Best practice for Windows 10 update
January 25, 2016 12:36 AM   Subscribe

I'm about to update my Thinkpad430s from Windows 7 to Windows 10. I always create partitions on my hard drive and store all data separately from the main Windows installation. Do I need to back those partitions up before upgrading or is backing up the primary partition sufficient?
posted by tavegyl to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)
 
Best answer: I updated my thinkpad t410. My data was left alone fine but when rebooted the screen stayed black. I then had to format (luckily had backups for most and copied everything else off) and do a fresh install of windows 10 which also then only booted to a black screen. I gave up and did a fresh install of windows 7. So you should backup or at least be prepared to have to mount the drive on another machine to extract the data like I did (assuming no encryption).
posted by JonB at 12:41 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


Best practice for Windows installations is not to let any form of Windows installer get anywhere near data you have only one copy of.

Even better practice is never to have only one copy of anything, ever. If you're even vaguely troubled by the idea that a Windows installation might trash whatever is on your Thinkpad's hard drive, then your present backup strategy is not working for you and needs revising. Get that squared away well before doing your upgrade.
posted by flabdablet at 1:01 AM on January 25, 2016 [1 favorite]


you should have a separate backup of all your data anyway. not just for upgrading windows, but always.
posted by andrewcooke at 2:10 AM on January 25, 2016


Response by poster: To clarify, I do back up regularly but my most recent back up is from a month or so ago, so it would be annoying but not disastrous to lose my data today. Since I was thinking of updating today I am trying to see whether it's worth going through the time consuming process of backing everything up again or if the risk of losing data on secondary partitions is low enough that I should accept a smaller risk of recollecting the last month's data in the event of disaster.

I was also idly wondering if my habit of partitioning drives to segregate my personal documents was actually any good. From JonB's answer it sounds like a backup would be preferable, though I have updated a few other Thinkpads without issues in the past.
posted by tavegyl at 3:00 AM on January 25, 2016


yes, absolutely. back up everything again before updating (question title is "best practice").
posted by andrewcooke at 5:25 AM on January 25, 2016


Best answer: Segregating your data on a separate partition simplifies backup and restore, so there're no downsides vis-a-vis backup.

The Win10 upgrade should not touch your data partition. It may, however, get confused and point all your defaults back to the folders it creates on the boot partition. You've dealt with getting things re-pointed in the past, and you may have to do it again.

I've done the same thing only my drives are physically separate-- boot SSD, and an HDD for bulky things and that don't benefit significantely from high disk-read speed. Restoring the HDD from backup couldn't be easier, as I just mirror it to an offline drive (well, offline for all but the hour or so it takes to do the backup). (This is my measure against cryptoware.)
posted by Sunburnt at 9:55 AM on January 25, 2016


Anecdotally, my in place upgrade was flawless and problem free.
posted by Sebmojo at 5:29 PM on January 25, 2016


If you have a recent good backup, and you're only concerned about data (not programs), then I'd say make a quick backup of any particularly important data files before you start the upgrade and then you should be good to go.

If you have any programs that you really need to make sure keep running, then do a disk-image backup before you start, so you can revert more easily if things get hosed. While the in-place upgrade seems to be quite reliable for most people, software is never perfect or bug-free.
posted by Aleyn at 6:19 PM on January 25, 2016


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