Just make sure you also image and restore the 100MB system partition. That little partition contains your bootmgr which is needed for booting.
It may be useful if you posted a Disk Management picture so that we can make sure you get it right.
Bte - The image of your 20 GB will be appr. 12GB large.
Ok, here's a screenie.
Keep in mind that it’s all about learning and this machine is my learning tool.
It it runs off in the ditch or catches fire and I have to lob it off my 16th floor balcony, hey, I’ve learned something.
You have all gone above and beyond here today, so you can go home now and I hope none of you are in Buffalo.
Looks like all you have to include in the image is the C partition. It has the boot, active, and system flags.
20 GB of space occupied will result in a relatively small image file---somewhere near 10 GB, plus or minus.
That OEM partition is presumably related to factory restore and is not other wise needed. Do you have any interest in ever restoring to factory specs? Have you burned any "recovery disks" that are intended to restore to factory specs (duplicating the functionality of a recovery partititon)?
Or the OEM partition may contain tools of some type. What's the occupied space on it? OEMs can put some cuckoo stuff on OEM partitions, but it doesn't look like you need any of it. If worried, you could make a separate image of the OEM partition just in case.
The image of C would include everything on C, including Windows, installed applications, configuration info, licensing details, etc.
You need to image/restore only C. It is the active partition and contains the bootmgr. You are all set to go.
Yes as others have stated C is the partition you want to make routine images of. But I don't know what tools etc live in the OEM partition so I would have at least one image of it so if your HDD dies you can fully recover to your current state. So if you need to replace your HDD you can reimage the small OEM partition along with the important C partition.
When I entered earlier in the day, my intent was, and I guess still is, to make a set of recovery disks and an image, just for fun.
I don't believe a return to factory specs is in the cards as I have jettisoned XP and stuffed W7 in it's place.
Funny thing about the OEM partition (Help is all that pops up on right click), previously it showed just under 2GB used space and now shows 100% free. I assume a "Clean Disk" operation I did, mopped up in there. Maybe Old Files?
Anyway, I guess I'll just go through the steps; recovery (is that the same as repair?) disk, image, delete OEM or expand C into it.
Now, can recovery and image be put on a USB flash drive?
I guess not, huh, cause USB is Fat, right?
"Recovery disk"?? I assume you mean the "rescue media" as it is called in Macrium. This is what you must boot from to restore an image file. It can be a DVD burn or a USB flash drive. You walk through a Macrium menu and choose either Linux-based" DVD or WinPE based. The latter is much preferred.
I've used both DVD burns and USB flash drives for the rescue media without issues.
I've always stored images on hard drives due to reliability. USB drives are typically FAT32 and I think there is a file size limitation (4 GB??), which would mean an image of the typical C drive would be too large. Maybe you could use exFAT, which doesn't have that size limitation. Never tried it.
Hey, don't confuse me now, after all this.
You said "recovery disks" back in post 1753 and now you're asking me what I mean???
So, without wearing out a keyboard, what's the difference between recovery, repair and now rescue.
L--O--L.
You can put an image on a flash drive provided it is big enough and formatted in NTFS.Now, can recovery and image be put on a USB flash drive?
I guess not, huh, cause USB is Fat, right?
The recovery disk can also be put on a flash drive (NTFS or Fat32). That takes less than 200MBs. But it should be on a different flash drive than the image. Use Rufus to burn the recovery image to the flash drive. Here is a precooked iso I made for the recovery disk. Right click and download.
Update: Rescue and recovery are the same. Sorry for the confusion.
The terms "Recovery" and "Rescue" are often used synonymously. They're referring to the bootable media, CD/DVD or USB Drive, where the user can boot up the PC on the media and select recovery tools, such as restoring the HDD from a previously-processed Image file, or clone a Source HDD to a Target HDD.
You're getting great advice here about the topic :). I've been Imaging (and Cloning) for a while. They're great peace of mind PC tools.
Regarding Imaging partitions, I'm in agreement with mjf. Since the "factory-restore" partitions are small in comparison to the user ("C", etc) partitions, it's simpler for me to Image the complete HDD. That way, I have the entire contents for recovery if needed.
For example, my Toshiba Laptop has 2 "recovery" partitions, one is a boot partition and the other one contains the "factory restore" data, original Drivers, etc, that came with the new PC to be used if a factory-restore is needed later.
[edit] Saw whs's post after posting, explaining your question about the Recovery/Rescue terms.
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