Windows 7 - Image your system with free Macrium

I had a similar problem recently on a mates 'puter, I can't remember the error code but it was caused by a faulty HDD, I ran a full scandisk error check and then it worked, I got my image and I am hoping to install a new drive next week.
I prefer Macrium as you can explore the image and even recover individual files if you need to.

Due to the Macrium enthusiasm I thought I'd give away a trick I use. To find a simple utility that just backs up and restores your MBR is not so easy as it was in the days when you could boot off a floppy. Plus getting them to work off a USB stick can be a pain. Macrium, after you do a restore, offers to overwrite the MBR with the saved one. Unfortunately they don't offer an MBR only save/restore. But those of you who have blown the crap off that restore partition that's only a few gigs, instead of deleting it, back it up with Macrium. I have like one .txt file on mine. I do a backup and the progress bar just goes ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip! Bingo!!

So now if I just really want to restore the MBR, I restore the dummy partition and choose to overwrite the MBR.

I hope one of these days I won't need this work-around. But since I had the partition just hanging there anyway, figured I might as well get something good out of it.

If you have a System Reserved partition which contains [$RECYCLE.BIN][Boot][System Volume Information]bootmgr,BOOTSECT.BAK

You can go into disk managment & assign the partition a drive letter, it is then recognised by Macrium & you can back it up independently

I am still working (for more than 3-4 weeks) with Microsoft to get a fix for a severe failure ( 0x80070002 error ) on trying to use Win 7 backup to an external USB drive on an HP Pavillion a6600f system.

The system was upgraded from Vista home premium x64 to Win 7 professional x64. There was a bad problem when trying to backup to an external HDD(NTFS formatted) or when the system was allowed to go to sleep (loss of recognition of USB and/or Firewire connection with the 1.0 TB external HDD, and loss of connection with CD/DVD burner in sleep mode, requiring a reboot to restore it!).

Some of the sleep problem was due to incompatibility with the nVidia chipset driver on the motherboard in my system. HP had a bios update link ( MS KB976972 for x64 systems) for the MBoard that fixed the sleep/BSOD CD/DVD loss problem, but the USB backup does not seem to be able to successfully save an image of the C: drive at this time, and failure to complete is very common for other backup modes.

If you want to use Win 7 backup, try saving with an image selection and then do a restore to see if it works for you.

I can't recommend using win 7 backup until they get some of these problems fixed and released in SP1, whenever that happens. If it works for you, that is fine, but have another option as well, just in case.

Overall, I am not impressed with the stability and reliability of Win 7 for an upgrade of a less than 2 year old system, although it has some nice features that I like.

Oh god... this thread is ridiculously old! I will ask anyway!

I want to do some partitioning on my hard drive. I want to split windows with another OS.

Does the partition size have to be the same as it was before? Or can I give windows less space and it will restore fine?

From what a lot of folks have posted, whenever you start partitioning the drive containing the OS, there are no guarantees that things will continue to work correctly. I think what I would do is create a system image of your computer exactly as it is right now. I'd also create the separate system repair disk (also called a recovery disk) just in case your partitioning experiments won't allow you to boot back into Windows. You could use the built in Windows imaging tool, Macrium free or Paragon free.

Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

Free Backup Software: Paragon Backup & Recovery (Advanced) Free Edition - Overview

Once you have the means to restore your machine to its current state, I'd go ahead and experiment with resizing the partition(s). Once you've resized, and once you've determined that your computer still functions properly, I'd make another system image of this new configuration. Again, a lot of folks recommend Partition Wizard as the go-to tool for resizing.

Best Free Partition Manager Freeware for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP 32 bit & 64 bit. MiniTool Free Partition Manager Software Home Edition.

I agree with Marsmimar's comments.
However, when doing partition size alterations in particular I strongly recommend the use of the bootable version of Partition Wizard and NOT the installed MiniTool.
I have had the MiniTool crash a number of times doing major changes like partition size changes.
I use the MiniTool mainly for investigation or partition type changes.

Thanks for adding that additional info, mjf. Always good to hear about potential problems.

If you want to restore a macrium image to a smaller partition - you have to use their roborestore utility.

If you can't run roborestore from within another o/s - you need to put it on a boot disc.

Paragon and (I believe Acronis ) images can be restored to a smaller partition - but it is very laborious and takes a while.

The answer is to shrink the windows partition to a bit smaller than the partition you intend to restore it to - before making the image .

You should then be able to restore it to the smaller partition on your newly repartitioned drive.

Windows Image backup is not recommended here.

The others mentioned will be fine.

This is the absolutely best advice and the most reliable way to do it.