1

I'm a software developer and have lots of system configured aspects on my development Windows 10 laptop (SQL Server, IIS, IDEs, etc). Over the years, I've had several hardware failures and the resulting downtime to migrate from one laptop to another is painful, and costly in lost work hours.

I have data backup covered, which makes sure I don't lose my code, etc. But backing up and recovering the entire environment (installed software, configuration, etc) has eluded me, and takes a long time to setup on a new machine.

I understand doing a mirror image backup of a drive could be a possible solution, but if you have a mirror backup from one laptop, I'm guessing that, if that laptop is dead (motherboard shot), you can't just restore it on another machine as some drivers, etc may be different due to different hardware.

I've had some exposure to virtual machines on Azure, which I like the concept of having your fully configured environment containerized, which can be saved and moved to any machine with fairly little fuss and time.

Is this a viable solution for a Windows 10 Home laptop? To make it a virtual machine, create a fully configured environment within it that is backed up nightly, and can then be restored on any hardware in the event of a failure?

If so, can the process start by taking my current Windows 10 installation and "containerizing" it so I don't have to start from scratch again?

Improve this question
2
  • Azure? We migrated a lot of customers from such cloud base solutions because it is network dependency and even most powerful ISP can have outage and then it is catastrophe for businesses
    – Alex
    Commented Jul 27, 2018 at 18:27
  • 1
    A mirror image backup only works for restoring to the same hardware. If your standard procedure for hardware failure is to replace, then a mirror image backup will not work. Setting up a virtual workspace may be an effective tool though, because virtual machines can run on any hardware so long as the base software (OS) meets the requirements.For development work a VM should be plenty fast. You just backup the entire VM, and when something breaks you power up the same VM on some other computer.
    – music2myear
    Commented Aug 2, 2018 at 16:26

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
0

Windows To Go is intended for this purpose, but MS has restricted it to Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education. Though there are third-party tools such as WinToUSB, and possibly AOMEI Partition Assistant that are intended to enable Windows To Go from other Windows editions, I've not tested them.

As a software developer, you might consider the Enterprise edition, at ~US100/year, particularly because of MS support if you're developing a product for use on Windows OS.

Caveats

  • See a reviews of MS Windows To Go regarding some negatives.
  • Check reviews and test any third-party tool for malware and bundled garbage with VirusTotal.

**Footnote: It is simple to create a Live Linux USB with persistence, for the purpose you state, but that would be more useful for cross-platform development, e.g. Oracle, as opposed to MS SQL Server.

Improve this answer
0
0

If you don't have real time critical tasks, then any VirtualMachine of your choice (VMWare, VirtualBox, Microsoft's Virtual PC....) will do what you want. Backup on regular basis your VM and you can run it on any other computer without problem.

Improve this answer
2
  • Thanks Alex. What do you mean by "real time critical tasks"?
    – crichavin
    Commented Jul 27, 2018 at 19:38
  • Tasks like production video editing or programs that require direct access to hardware. While most common equipment are directly exposed to virtual machines on nowadays computers via direct support from CPU for virtual machines, there're might be a cases when one need to utilize full power of computer's resources. Virtual machines are still abstraction layer between real OS and OS that works inside of VM. Most business applications as well internet browsing including youtube watching handled by VM easily, but if there something that need up 100% from hardware then it can be slow-downed
    – Alex
    Commented Jul 27, 2018 at 19:52

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .