I am protecting against a sudden failure of my SSD system drive. From what I understand, when they fail, it is frequently catastrophic with no warning, and I want to avoid the trauma of a new Windows install and reinstallation of all my software. It's been a year since the last time that happened to me, and I still occasionally find some piece of software that doesn't run because it hasn't been reinstalled. FWIW, I keep on one of my data drives all of the downloaded software installation files, each in its own directory, complete with authorization codes, etc. So when I find a program that needs to be reinstalled, it is a matter of two or three minutes to get it up and running. But I have a lot of those files!

I think I'm making it a bit less complicated, for my usage at least. I put about 150 GB of the new 3TB drive into a separate partition that I will use to keep my system clone. That partition will always be on-line, I won't have to swap disks around in my external docks, data transfer will be faster than a USB external drive, I will always be able to boot from it if necessary, and I will keep another copy of that clone drive in my fire safe along with the copies of the rest of the system.

I don't foresee any other use for that 150GB. Going from 2TB to 3TB on my failed F: drive, even with the 150 GB taken away by the clone partition, I am still increasing my available space by more than my backup disk for the F: drive has room for, and the data on the F: drive, while not static, does not increase. It gets moved around, but not added to.

My recovery from the backup disk to the F: drive has been running for 17 hours, and judging by the file names it is currently writing, is about 75% finished now. Average file size is a bit over 500MB, and there are 3,879 of them.

I'll breathe a little easier when that backup is finished, even though I do keep a backup of the backup in the fire safe.

tanstaafl.