My ramblins of a computer upgrade and question on what drive image software do you use at the bottom?

[Blunt]

Going to ramble on a bit below, at the bottom there is an open question about imaging software for the boot disk drive change.

So I read an article in November that upgrading my Ryzen CPU might be the right time before the new AMD Zen4 architecture becomes the predominant AMD CPU line with new socket (AM5).  One of the good things about AMD is they have maintained the AM4 socket for ~8 years but the time has come for AM5 socket to start being mainstream.  Anyway I have upgraded my AM4 socket from a 1700X (2016) to a 2700X (2020) to a 5900X (2023) and learned some things upon the way.

In order to upgrade the CPU, it required a firmware updates.  I had to do it for the 1700X to 2700X and now again for the 5900X.  This time several days passed by between the firmware update and CPU install.  Maybe it’s perception but I swear my computer was speedier and booted faster.  I guess I avoided firmware updates because I was too worried about bricking the mobo.  I will probably take firmware updates more seriously in the future.

 

I have had the same computer case for about 8 years.  Cases have changed dramatically, they don’t really support internal DVD drives anymore.  I understand why, I haven’t burned or used my DVD drive in 5 years.   The cases also got wider and guess what, the new CPU fan I bought for the 5900X didn’t fit in the enclosure.  The wattage between the 5900X & previous 2700X are both 105W so I just re-used the old fan (hopefully it isn’t end of life yet).  I am thinking now of buying a new case and abandoning my DVD drives that I don’t use but have strong sentimental remembrance of.   Not to mention several hundred blank DVD’s getting dusty on a shelf.

 

Windows was fine with the new CPU, however I started getting memory problems.  After going into safe mode which is a b*** to find/get to these days in Win 11 it seemed to correct the problem.   In the meantime I ordered 32GB of ram anyway.  I didn’t get around to testing with Memtest86 so not really sure if bad ram or not.   On this note, I bought ram without any heatsinks on them.  I realized I have never overclock ram, too tricky to do and the heatsinks took up substantial room, enough where I wasn’t positive 4 sticks would fit.  Reading articles online most conclusions were it wasn’t needed and ram chips not overclocked run cool.  The heatsinks are more of a marketing gimmick. 

 

On that note, Windows 11 has been telling me for several months Memory Integrity turned itself off due to incompatible drivers.  I have upgraded from Win7 to 10 to 11.  I had some very old drivers running that were stubborn to remove; they may have even been older than Win7.  The Win help page just said to go back to the manufacturer and for several drivers gave incoherent details about who made the driver.  I stumbled upon a very useful utility in Windows called PnPUtil, with it I was able to uninstall 4 stubborn drivers.  These were the type of drivers that even if you remove the registry entry they still run.  If anybody needs notes on how to use PnPUtil, I can post (first create a TXT of all drivers using the utility then do a surgical strike from the list).

 

Lastly I have to install a new NVME drive, I have 2 M2 sockets.  My boot drive is 512GB, new one is 2TB.  I want to make the 2TB drive the boot drive and image the smaller one over.  For the M2 sockets, one is slower.  So my thoughts are to install the 2TB into the empty slower socket, image it then swap the 2 NVME drives so the new 2TB boot drive is in the faster socket.  I am not sure what imaging software to use, the two I am considering is Clonezilla or Macrium Reflect.   Anybody have any thoughts on this and/or best practices?

 

 

Edited January 10, 2023 by Blunt
Spacing

[daredevil]

I use Macrium no issues. Imaged my 256GB SSD to M2. I have Gen3 for storage and Gen4 for OS. 

 

One thing bad I did was installed games on nVME - Primary drive.. well it's 2TB so why not.. right? But now back ups is pain in da but because of 80GB appx file size per games! 

 

My only suggestion keep bootable - with required software. So that way, daily and delta back ups are not an issue. 

[Snuffs99]

I use AOMEI backupper, moved my Win 11 from older 500GB Nvme to newer 1TB drive, straight clone from the smaller drive to the newer one, it will ne bootable straight away.

 

 

[Blunt]

Thanks for confirming Macrium and valid point on keeping the legacy drive bootable.   May just leave it intact as a backup, it's not a very big drive.

The AOMEI tool looks pretty solid also, I am in no rush so probably watch a youtube on it also to see which one will work best for me.

[mraw435]

23 hours ago, Blunt said:

Memory Integrity turned itself off due to incompatible drivers.  I have upgraded from Win7 to 10 to 11.  I had some very old drivers running that were stubborn to remove; they may have even been older than Win7

 

This gave me a headache for so long -- had an old external HDD I plugged in to recover old pics and move it to my NAS (the old HDD is now recycled) but started getting the warnings of incompatible drivers. Was able to solve using pnputil in shell. Took a lot of googling to get to that point though haha as I initially couldn't find the problematic drivers.

 

Good luck with any/all future projects! 

 

 

[Paul Elton]

This is one of the basic reason why I store all my personal data on the external drives, on my first pc what i had since 2007 i went from win Vista, then bought upgrade to 7, and then 10. PC became unusefull, nothing was helping and just needed to format. After that i decided to move all my pic, and documents to 2TB samsung external storage, and ... BOUGHT new PC 😄 Life

[Blunt]

I used to run a backup software to another hard drive.  The issue is it doesn't protect you from a location issue like fires and floods when the backup resides at the same location as the original.  I bit the bullet and bought storage space on Google and back up to there now.  

[daredevil]

1 hour ago, Blunt said:

I used to run a backup software to another hard drive.  The issue is it doesn't protect you from a location issue like fires and floods when the backup resides at the same location as the original.  I bit the bullet and bought storage space on Google and back up to there now.  

 

Backing up on OneDrive for OS is pain da butt! I only use if for documentation. Google, i will never trust.... they where last to implement encryption on their cloud back ups. Even their Authenticator sucks! 

[mraw435]

I have the two back ups now (HDDs in my comp and just built a NAS last year) - i am missing the 'offsite' storage.

 

Outside of google what would you recommend?! 

 

 

 

 

[Snuffs99]

13 hours ago, daredevil said:

 

Backing up on OneDrive for OS is pain da butt! I only use if for documentation. Google, i will never trust.... they where last to implement encryption on their cloud back ups. Even their Authenticator sucks! 

 

100% agree on all points. Like you i only use OneDrive etc for small sized files. I do also use Gdrive and mega.nz but i don't trust any of them with my personal or important stuff.

 

The other thing many don't realise is their upload speeds are usually a fraction of their download speed...... so it can take a looong time to upload large amounts. 

 

 

 

13 hours ago, mraw435 said:

I have the two back ups now (HDDs in my comp and just built a NAS last year) - i am missing the 'offsite' storage.

 

Outside of google what would you recommend?! 

 

 

 

 

 

Stick with your HDD/SSD's mate (pref 2 min) for anything large in size or important.

Go grab yourself a decent make good sized USB drive, encrypt and PW protect (if needs be) and then keep that elsewhere, pref in car or another persons house because you can have all the backups in the world on various devices but if your house burns down it will take all them back ups with.

 

Cloud storage wise i do use a few freebies like OneDrive, Gdrive, Mega,nz etc and have had no issues with them, that said as mentioned above i don't store anything important on them.

Do not use any storage your ISP may give, if or when you leave ISP's they tend to take the "added benefits"  away which usually includes any cloud storage unless you pay.

[Blunt]

20 hours ago, daredevil said:

Even their Authenticator sucks!

ROFL, I am using it currently and have been thinking of switching.

[daredevil]

20 hours ago, mraw435 said:

I have the two back ups now (HDDs in my comp and just built a NAS last year) - i am missing the 'offsite' storage.

 

Outside of google what would you recommend?! 

 

 

 

 

 

One drive, one drive and one drive. Office 365 - Free 1TB/year

[Blunt]

Here is my issue with the onedrive plan, it's capped at 1TB, sure I can buy a family plan with 6TB, but each account is capped at 1TB.  Unless I am missing something, MS doesn't have flexible options for more space.  I just want one large repository as I am going to start transferring old videos to digital soon.   Had a similar issue at work with Azure, one of the reasons for a move to Snowflake, MS is weird stingy on storage space.

 

As for doing backups & manually putting them in another locations, it's just not sustainable.  Did that for decades and what I learned is that the further the location it's kept, the less frequent I made a fresh copy.   Cloud backup with a good file sync program that monitors drive changes is the most practical and ensures you have the most recent copy.