Hey Y’all,
It has long bugged me that making an Image backup is often beyond the technical ability of a large population of Windows users. Especially now with the problems people are encountering with the Win 10 1803 update. Like many of you, I am the default tech support for the extended family and close friends. However, living hundreds and thousands of miles away doesn’t make this easy.
Hence a little PowerShell (since it is builtin to Windows) programming and I’ve automated the Image backup process for those non-technical users to getting a popup reminder when a backup is necessary (it won’t stop nagging until they do a new one), plugging in a USB External Drive, and clicking on a shortcut. The rest is automatic including shutting down the machine so they can do it when going to bed or leaving the house.
Of course, it does take a little setup, to be done by you the Tech Support person but I’ve even automated most of that process with a -setup switch on the program.
Here’s a Zip file that contains the following:
The PowerShell program – Start-ReflectBackup.ps1
A Word document containing instructions and explanations (for you Tech types).
A PDF document for those who don’t have MS Word.
You’ll have to search for:
A copy of Macrium Reflect Free V6.3.1835 (when you install this check for updates JIC). Sorry but I can’t upload the Zip file with it included it’s too big.
Note: this uses V6 since V7 has changed things and will not exit upon completion so the PowerShell can complete.
Start-ReflectBackup.zip: File removed due to missing item in zip file. See post #7 below.
I’d love to do this with another free imaging program so if anyone knows of one that can be called from command line and stores the backup parameters in a file that can be used as an argument pleas comment.
HTH :cheers:
