System Image Backup Strategies/Thoughts

System Recovery Options

System Image Recovery

Victor S said:

Some interesting perspectives, all workable. I really think many people waste their time system imaging, giving up as soon as it gives them problems, usually space related, because they image data along with the system.
Or they've bought a PC with just one huge system partition.
But it is what it is, and I would never discourage taking images.
Personally, I use imaging for 2 reasons, both related to my aversion to reinstalling everything, and retweaking everything. Really, many of us have *years* invested in setting things up as we like them. Who wants to redo all that?

1. I want my system back to a clean version in 5 minutes, no matter what I do to it, what a virus might do to it, or what a hardware fault might do to it. Sure, I use a firewall and anti-virus, but they aren't perfect. Like most everybody else here I also install and try a lot of unsuitable software. I want no trace of it left in my system. For those reasons, when I want a new base image, I always restore my last image, do my app install and/or updates, then immediately create the new base image. It's all very fast to do, and I'm totally relaxed tinkering, downloading, and browsing the internet. Because my system is invincible!!

2. All the images in the world are for naught if they won't restore. You see that sometimes on this forum. As I said, I would never discourage taking an image, but also recommend they be tested.

The first is why I image - it is just so much easier, quicker and more reliable than any other method to recover particularly if like yourself and I you tend to tweak your system rather than leave it mostly 'as found'. And I also agree about testing your restore capabilities, using something that is reliable sometimes has to be a leap of faith initially - like deleting the inbuilt Factory Restore partition and relying on imaging - but for myself it is worthwhile having used a similar system with XP.

:)

Unrelated observation - Google does not return relevant search results any longer.
I typed in --- windows seven forum ---- and could not find this site.
Went to Yahoo and it pointed me to this site immediately.
Is Google going down.....?

....back to the issue.......

Thank you all - this is the first time I actually understood the recovery process.

And I hope Windows 7 imaging tool is enough to get me covered,
I do not want to spend money on macrium.

I will definitely follow the good practices suggested here.


BBDS.

boyboyds said:

I do not want to spend money on macrium.

Macrium is free.

You would likely find it more easily understood than Windows imaging.

It takes 3 or 4 clicks to start the image making process, and it completes in 5 minutes on my system (80 GB C partition, 29 GB occupied). The resulting file is about 12 GB.

When windows imaging works it works very well. However, there have been issues with it. It has problems with the System Reserved partition. If the free space on that partition goes below 50mb them Windows Imaging will refuse to work. It will just say an error about lack of free space. That's why a lot of people either delete the system reserved partition or expand it like I have mine.

Macrium doesn't have that problem. Even if you lack the free space it will still be able to do the image and restore no problem.

It's very flexible when compared to windows imaging.

I have the PRO version but the Free version really is an amazing imaging tool. I'd say the best free one around, but that's just my opinion.

OK, I will try free macrium on both my XP and W7.

I should definitely get more pro-active about my backups,
I was somewhat intimidated and confused about the whole imaging issue.

Thanks for all your help.

BBDS.

You can never be too careful when it comes to backups.

I actually use 3 different backup tools. Windows imaging, macrium and a programme for backing up my data partition which I don't image, it just copies the folders to another drive. Probably overkill for some people but you can never be too careful. I have some data going back 10 years so I'd be gutted if I lost it! :)