Backing Up Entire PC

User discussion and information resource forum for TeraByte Drive Image products, including TBNetManage.
Friendly
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 6:10 pm

Backing Up Entire PC

Post by Friendly »

I'm trying to back up the entire PC with # of drives, but upon selection it tells me "You have more than one drive selected"
How do I go about this.
Thank you
Last edited by Friendly on Sat Jul 20, 2024 5:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Muad'Dib
Posts: 130
Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:23 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire Drive

Post by Muad'Dib »

I am regularly able to backup multiple partitions on a drive as a single backup. Are you sure you are selecting a specific drive (instead of the top option, which is the entire Computer)?

Can you supply screenshots of what you are selecting?
Friendly
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 6:10 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire Drive

Post by Friendly »

Thanks. Here is the screenshot.
I should have made it clear, there are 3 drives actually, not partitions, but still how do I back up the whole PC.
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Friendly
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 6:10 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire Drive

Post by Friendly »

This is my PC with drives, but on my wife's work PC there are actually partitions and it's the same thing
Friendly
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 6:10 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire Drive

Post by Friendly »

Muad'Dib wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2024 4:37 pm I am regularly able to backup multiple partitions on a drive as a single backup. Are you sure you are selecting a specific drive (instead of the top option, which is the entire Computer)?

Can you supply screenshots of what you are selecting?
I have changed the title, still, how do you go about backing up the whole PC.
Muad'Dib
Posts: 130
Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:23 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire PC

Post by Muad'Dib »

From your screenshot, you want to back up your entire computer (3 separate physical drives), not just an entire drive (I started writing this before you changed your post title). As far as I know, you can't do this running IFW interactively. You should be able to do using TeraByte scripting language, but I haven't played around with TeraByte scripting language to help you with that. However, on a simple (ALMOST scripting) level, you could do the following (this assumes you are somewhat familiar with DOS commands and batch files):

Go through the steps to back up each drive separately. On the final screen you have the option at the bottom to "Show Command", click on that button and choose the "Save to file" option. Repeat that for each drive (give each file a unique name). Then using Notepad (or something similar) merge the three files and save it as a file named ComputerBackup.bat (you can name it whatever you want, but the extension has to be .bat). You could then run that batch file and it would backup each drive separately, then go to the next line.

Note that while I am very familiar with creating batch files, I haven't done what I'm suggesting above with IFW, so I would strongly recommend you first try it out with multiple drives, but not every partition (this is so you don't have to wait a long time for all the backups to finish). And then verify you have actually backed up what you wanted to.

NOTE: Even if there is an error in backing up one of your drives, the batch file should continue with backing up the next drive.

If anybody has a better (but also simple) solution to what Friendly wants to do, feel free to offer suggestions.
Friendly
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 6:10 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire PC

Post by Friendly »

Thank you for your advice I will try that and see how it goes.
In a mean time, I hope terabyte support will reach out and as you mentioned, maybe there is easier way of doing this.
Thank you 
Muad'Dib
Posts: 130
Joined: Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:23 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire PC

Post by Muad'Dib »

UPDATE: I just tried my method on three small partitions on three separate drives, and it seemed to work as expected.
Friendly wrote: Sat Jul 20, 2024 5:37 pm maybe there is easier way of doing this.
Once you try it, my suggested method is actually quite easy. If you want to get into the various capabilities of TBScript, it is going to be more complicated, but it will add a lot of flexibility (scheduling the backups, ways of dealing with errors besides just quitting the backup, etc.). But if all you want to do is backup several drives with one command, my suggestion should work just fine (but again, after it's done, verify that you're actually backing up what you want and how you want!).

NOTE: If you go to page 142 in the most recent manual, it will give you more information about running IFW from the command line (probably more information than you need to begin with).
Last edited by Muad'Dib on Sat Jul 20, 2024 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
TeraByte Support
Posts: 3891
Joined: Thu May 05, 2011 10:37 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire PC

Post by TeraByte Support »

If you go to utilities / ready to run scripts / backup script - that script is to backup multiple drives.
Friendly
Posts: 36
Joined: Sat Feb 26, 2022 6:10 pm

Re: Backing Up Entire PC

Post by Friendly »

So, I have followed your suggestion and created script batch for each drive and afterwords run it, it backed up my PC, but tbh. this is no different than running them via UI FTW image separately as I have end up with separated images on my destination drive.
I was hoping to get single image that would contain the drives, unless I'm missing something.
Thank you
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