on my PC I ran freefilesync, and just sync'd to an external drive (I actually sync'd two drives to it) yes I would have to reinstall windows and apps, but if I restore the DIM stuff to all the same locations it should go forward, and the Carrara preferences (or just copy the whole directory back). On my Mac I switched to I have TimeMachine which makes a snapshot every 30 mins or an hours and in the event of a crash HD or a complete change of machines just tell it I have that when doing the install and it takes care of it. I know windows has some tools but I haven't played with them.