creating system images ... is EaseUS OK ?

[hydra3333]

Hello.

After a chat with ChatGPT Ai and Claude AI about creating system image backups, I bought a license for "EaseUS Todo Backup Home (Lifetime Upgrades) 2026". Silly me. I just discovered the company is based in China. Apparently it has a large user base and has good reviews.

So: is anyone here using this, is it safe, and do you think it is any good ?

[Subtitles]

If by System Image Backup you mean "cloning" then I suppose any application dedicated to this is good.
I don't use EaseUS I think they are too expensive last time I checked.
I used Macrium Reflect over the years and I can recommend it.
Backup is not the same as cloning. Check if what you bought can do cloning as well.

[hydra3333]

Thanks.

I mean do an occasional backup of the system disk (an image of it including the special windows partitions, eveything) so that it can be fully restored if something goes wrong.

Been there, done that quite a few times with backing up to a Windows System Image (the control panel thing) but M$ no longer support it and say go buy a 3rd party app. Way to go (not!) microsoft, removing really useful core system functionality and focus on hocus pocus instead like rounded edges on icons and mucking up the start menu.

Cloning would be a nice to have, for me, and I think EaseUS does it.

[ProWo]

Hello.

After a chat with ChatGPT Ai and Claude AI about creating system image backups, I bought a license for "EaseUS Todo Backup Home (Lifetime Upgrades) 2026". Silly me. I just discovered the company is based in China. Apparently it has a large user base and has good reviews.

So: is anyone here using this, is it safe, and do you think it is any good ?

I think it's okay.
Find out exactly how the restore works.
The backup is usually not a problem, but the way the restore is performed can cause problems.
EaseUS should ideally provide a DVD/USB stick medium that you can use to boot up and then perform the restore.
Remember to backup the whole disk with all partitions.

[Columbo]

Great to see you hydra3333. I'm going to +1 the recommendation for Macrium Reflect. I use it offline on my linux systems too. Saved me several times.

[ozymango]

Cloning would be a nice to have, for me, and I think EaseUS does it.

I'm pretty sure the full version you purchased does disc cloning (or system cloning) as well as a bunch of different backup options, so you should be covered for pretty much anything. I've used EaseUS in the past, not for a full disk image, but for backing up files and partitions, and it's worked fine for me. As for it being made in China, I buy stuff from China all the time and so far I'm still alive and unhacked.

But one thing about any backup/cloning program that I've learned after doing computer tech support for over thirty years -- always always ALWAYS test that you can do a full backup AND a full restore of whatever systems you have, before trusting that the backup actually works. I've had way too many experiences over the years when somebody (fortunately not me!) thought they had a good working backup of some system, and then went to restore it, and then they encountered problems, the kind that make your stomach turn upside down. And yeah it can be a hassle to have to put together yet another system to try to recover the first system as a test case, but believe me, in the long run, it's worth it to do it when it's easy, so when things hit the fan, you're good to go!

And not meaning to scare anybody about "lifetime service" guarantees from these kind of companies, but I can think of at least four programs I own that have a "perpetual" license -- that are now either out of business, or no longer support the software I have a "perpetual" license for. But they'll sell me a new program with a new "perpetual" license!

[hydra3333]

Thank you everyone. G'day Colombo.

I am still nervous about the thing I bought.

I reckon FWIW I'll ask the AIs more about Macrium Reflect, even with its annual subscription fee; it may notionally be produced by a Pommie company IIRC.

Being down under I may as well be spied on by the Poms rather than the Chinese and count my payment as a sunk cost and a learning ... and to not trust AIs.

Not a huge fan of "she'll be right mate", I've found that those trying to think things through and taking actions tend to be luckier on average. Oh well.

Cheers.

[cholla]

I have used Acronis True Image for a long time .
It has always been dependable.
It has a "free" version if you have a WD (Western Digital) hard drive.
I have & use the full version & it has more features than the free version.

BTW I had to look up "Pommie"

[ozymango]

I reckon FWIW I'll ask the AIs more about Macrium Reflect, even with its annual subscription fee; it may notionally be produced by a Pommie company IIRC.

You're worried about the Chinese doing mischief on your system but you trust AI to tell you the proper backup software for your needs?

No offense, good sir, but do you have much experience actually backing up and restoring computer systems? If not, frankly I think you'd be better off checking out the forums of computer system users to see some real-world experiences of backing up/restoring systems in production environments. I see you're willing to spend $$$ without even trying out any of these programs. Is it because you're concerned that something nefarious will be going on behind your back when you run some of this software? If that's your concern, then I very very much recommend that you do your own research and not trust AI to sort you out here. I tend to lean open-source software myself, you can actually view the code behind the software -- programs like "Rescuezilla" and "FreeFileSync" can probably do 100% of what you need to do, at no $$$ cost, and again it's open-source, you can actually see what's going on under the hood in these programs -- and you try it yourself, don't rely on AI to tell you what's gonna work for you!

I worked computer tech support for over thirty years, so I do realize that you're not gonna listen to me anyway and do whatever it is you feel like at any moment, but I like to at least make notes that I did offer the customer some options they might not have known of otherwise.

[Columbo]

I reckon FWIW I'll ask the AIs more about Macrium Reflect, even with its annual subscription fee; it may notionally be produced by a Pommie company IIRC.

I wasn't aware it had gone to a subscription model. I bought my version 8 outright some time ago. You can probably find a version 8 free edition floating around the web. Contact me by PM over in DG land and I can point you to something.

[thecoalman]

I am still nervous about the thing I bought.

Test it, worst time to test a backup is when you need it.

[ozymango]

Test it, worst time to test a backup is when you need it.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This, a million times over!

[hydra3333]

Cool ! I was lazy and got a couple of the AIs to research/compare products for me and then I compared their responses as well ... the thing they didn't mention I forgot to ask explicitly. Looks like geopolitical related risk in the modern world isn't their thing.

At one level, if something is a recognised brand with similar/same features as others and they have a pretty decent size user bases and reasonable trade rag and user reviews and "reputation" then the risk associated with it working was probably close to acceptable, and so I foolishly then based a choice on (cheaper) non-subscription model costs.

Shoulda/coulda tested it as well, had the means and motive Also shoulda/coulda asked here first as well, people always have interesting and useful perspectives and advice. Oh well.

Ozymango, thank you for your perspective; as we used to say at work (in what was once called IT) - all input gratefully accepted if not necessarily acted upon Translation: very happy indeed to receive advice and experience, it certainly influences evaluating options and decision making. You may have been chatting with my missus, managing in part to quote her almost word for word

Columbo, cheers for the kind thought. Although retired and close-ish to skint, I don't mind paying a little for an up to date version. PS I really value and rely on dg land gear every day !

cholla, I do have some WD blacks however the system disk is samsung ssd. Apology for the colloquialisms, its the gold standard nomenclature over here.

It appears seems to come down to Macrium Reflect and Acronis True Image (not yet having checked their provenance or compared them).

I'll leave it here then. Thanks again !

[ozymango]

It appears seems to come down to Macrium Reflect and Acronis True Image (not yet having checked their provenance or compared them).

I'll leave it here then. Thanks again !

Hey, Hydra -- I've used both Macrium and Acronis and found they work great, and really the most important thing about doing backups is actually doing the backup, whatever you end up choosing will probably be just fine, as long as you don't do what I do and get lazy and then my system crashes and then I look at my backups and go, "Uh ... I last updated the backup in ... July ... 2024. #$@#$!!!!!"

The other day I couldn't get my laptop to boot and I'm fussing with it and popping the battery in and out, and my wife says, "There's an unplugged cord over in the corner, does that go to your laptop?" #$@#$#@!!!!

[cholla]

Sorry for the AI quote but it had the information.

No, the Western Digital (WD) drive does not have to be the system drive to use the free
WD Acronis True Image. The software only requires at least one compatible WD drive (HDD, SSD, or NAS) to be connected to the system for installation and activation. It can be used for backup, cloning, or imaging, even if it is a secondary or external drive.

Good to learn a new word & I'm sure I use colloquialisms you might need to look up. For example: larrupin'

[thecoalman]

Sorry for the AI quote....

Good to learn a new word ..

Despite pecking away since 1983 starting with a c64 I never learned to type. I've gotten into the habit of just typing away and then fixing it with spellcheck. I never go through the spellcheck with AI and it probably thinks I'm a moron, no new fancy words for me. LOL

[ProJiJi]

< < < truncated > > >

And not meaning to scare anybody about "lifetime service" guarantees from these kind of companies, but I can think of at least four programs I own that have a "perpetual" license -- that are now either out of business, or no longer support the software I have a "perpetual" license for. But they'll sell me a new program with a new "perpetual" license!

This is an excellent observation.

But you are obviously being so kind. I'd bet, over a beer, you could remember more than four.

[dessieclive]

I highly recommend it. Works well for both system back-ups as well as individual disk back-ups. Used it for a few years, and never ran into any major problems, overall a good fit for the job in my opinion.

[abolibibelot]

And not meaning to scare anybody about "lifetime service" guarantees from these kind of companies, but I can think of at least four programs I own that have a "perpetual" license -- that are now either out of business, or no longer support the software I have a "perpetual" license for. But they'll sell me a new program with a new "perpetual" license!

Technically, our bodies' molecules are entirely renewed after 7 to 9 years, so that body that was ours 7 to 9 years ago is now no more, and is therefore, for all intents and purposes, dead, even though we might be convinced that we are still made of the same matter, and experience an existential continuity due to our memories and sense of a persistent individual self. Thence, companies which purport to provide a “lifetime service” are only required to do so until the last molecule that formed our body at the time the initial contract was agreed upon has finally left its temporary vessel.
I rest my case.

[hydra3333]

7 to 9 ? Wow.

I think I'll cross check with an AI ... those, of course, being 100% reliable and evaluating for themselves and never ever parroting !
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260218-i-hacked-chatgpt-and-googles-ai-and-it-onl...ook-20-minutes
(noticed that in amongst the free monthly security summary Crypto-Gram by Bruce Schneier, March 15 2026 )

Of course I have never gone by their advice Hotdogs, or as the French say, 'otdogs !

[GAhere]

I have used Nortons Ghost (no longer a supported product) for high production cloning/imaging, Macrium and Acronis.

But there is another option, now days there are standalone HD copiers that are not all that expensive unlike the $15K 10 drive high speed production unit (I could clone ten 250 GB SSD drives in 2 minutes from a master SSD drive) I also had at the work place.

The low cost consumer versions are typically 1 drive to 1 drive and drives must be the same size or the target drive must be larger than the source. In other words the unit cannot resize to a smaller drive than the source.

Looks like a drop in drive holder that sits on a desk.. and handles desktop and laptop drives.

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=hard+drive+copier&crid=3BJHQTMC455ET&sprefix=hard+drive+cop...f=nb_sb_noss_2


[Attachment 91582 - Click to enlarge]

Those desktop cloners have gotten better over the years so they have more capability than the one I have for personal use. They also may not be as speedy as imaging software but I save time by making a ready to go backup drive that can simply be installed instead of having to restore from an image.

[abolibibelot]

@“hydra3333”

7 to 9 ? Wow.

Well I read that years ago, it seemed backed up (no pun intended) by several serious articles, which I probably haven't read in depth. It was part of a French online cartoon blog exploring some puzzling or peculiar notions about human bodies (and minds), called “Tu mourras moins bête” (“You will die less stupid”), later adapted as a television cartoon series.
I would suppose that for some tissues the turnover rate is much higher, while the atoms forming the bones tend to stick around much longer, but eventually, they, too, get relieved of their duty (long before we do).

French poet Jules Laforgue wrote a magnificent poem based on that notion, some time in the late 19th century: “Suis-je?” (“Am I?”). That one from the same collection is equally stirring and ahead of its time (very few poets at that time were well versed in science, even fewer pondered so intensely about the infinitely large and the infinitesimally small, or even the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence). Poor guy died of tuberculosis at age 27.

And so what did your A.I. buddies have to say on the “matter”? I haven't attempted to chat with an A.I. chatbot yet, I'm quite scared to do so, I could get addicted, or I could come to a painful realization about the vacuity of my poor human mind... Also these things have a gigantic environmental footprint. (But at this point, who cares? As I read long ago on a French forum discussion about the inconsistencies in the plot of the animated series Saint Seiya, “once you start peeing on yourself, there's no point in holding it back”.)

@“GAhere”

But there is another option, now days there are standalone HD copiers that are not all that expensive

Good to know, but it's not quite the same purpose. System backup programs have the ability to perform differential / incremental backups, allowing to keep multiple versions with (normally) moderate storage space requirements (although I've had surprises in that regard: incremental backups made a few months apart on a system that normally shouldn't have changed much could be like 20-30GB for a total partition size of 100GB; I'm not sure if this could be related to the way SSDs operate, with wear leveling and whatnot).

When I first started looking into this, Acronis True Image had a stellar reputation, then it got criticism for becoming a prime example of bloatware, while losing key features (don't remember the specifics). At which point Macrium Reflect seemed to have become the most praised such program. Don't know much about Easeus Todo Backup. Each one has its own format, its own compression schemes, its own set of features to explore backups among other things. Last I checked (which was a long while ago) Acronis True Image allowed to explore backups, but through its own proprietary explorer, it didn't display all file properties, didn't allow to read / play files directly from the backup. Macrium Reflect allows to mount an image as if it was a regular partition, explore the content through the system's explorer and read / play files with seemingly no limitation. However for backups of specific directories (as opposed to backups of entire partitions), unless it's been improved in recent years, mounting a backup emulates a FAT32 volume, which alters some attributes (timestamps are less accurate for instance), and causes issues with files larger than 4GB. If I remember correctly Acronis True Image didn't allow to mount backups of specific directories. However its compression efficiency was significantly better than that of Macrium Reflect. Again, I made those tests years ago, it could have changed a great deal by now.

[hydra3333]

@abolibibelot thanks for that good info about Acronis True Image and Macrium Reflect ! Their idiosyncrasies seem a tad disappointing.

The 7 to 9 was more of a tongue in cheek lead-in to the article about multiple AIs taking one intentionally fake website and the spouting that as "truth" (whatever that is nowadays) proving how easy it is to train them on fake data. Given the state of the net, one may reasonably suggest that AI's may not be trustworthy ... I had some recent very poor (bad) experience with them in programming assistance with them hallucinating and outright "fibbing" which ended up wasting days of my time.

[GAhere]

@“GAhere”

But there is another option, now days there are standalone HD copiers that are not all that expensive

Good to know, but it's not quite the same purpose. System backup programs have the ability to perform differential / incremental backups, allowing to keep multiple versions with (normally) moderate storage space requirements (although I've had surprises in that regard: incremental backups made a few months apart on a system that normally shouldn't have changed much could be like 20-30GB for a total partition size of 100GB; I'm not sure if this could be related to the way SSDs operate, with wear leveling and whatnot).

I don't bother with "differential" or "incremental" backups, generally not worth the hassle or time for non business purposes.

Between major backups I simply dump/copy any new data files (photos/music/video/documents) onto an external HD periodically. Having these files not compressed in a backup image file make them quick and easy to restore if one finds themselves with the need to recall those files. You also do not need software to restore the data files nor do you have to rely on third party imaging software that in the future will become vaporware or obsolete and difficult to find the correct version, just copy the files back form you external HD and you are done.

I leave the imaging and cloning (software or cloning hardware) to do the heavy work of backing up my OS AND installed programs which if one were to have to rebuild/reload a OS drive with installed programs from scratch one would find imaging and cloning to comes in as a very valuable time saving tool.

Spent 22 yrs with one company and we used imaging as a means of setting up many computers at a time with one single image in high volume production setting.. We had a "gold" image of each PC (servers and workstations) which had the configuration and custom programs setup and installed in the image per our software team. Just in production side we averaged about 4K PCs per quarter that we loaded.. Our Service side also used the same images for repairing and reloading PCs from the field that needed repaired..

OS and installed Software normally does not change much but takes the most time if you need to recover from a crashed drive.. Data on the other hand can change but a simple copy to an external HD will take care of that easily.

No sense in making things more complicated by creating proprietary image files just for changing data..

[abolibibelot]

I don't bother with "differential" or "incremental" backups, generally not worth the hassle or time for non business purposes.

Very early on I started making a dedicated partition for the operating system, and never using the default directories (“My documents” and whatnot) for storing personal files, even things like the e-mail database I put on a separate partition. In that context, differential or incremental backups make sense, as normally the system partition doesn't change much over a few months (well it's been longer than that since I've done a Macrium Reflect backup...). What does change is updates, configuration files for various programs, temporary files, files in active browser profiles, and so on; it can add up to quite a bit (especially with frequent updates) but it's normally a fraction of the total. If a differential or incremental backup can be, let's say, 5GB instead of 50GB for a full backup, that's a very significant space saving in the long run, if archiving older backups (or it allows to keep more older backups for future reference, if purging them beyond a certain total size).

Indeed it makes little sense to use such programs to backup most personal files (media files like pictures or videos compress very poorly anyway). But for things like an e-mail database, with files that change constantly but only by small increments, it's highly beneficial in terms of space savings to backup only the fraction which has actually changed.
Another option, which can be more efficient in the long run, is to backup such files as-is with a regular compression program (WinRAR, 7-Zip), and then every year for instance decompress them all then recompress the whole content in “solid” mode with a high dictionary size parameter, like 1GB (maximum with WinRAR last I checked). That way all files which have a size inferior to the dictionary size are compressed with a tremendous efficiency (for instance, for year 2019, I recompressed ~95GB in about 4.5GB, that's a ~5% ratio, while the compression ratio in the original archives was about 30%). Files larger than the maximum possible or practical dictionary size (7-Zip allows up to 4GB but that requires a huge amount of available RAM – also I found out that 7-Zip wouldn't group files together in an optimal order, which can greatly affect the compression ratio in “solid” mode) won't be compressed as efficiently, so that method can't be used with huge PST files for instance (unless it has changed in recent years, Outlook stores the whole database as a single PST file, as opposed to one file per in-program folder like DBX or MBX formats). Also a significant drawback of “solid” compression is that a single tiny error in an archive makes the whole content located beyond that error unreadable. Another is that retrieving a single file out of a huge amount of data can be very slow (depending on where it's located in the archive, it can be necessary to read the whole content of the archive, like 95GB in the example above, to extract a tiny file located at the very end). A major advantage however is that those compression schemes have become standards and are unlikely to get deprecated any time soon.

You also do not need software to restore the data files nor do you have to rely on third party imaging software that in the future will become vaporware or obsolete and difficult to find the correct version [...]

Didn't know the term “vaporware”. (I was born when it was coined but barely. In retrospect, perhaps I'd better have stayed in nothingness for another eternity.)
But I'm wondering if it's properly used here since it's defined as: “In the computer industry, vaporware (or vapourware) is a product, typically computer hardware or software, that is announced to the general public but is significantly delayed, never released, or canceled.”
So apparently it applies to software that never came to exist, then how can existing software “become vaporware”?

Just in production side we averaged about 4K PCs per quarter that we loaded.

Not sure if I understand that sentence correctly... what is “quarter” here?

[GAhere]

Company had sales/build plans set in increments of 3 months otherwise known as Quarters (4 Quarters in a year).

Basically my team would build to the sales plan for each 3 months and typically we would setup and load 4,000 PCs in each 3 months which amounts to roughly 10,000 to 12,000 PCs per yr to cover our companies product sales.. Basically the PCs were a combination of industrial desktops, mini "embedded" PCs (these PCs were integrated into our products) and servers.

At one point I had two dedicated coworkers plus and part time coworker plus myself to handle the quantities.. Company got bought out by our competition which promptly shut down all production of our products.. At that point my other coworkers left and I was handling PCs to allow the now legacy products to integrate to the new companies software..

It was an ugly affair towards the end and I left the company..

As far as vaporware, that term can also describe software or product that has been sold or abandoned by a company and the company no longer exists (IE vaporized).. Also called abandon ware..

While one can zip data files, reality is music, pictures and video are typically highly compressed and you gain nothing by attempting to compress it further. Just a waste of time with no reduction in space.

I personally would rather just create folders with a date, copy data files into those folders and call it good.. This method requires no software, just drag and drop..

[abolibibelot]

Thanks for the explanation.

Yes like I said it makes no sense for media files, although it can be beneficial for highly compressible (text based) files. (But the ZIP format is not as efficient as more recent formats like RAR5 or LZMA2 – perhaps others I'm not aware of – and it does not allow compression in “solid” mode, so it's not suitable for what I described above. In my experience WinRAR does this best, as it's not too hungry on system memory when using the maximum dictionary size of 1GB, and it groups together files with the same name or at least the same extension, regardless of their location; 7-Zip has no option to do that; it could still be improved in WinRAR as it groups files with the same name by size rather than by date, which can be detrimental; if the goal is to optimize the compression ratio as much as possible it allows to tweak the sorting order by editing the "RarFiles.lst" file, but full paths are not recognized there, only file names and extensions. I reported these findings to WinRAR's author, among other bugs or gripes, also asked if he could increase the max dictionary size to 2 or 4GB, since it's been 1GB ever since the RAR 5.0 format was introduced in 2013, perhaps he'll listen one day... I also proposed to completely re-do the lousy French translation for a few bucks, he replied do not want... oh well... for once I tried to be useful for sumpting...)

[GAhere]

Or...

Starting with Win7 and higher you can use the built in WINDOWS zip utility and be done with third party zip tools.


[Attachment 91628 - Click to enlarge]

Windows zip Files can also be unzipped by Winzip or 7zip or other methods that are able to read the zipped file or of coarse unzip it with Windows built in zip utility.

Something else to think about, you can automate the zip/backup process to happen automatically by creating command line batch files (aka bat) and then adding that batch file into windows task scheduler..

More advanced control you can build a more advanced script file which uses Windows Power Shell and add that to the Windows task scheduler.. You can even setup the script to shut down your PC after the task has completed for the night.

Many, many ways to backup your files..

By the way, unless you are using POP3 for email, your emails would be using IMAP, modern IMAP does not remove email files from the server, instead it keeps all of your emails on the server and then it keeps a copy on your PC that is synchronized. This allows you to access your email info even when your PC is offline.. The server does not delete the files unless you have set it to delete the files after a set amount of time. Default in Office is never delete..

Basically absolutely no reason to backup your Outlook files in IMAP..

I would be shocked if there is many email servers now days that even let you setup POP3 as it is consider a less secure mode of email.. I know My ISP mail doesn't allow POP3, neither does Gmail, only IMAP is the option.

By the way, PST mail files have been obsoleted in newer versions of MS Office, newer versions use OST files.. MS moved to using OST files beginning with MS Office 2016.. Using older MS office versions may work for the time being but they WILL eventually stop working due to most email servers requiring a much higher authentication protocol that the older Outlook versions will not have.. I have run into that myself and the fix is update Outlook IF it has an update with that security enhancement or migrate to a much newer version of MS Office which supports the newer security protocols..

[hydra3333]

zip and rar aren't really for system image backups
The non-classic Outlook does not support PST, which is unfortunate ... and isn't really related to system image backups either.
the topic was intended to be more about backing up and restoring the system disk including windows and recovery partitions etc, rather than data backup.
thanks for the info though.

[GAhere]

zip and rar aren't really for system image backups
The non-classic Outlook does not support PST, which is unfortunate ... and isn't really related to system image backups either.
the topic was intended to be more about backing up and restoring the system disk including windows and recovery partitions etc, rather than data backup.
thanks for the info though.

Got it!

Several trains of thought for backing up your entire system (OS, programs AND data)..

Imaging software like Acronos, Macrium ect that can make a single compressed image, most free versions do not allow for automatic backup imaging on a schedule or incremental backup images. If that is what you are after then you may need to go to a paid version that does offer that feature.

Compressed system images have pros and cons.

Pros, can often fit many backup images on a single backup drive.

Cons, imaging and compression take considerable amount of time to perform so backups and restores depending on how much data you are dealing with could potentially take hrs to perform.

Free versions may not offer single file extraction (all or nothing) so if you are looking for ability to extract one single file from the compressed image file you may need a paid version. Not all paid versions offer single file extraction, be sure to read all details before purchasing.

Acronos and Macrium can also do "cloning", basically a 1 to 1 drive copy from your source drive to a spare drive making an exact copy of the source drive.

Pros, this is the fastest way to backup and restore your system since the software does not need to compress the drive data and create an image or decompress and restore the image data.

Remove the backup cloned drive and in an emergency if your main drive fails, you replace the main drive with the backup drive and your system is back up and running in a matter of minutes.

Cons, can't keep the backup drive copy connected to the system, Windows will treat the drive like the system has two boot drives and will mark one as unformatted to prevent damage to the other drive.. In other words, makes a mess of your backup drive that would need to be fixed in order to boot it..

You will lose a small amount of data between system clones, however that loss can be easily mitigated by making a habit of copying new or changed data files to a external UBS backup drive.

Other notable things..
Some imaging/cloning software may have additional features like on the fly partition resizing up and down which can come in handy when wanting to move to larger drives or the need to expand or shrink a partition. Not ALL cloning/imaging software offers resizing or is able to custom fit to a larger or smaller drive (think fitting multiple OS versions on one drive that you can select boot to).

Some imaging/cloning software offer "smart copy", instead of just bit for bit copy.

Smart copy is far, far faster as it only copies the total drive DATA omitting copying the empty space on the drive.

Bit for bit copy on the other hand is much slower as it copies the entire drive structure bit for bit, it is more useful in the event of a damaged drive and you want to attempt to recover the entire drive contents.. Sometimes you get lucky and it works..

Bit for bit copy is typical of low cost standalone drive copiers, more expensive standalone drive copiers often offer both bit for bit and smart copy..

Imaging/cloning a drive is a great way to avoid having to reload Windows (or any OS) along with the need of reinstalling programs and as long as your data is not changing drastically between backups.

But even if your data is changing drastically daily, you can simply use an external drive to copy the new data to at the end of the day (this can be automated through Windows Task Scheduler).