start button and check for it # If you can find the icon

This is a mockup of a user with a C: drive inside a machine, with a large capacity external backup drive (partitioned GPT, formatted NTFS) as the backup device on a blue USB3 connector.

A brand new external drive, should already have a partition defined on it. It could be ExFAT instead of NTFS, that's what you might expect to be different. Some are prepared with ExFAT. Then I re-format them to NTFS (a journaled file system).

You can also draw ASCII Art diagrams, to get some of those details across. My boot drive. You put a term like "AMD" in a file system label, to remind yourself which machine it lives in :-) At one time, I only had the one AMD machine, and that label was good enough.

FAT32 NTFS NTFS NTFS NTFS NTFS Disk 0 +---------+---------+----------+----------+----------+--------+ | 100MB | W11Home | Recovery | WIN10AMD | Recovery | Shared | | ESP | C: | 649MB | H: | 1GB K: | S: | +---------+---------+----------+----------+----------+--------+ \__________________/ \___________________/ Boot First OS Second OS Data

Paul

Good old xcopy will back up your data to an external drive. Assuming your data is in the standard place and your USB drive is drive U:

XCOPY C:\Users\tim\Documents u:\Documents /A /E

I am sure others can add some sophistication to that, put it in a batch file and run it daily with Task Scheduler.

Alternatively SmartSync Pro will let you do it with a GUI:

Thanks for the suggestions. A plug in drive tends to be identified as D here. I am finding W11 fairly impenetrable to an unskilled user. Purchased software may take the *fun* out of the job but saves a lot of nervous stress:-)

snip

Paul. This is way over my head! My PC literacy has severe limitations:-)

You and me both, I am in the process of moving to Windows 8.1 which allows me to choose when updates are installed.

The "related" items at the bottom here, might have bits and pieces of background info.

Formatting a drive, removes data (makes it inaccessible), so that is not to be done lightly. It's OK to format a brand new purchased drive. The drive in my picture, has been formatted a couple of times, removing the previous full backups on it.

Paul

I'll have a look tonight. However, I can tell you now that right clicking on the start button does nothing! on this version of W11.

It should ...

Is the Windows 8.1 OS installed ?

It's kinda late to be starting a Windows 8.1 from scratch.

I have a couple old drives with W8.1 on them. I bought copies of the OS for 40 each, which was the price of the "introductory offer" way back when.

Both doing installs, and doing Windows Update on older versions, isn't always all that easy. Vista for example, is a disaster. W8.1 not so much.

There's a Windows 11 for Dummies from Andy Rathbone. He wrote some versions for previous OSes. The Windows 10 one was a bit shorter, and might have been provided by Dell. This one is 467 pages long. I like to AV scan items like this, when they come from "unknown" sites.

Name: erWNsUfbuiQYikMAHw0VXnlFVi1mZg5AuvYg78r4.pdf Size: 20,167,886 bytes (19 MiB) SHA256: 961977C03558431FAFC588D3BBF9670FF253F37A7A8AB071028D616AC6341D24

Both Western Digital and Seagate, offer a rebranded copy of Acronis TrueImage (backup). This is kinda like trial-ware, in that some of the features have an "Upgrade Now" next to them, and unfortunately, if you did buy the Upgrade, it would not be the same program. It would be their thing with the AV Subscription bolted to the side. If they still offered a backup program you buy once and own, I think people would buy it.

The download for both, is a rather large file, around 700MB. This is enough of a software, to at least make an emergency backup (boot drive dies, want to restore to new drive). Normally with backup software, you make a "rescue disc" for bare metal restore time. You need an OS to boot a machine with, and a "rescue disc" is that OS. I don't see a Rescue Disc option in this thing.

Name: SeagateDiscWizard.zip \ Size: 714,997,691 bytes (681 MiB) \__ I include this info to SHA256: B662C49C2D3A9F2E507BDB2216134C1F8CA03520627532A5FE1F599C7124CFDF / show what I tested. Extract the EXE inside.

the storyboarding is pretty good on this version. The "lumpy" part, the options page, is there if you want to "do it your way". The output is stored as a single .tibx file or so, on the external drive (or, whatever partition you selected for its storage). When they put an X on the end of the extension like that, it tends to mean the format can handle 500TB or larger. Some of the older softwares have a 2.2TB limitation.

It is, it's an Asus Z170-K board which is from the Win 8 era. I have a couple of 8.1 Pro DVDs and a couple of Home. I can find my way round it easier and it does simple things like asking for the computer name (Win 10 makes one up) and telling me there are updates to install so I can choose when to install them. I do use Open Shell, Microsoft seems incapable of producing a GUI like Android, particularly in respect of scaling!

Well that is strange. I tried it following Paul's message with no result! You eventually get to the same place by L click on start taking you to a menu which includes the *settings* gearwheel and thence to your list!

The problem I hit following an instruction set found on line is that my version has Update and Security as two separate locations.

I use Microsoft SyncToy to backup selected folders on my PC to corresponding folders on a backup drive. It compares the source and destination folders and only copies files which are new or have changed, do it doesn't copy every thing every time which that XCOPY command will do.

Don't be misled by the "Toy" in the same - it is a very useful tool which can be set to copy and delete in various ways - eg only copy new and changed files, or do this and also delete file from the destination if they have been deleted from the source, or perform deletions both way (so also delete from source if it's deleted from destination). It can be configured not to copy specific sub folders below the "root" of the source folder that is defined - for example I back up all folders of installation files to an external hard drive, but only copies a few selected folders of that set to a much smaller pen drive that I carry around with me.

It's been around for ages and hasn't been updated for ages. I'd sure there are other newer tools which do all this and more.

I much prefer a backup which is an exact file-for-file copy of the source because it is easy to do to the destination disk and retrieve one particular file that has got corrupted or accidentally deleted from the source. You don't need the software to extract the file from within a single enormous backup file.

It is fairly tolerant of drives which get allocated different drive letters on different occasions. One of the big problems with Windows is that external drives don't *always*, with 100% certainty, get mounted as the same letter every time: sometimes it depends on the order in which they are conected. With Unix/Linux you can specify a unique ID of each disk and say "always mount drive 1234 as /home/document-backup and drive

The /A command means it only copies files with the archive attribute set.

I noticed that. It relies on the operating system setting the archive attribute every time it updates or creates a file, and on nothing else (except XCOPY) clearing the attribute. Timestamps and file size seem to be more bulletproof. I've even had SyncToy correctly copy a file that has been updated on the source more recently than the one on the destination but which (because a clock error) has an older timestamp. So I'm not sure how it determines the list of files to be updated, but it took the correction decision in this rather unlikely situation.