Do Imaging programs like macrium and veeam properly back up your system if you have main OS set to S

So i'm thinking of getting a HDD and just redirecting my files and folders (downloads, docs, music, videos, desktop folder) to that HDD D drive for data storage while my leaving my main C drive SSD to be for programs and other important things.

But my concern is if i redirect my folders and data to the HDD D drive, if i use a system back up/imaging tools like macrium reflect or veeam, When they back up my OS, would they only back up the files and OS on the C drive? or would they be smart enough to know that i directed my folders and data to the D data drive and also back up my data from that drive?

Anyone has experience backing up and restoring their system using such imaging programs when they had SSD as their OS and HDD as data drive? Do the programs get it right and restore both your OS and DATA correctly?

And Also, let's say later if i restore both the OS and DATa on a single drive, instead of 2 separate drive like how i initially set it up, would that still work? or would i still need 2 drives ? 1 main C drive and 1 data drive set up to be able to restore it properly?

I'm not sure if i'm explaining my question correctly to you guys and if it makes sense

 

I am using Acronis Image this backups and can pick multiple drives to backup but that requires a larger drive to backup to. When I backup or restore my image it goes to C: or the drive that is designated as C:\. If you backup before the save data path is known when saved to the HDD then when you restore you will have to when you open the program direct it to where the saved data is so it can load up the data back. But if you do it after you have given the path where they are saved to the restore image will have the right location already setup to find the data locations. Also never save your Data and O/S to the same drive your asking for trouble. The HDD as it's only data save will have a longer LifeSpan then the SSD as it only access it when needed. One should never use two drive backup unless your doing some kinda RAID setup but even that is no guarantee for problems.

Setup:
1. SSD - Main O/S and running program
2. HDD - store the Data and separate from the SSD

This will be the best protection against Data loss.

 

It backups whatever is on the actual drives, C: > C: image, D: > D: image etc.
With no mix-up between drives ...would be a serious nightmare imo :O)

I don't think (but who knows) you'll find a backup\image program that does the OS-like work of deciphering personal settings\paths before imaging a disk.

Basically, place files wherever one think is fine\practical, do backups (imaging) of all drives, with regularity adapted to the importance of files.

 

Sure its done quite a bit,, one drive( C drive) is dedicated to windows 10--boot up drive with windows 10 programs-registry cleaner, network drivers and so forth,, another drive (D drive) has all the data, pictures ,games and so forth, Macrium Reflect will back up what drive is source, C or D to destination drive-backup drive (F drive) which could be on USB ect, So each drive has to be backed up one at a time, yet y'all can schedule what time, frequency and so forth each drive is backed up , so its quite automatic to image each drive without doing each time.

Example schedule backup of C drive at 9 am every Saturday,, schedule backup of D drive at 12 noon on Saturday both images stored in Drive F under its own unique name generated automatically( password optional), Mac 7 Free will do full backups and incremental--no differential ones, paid version has a lot more perks in it with faster backup protocols.

I will mention also, you restore images to bare metal drive--drive that is wiped,, use 0 or 1 as wipe protocol -one time-gets the job done,, otherwise the image may not over write the same area used and errors galore will occur. I use a wipe program written in Linux by Peter Hyams(spelling)--its really fast about 30-45 minutes and the drive is wiped and ready for image, the best I have used and is free.

 

I use macrium reflect. I have it backing up my primary drive partitions (both win10 and Linux) in an incremental forever (max 30) policy every night to my NAS. I have all my games installs for all the launchers I have installed (Steam, GoG, Origin, Epic, etc..) on the secondary drive. I could back this up with no issue but I don't bother since I don't consider it critical and it would just be a waste of space on the NAS. All the game saves are either in Win 10's user directory or various cloud saves anyway.

But you can configure your backup app to backup whatever you want it to. There aren't any restrictions really except your own config ideas. If I wanted a data drive that I wanted to backup I would probably either get a larger SSD for the game drive (512 is plenty for me) and partition it so 512 was dedicated to games and I wouldn't bother backing that up and just back up the other partition I was storing data on. But it all depends on your needs, you can do what you want.