I have no experience with Win 10 but I can't imagine there would be a difference. The formats for the files you're backing up are what they are based on the programs they come from on their own. Data files can travel across different operating systems without a problem.

750 GB is not a small external drive. Remember to dismount the external drive before unplugging it from a PC it's on. That's done by clicking on the upward pointing triangle at the right of a bottom positioned taskbar, then click on the symbol that looks like a USB plug, then click on the device listed you want to dismount and wait until it gives you an OKAY to disconnect. If that's too complicated, after plugging in the external drive and using it, don't unplug it until you've shut down the PC and it's completely off.

Remember there's no need to backup programs (and in fact a duplicate copy of the installed files and folder structure are usually useless) , just data files.

Use an external drive for backups on win10 here - Put it on the wifi/router usb port & it works well there. Goes to sleep and waits for something to happen.

In win10 from file explorer, from the top drop down menu 'map the drive' and it will find it on my wifi and from there its easy to follow the prompts to assign it a drive letter and path. Super simple actually. If win10 doesn't have the simple map drive icon there you can from Program & Features, add windows features.... add a checkbox to the SMB simple file sharing.

Found a little program 'SyncBackFree' which uses almost no resources and here set it up to Mirror folders once per hour - it also does backup and other things. Just a few file additions or changes you don't even notice when it does its thing which happens really fast if not bunches of files to change.

I'm just the opposite of most around here. I like to Clone my Drive at least once a month. I do this with a Hard Drive I have hooked up Externally (thru USB). If my Hard Drive Crashes I can just pop out the bad drive and pop my Cloned Drive in, in place of the drive that went bad!

I don't like having to Reinstall everything (Windows Operating System, OS Updates, MS Office, MS Office Updates, Programs, Anti-Virus, etc...). Cloning the Drive Copies Everything, Passwords, Cookies, Registry, etc.... everything!

I've never lost anything really important doing Cloning when a drive crashes. And one major thing I don't loose is my Time. Replacing the Hard Drive only takes minutes and I would have to do that even with a Standard Backup to Install everything and replace all my files on the new hard drive!

mikie, I too use (and recommend) Sync Back. But I don't run it more than once a month or ad lib when I've added some volume of new or important files (as photos from a camera or phone, a batch of newly ripped CDs, tax return files, etc.). Few users would need to do it even as much as daily (at work it was data file folders only and once a day). Ironically, scanning your PC's hard drive AND your backup drive once an hour to do the comparison is putting a lot of unneeded use on your drives, that alone will hasten their failure.

bugspop, with much more than 50 PC user years in my family counting all the PCs we've had, I've never cloned or imaged a hard drive and have never once experienced a time when doing so would have been an advantage. As above, my data gets backed up regularly, and with multiple instances. I've had backup drives die (in fact they all do eventually) but have never suffered inconvenience or loss of files worth spitting about from a main hard drive's demise. I think with one image, unless you've added a lot of programs, you could get by after that with restricting your activity to just data backups.

I have many times had to Replace Hard Drives that Crashed (at least 5). Use to take care of a couple Small Businesses computers. If it hadn't been for the Cloned Drives I would have spent countless hours reinstalling everything and restoring files.

I too have lots of systems to oversee. No, many aren't mine and I can only recommend Backing up, cloning, etc... That doesn't mean that one will be done! We have 5 Laptops, 1 Desktop, and 1 Tablet all on Windows 10 here at my house. I only Clone 3 of those computers!

My old boss lost her home computers hard drives twice, loosing everything before she learned to listen to me! I did get her started on a Cloning Program and it did save her the next time her computer crashed. Not sure what this woman did to her computers, but she had many problems. I do recall her saying they had power outages in their area all of the time, but she did have her pc on a UPS Battery Backup system. She had a ton of valuable information on her home computers, as did her small businesses computers which I maintained for her. Never had any problems with the Work Computers, maybe because she didn't use them (The Office Manager and Employees used them)!

Yes, even a dormant hard drive can die, although I've never had that happen. The Business Computers I Cloned usually had Two Clones made. Usually One copy was in the Safe at the Workplace and the other usually stored in a Safety Deposit Box at a Bank!

SnidelyWhiplash - SyncBackFree runs automatically every 30 minutes now I just noticed. Its a two second total time process on SSD and the wifi network for only the OneDrive folders here in which I keep about 70mb local in total. OneDrive online has maybe 7gb but only keep some basic photo's or screen grabs plus personal text and few mp3's. So it is in no way wearing out my hard drive in any appreciable amount. I've one very important file which is used frequently that's the reason for 30 minute mirrors. It only writes files that have changed or new added files and here its deletes files that have been removed deleted locally.