Windows 7: Both System image and back up are required?

Hi,
Recently purchased sony vaio VPCEG16FM in July-11

Yesterday took system Back up in external hard drive.

Should I take system image also?

If yes - where in same external hard drive?



Can i store both - system image and back up in one external hard drive??

If any other option of system image is good - kindly suggest.. for example partition of my C drive and use windows 7 software for back up etc

Best regards,

Ravi Davda

Hello Ravi,

Creating a system image and/or a backup is not required, but it would be a good idea to keep anything that you do not want to lose backed up in case your Windows 7 installation suddenly goes belly up on you unexpectedly. The links will give you more detailed information about them if needed.

You will be able to save both to the same external HDD.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

I like images a lot more than backups. An image is easy to mount to extract partial information and it can always bail you out. If you image on a regular basis, you never can lose a lot.

The best options are free Macrium for full images and free Paragon if you prefer differentials. Just define a folder on your external drive and put your images there.

Windows imaging is not recommended. It is extremly touchy, has quasi no options and images go always to the root. Bad news all together.

>>>Should I take system image also ?
Personally, I'd say it is most preferrable. It can be used to rstore your system should it went belly-up.

>>> If yes - where in same external hard drive?
My external hard drive will automatically set up a folder at the very first time of System Image backup. Subsequent backup will be in that folder.
My external hardrive also names the folder as WindowsImageBackup under which is a folfer t-4-2-PC.




>>>Can i store both - system image and back up in one external hard drive??
Of course. They will be stored under different folders in the external drive.

>>>for example partition of my C drive and use windows 7 software for back up etc
If you meant .....partition C drive for system backup, my reply would be " no ".
Never backup anything into an internal partition, because if your hard drive fails, so go all your system backups.

Hello.

If I just wanna backup data, which is files & folders, should I backup them on a folder basis, or use image backup?
I'm confuse between image backup & data backup.

Some fella said if we do image backup for datas, it might not restore completely in the future.

And one more thing, in Windows 7, there are 2 features in backup & restore, which is Back Up your files, and the other one is back up your computer. Does back up computer will include the OS,Apps,Software, & data files in an image?

Thanks!

1. Don't use Windows facilities for data backup. That can be really screwy.

2. The safest way is if you periodically copy your folders to an external disk. Then you are in control and know what you are doing.

3. If you have all your data on a seperate data partition (which is highly advisable for a variety of reasons), the imaging is a good option. I would use free Paragon because it supports differential images.

4. A completely different approach would be to use a sync tool like Allway Sync. That is probably the fastest, but you have to watch what you are doing. Try it first on some copied data.

Thanks whs.

"2. The safest way is if you periodically copy your folders to an external disk. Then you are in control and know what you are doing." - I think i'll go with this. because the files & folders are everywhere in my PC. lol

How about easyus todo backup software?

The tutorial seems easy to understand.

Easyus is praised by many. I have not used it in a long time because I use free Macrium and free Paragon right now. But don't go by me. If you like Easyus, go with that.

Just make sure you try out the whole cycle (imaging and restore) on a test partition once. I always use a small 2GB partition for tests like that. Only after the test you can be comfortable.


That does not sound good. Maybe you want to make some order.

Yeah I might want to organize all the folders in order before I start my backup process.

Thanks!