Able to restore complete image of a HDD from an USB 3.0 drive?

SIW2 · 17 May 2011

Yes, you should be fine if you use usb2.0

If I use the Disk Management tool to view my VHD files - could that make my system image backup useless/damaged?

No.

Bellzemos · 17 May 2011

Well, I only have USB 3.0 cable which should be USB 2.0 compatible. And Recovery disc probably has USB 2.0 drivers integrated? I hope so. Thank you for helping me.

SIW2 · 17 May 2011

That should be ok if you plug your usb3 hd into a usb2 port.

kronckew · 17 May 2011

i use macrium pro. it has a bootable winPE system that adds itself to your bcd bootup menu selections. macrium provides a utility (reflectdc.exe - reflect driver copy utility) that automatically copies your usb drivers to the winpe system. it also then adds them when you create a cd or dvd recovery disk. one caveat - i had to manually add my usb3 hub drivers to the appropriate folder in C:\Boot\Macrium\Drivers.

SIW2 · 17 May 2011

Hi kronck,

Yes, that may be due to usb3 drivers having two .inf files

whs · 17 May 2011

I always like to try these things out before I use them. With Macrium, I create an image of a 2GB test partition that has some copied data. That's how I found out that free Macrium can image with USB3 but not restore - for that I had to use USB2. Reason is because the Linux recovery program does not have USB3 support.

I have tried Winows7 imaging but found it to be too messy and way too restrictive. You never know what it is doing. Free Macrium or free Paragon are much better options.

seekermeister · 17 May 2011

I have not tried it yet, but Acronis TI 2010 or newer, is supposed to be able to access USB 3 HDDs at full speed. Since it can be used on a bootable flash drive, I see no reason why USB 3 would be a problem...unless the flash drive isn't compatible with USB 3.

SIW2 · 17 May 2011

I hope it can - it's a paid product.

Bellzemos · 19 May 2011

I have three more questions about the Windows 7 system image backup tool:

1. Sometimes I'm unable to eject my external HDD - Windows 7 says that it's in use by a program and that I should close that program to be able to remove my USB HDD. I don't know which this program could be so I reboot my PC in order to be able to safely remove the drive. Is this a common thing?

2. When I'm creating a system image (it takes about an hour and a half), what am I permitted to do at that time so that I don't compromise the creation of the system image on my external HDD. OK, I know that I shouldn't defrag at the time (that I should do before), what about surfing the internet, playing games, watching movies etc., is that safe? Or should I leave the PC running idle (maybe even disable the internet link) until the system image is done?

3. I would like to test my system image and restore it on my old PC. The system image has my new laptop's whole HDD backed up (a 500 GB drive). My old PC has a 320 GB drive. But I only backed up about 250 GB of data in that system image. So, will I be able to restore it to a 320 GB drive? The partitions will have to be smaller, does the system image backup save the data of the free space too? So, is it possible to do it?

Thank you!

SIW2 · 19 May 2011

1. Have you looked in Task manager and see if that tells you.

2. You can continue to use your pc while windows is making an image - but it may take longer if you do.

3. No you can't restore it to a smaller HD