Let's say I have a friend have me fix their computer and I got there computer to a perfect (or near perfect) state. I would want them to have a way to revert back to exactly how they set it, right? What would be the best way to back up their computer so they could get back to that state. should i just make a simple system image, or should i do a Jurassic full backup on their computer? What do you guys think?
As long as the system is on its own partitions or drive, a system image would be all you would need. If everything is on the only partition of a drive, then you would need to image the entire drive.
If you wan to be able to recover data in the future, then you should also image the data partition or drives. It would be better to image the system and the data separately if possible.
I suggest not using Win 7's built in imaging. The free version of Macrium Reflect is better and more reliable.
Whatever you decide, make sure the customer is aware of what you are doing and approves of it.
is there a way, just asking, (and i do make sure they approve of what i'm doing first) to do a full backup of the OS and save it to a partition, then add an option to restore your computer right from that partition? Or something similar to that, like a factory reset?
If the OS is on its own partition(s) or a separate drive, you could put the image on another partition of its own or in a separate folder in a data partition but the customer would have to be savvy enough to know how to use the recovery disk to restore the computer (and, if the customer was that savvy, s/he wouldn't need you). There also is the danger could accidentally delete the image. It would be far safer for you to keep the image yourself and, if the system ever needs restoring, have the customer bring the machine in or you go to the machine to do it.
I was planning on doing that also if needed. I have a 1.5TB External HD and wanted to see if i could do something like that. But i want to keep the images nice and organized inside my External. Can i use Macrium Reflect to achieve this? if so, how? I really don't have much experience in backing up computers.
Absolutely! When you make the image, you can tell Reflect where to put it. Just make a folder for each customer (if you have very many customers, I would suggest keeping all the customer folders in another folder) and direct the image to the appropriate customer folder. If you make more than one image for each customer, you will want to assign a unique name for the image instead of using Reflect's default name (which is a confusing string of letters and numbers), such as Customer A - Initial System Image, Customer A - Data Image, etc.
Have you checked out whs' tutorial yet?
i haven't looked at any tutorial yet, but i just have ONE more question, when you select the image to restore from how would you select what image to use (I haven't had to do this, sorry) from the External HD? could you please direct me to that tutorial you were talking about please? Im sure you would have anyways, but i had to ask :)
sorry, can i add this to a ready-made Windows LivePE, or must i follow the instructions included? I will watch the video sometime tomorrow, but i was wondering if it was "portable" and could be easily added to my current LivePE
Quote