Need to automatically backup hard drive in Windows 10
“My computer is 8 years old, and I really worry about it may fail one day, so I want to make an exact copy of my hard drive to avoid this situation. How do I backup hard drive automatically?”
Like user in the above case, you may want to backup hard drive automatically in Windows 10 and there some reason in the following:
⦁ Prevent computer failure, such as, system crash, virus attack, disk corruption, etc.
⦁ Protect data on the disk. It’s more of a hassle, but if it’s just a system crash, you can reinstall Windows 10 from scratch. If you store any data on the system partition, it will be deleted forever and you cannot find it anywhere. And there is possibility that data on the non-system partition will be deleted or modified mistakenly.
⦁ Avoid reinstalling Windows. Reinstallation does not affect the non-system partition, but it will uninstall all the programs not come along with your computer and delete personal data on it. Thus, if you don’t want to reinstall everything and bear the risk of data loss, it’s suggested on backup hard drive including everything on it.
Best way to automatically backup hard drive
If you are more concerned about data security, you may know Backup and Restore (Windows 7) in Windows 10. It’s a free backup software provided by Microsoft and allows you to backup user files, create a system image backup, as well as other non-system partition(s).However, it cannot backup hard drive directly, you can choose to select system partition and other partitions manually. If you don’t want to do so, it’s suggested to turn to a third-party free backup software for Windows 10.
AOMEI Backup Standard is a good choice. With it, you backup entire disk and make it automatically. You have 3 options, namely, daily backup, weekly backup and monthly backup. More precise, you can set the backup date, backup time or backup intervals. And it’s always used with incremental backup, which backup only changed files, thereby saving much backup time and disk space.
Backup hard drive automatically step by step
Before you start to backup hard drive automatically, please download this software first. And prepare an external hard drive or USB drive to store the backup image. Then, follow the steps below carefully to create a disk backup in Windows 10.
1. Execute AOMEI Backup Standard after installing it on the computer. Select Backup -> Disk Backup.
2. Click the Add Disk button to select the disk you want to backup. Then, select the prepared disk to store disk image file.
3. Click Schedule Backup > Enable Schedule Backup and select Daily, Weekly, Monthly. The suggested backup frequency is Weekly.
4. Then, click Start Backup to backup disk in Windows 10.
Wait the backup process complete and click Finish. After that, you will have an exact copy of disk in Windows 10. And this software will create one full backup plus 6 incremental backup, then repeat this process until backup disk full. In this case, you can choose to enable automatic backup cleanup methods and delete old backup images automatically. Thus you can ensure there is always have enough space for new backup. It’s available on the professional version.
conclusion
To backup hard drive automatically, you have two ways, one is to backup system and non-system partitions together using built-in tool, the other is to directly backup disk in Windows 10. And it’s not difficult to see the second way is easier. With it, you can backup disk to any storage device, such as, interal or external hard drive, USB drive, network drive, NAS, etc. The suggestion is to backup disk to external storage device, since any computer failure will affect the backup image if it’s stored on the internal disk. It provides you with multiple helpful features to simplify this backup task or improve backup efficiency. For example, it backup only changed files since last backup, whether it’s full backup or incremental backup.
