Windows 7: Daily System Imaging

Hii..



I have setup a daily system imaging. The first time I did this it took around 1 hour or so. However nowadays, it takes only ~10 mins or so. I had this idea that during a system image backup, the computer does a full backup, rather than incremental backups.



As you can see it took only 7 mins last time. Because I want to set it up and sort of forget it, I want to make sure that the system is being imaged as I intend it too. However I cannot really know whether the system has been imaged, without doing a full restore.

Is there a way to confirm that this is ok?



Also do the restore points remain preserved in the system image? If not, is there a way to ensure that?

Too bad you are using Windows7 imaging. As far as I can see the reports, half of the time people are not able to recover from those images. So I think you are taking your chances. Have a look at this thread where it took me more than 1 week to get this man back on track.

Use a robust imaging program - anything is better than Windows7 imaging.

System Image .bat script - allow multiple images - WindowsImageBackup

Click on the above link and at the bottom of the 1st post, download the sysimage.bat OR the sysimage.txt and RENAME to sysimage.BAT.

From a DOS prompt and IN the directory to which you just downloaded the file:

NOTE: have any drive mounted that has system images upon it PRIOR to running.

sysimage.bat /I Y

This will provide everything you wanted to know about your system image backups. Including whether they are incremental and whether they have system state.

Doesn't the native Windows 7 System Imaging Program verify that the created image is good and in order like most third party programs do?

However I strongly support the advise given by whs to use a System Imaging Program other that the one native in Windows 7 so that you don't come to grief when restoring an image.

I think one of the problems with many people is that they either have a single partition or have not trimmed their OS down to the essentials so that it takes the least amount of time to do an image. If your OS is as small as you can get it then you are more likely to do regular imaging - mine takes less than 10 minutes for a full image - and backing up other data regularly will also take less time if done almost immediately after data changes. I've never used Widows imaging or backing up but Macrium and Acronis have been totally reliable for me at least.

My C: partition (which is on a Crucial M4) is appr. 30GBs - and that includes the Ubuntu virtual machine. Imaging that to an internal HDD or the eSata external takes 10 to 12 minutes. But to the USB2 attached external it takes more like 25 minutes. I always take full images with Macrium.

I have tried differentials with Paragon which are a lot faster after the (longer) initial image. But I really prefer full images. They are easier to manage.

With Acronis, that I use, the image is created copying sector by sector. That means that if the drive has been defragmented and the files moved around then their is not much difference in size between a differential and full image. Therefore I too prefer to take the full image each time.

It takes 25 to 30 minutes to create and verify the image and between 8 to 10 minutes to restore with all the third party programs in place. Since I have started imaging, I have developed greater confidence in fiddling with applications and files because there is always an image to fall back upon and never the need to reinstall Windows or the Third Party Programs.

The restore time is really short. With Macrium, it is more like 20 to 25 minutes.