System Imaging Tool W7

I use the free Acronis from Western Digital and Seagate, and free Macrium.

Never had any problems with any of them.

At present, I'm only using Acronis. I have successfully made/restored by using it within Windows and I know it works in using boot from disk method. Restore time is approx 5 minutes. I also keep a minimum of 3 images for each PC.
Thanks.

If you have room on your back up hard drive as I do then use Windows System Image and Backup and free Macrium.
I have reimaged my C/ Win 7 OS twice with Windows Sytem Image and Backup. Did it just yesterday. They do work.
I also have the Macrium if Windows Image doesn't work.
If you have the space available you might as well use some of it.

Acronis seems to be good by all that use it. I haven't tried it myself. It would also be a good choice in place of Macrium.

Mike

Hopalong, If you have space why not use both Acronis free as well as Macrium? I learned the hard way, you can't have too many backups.

One thing you must do is test the restore from the boot CD. I tried Macrium Free and the linux restore CD was a bit iffy at locating my backup drive. For this reason I dumped it and have gone back to windows imaging.

essenbe said:

Hopalong, If you have space why not use both Acronis free as well as Macrium? I learned the hard way, you can't have too many backups.

I see no reason not to.

I just figured two should be sufficient.

Plus I have multiple images to re image from. Keeping one of each is never sufficient.

Mike

In the past, I tried Macrium & Paragon, I found them unreliable same for latest build of Acronis 2011. As for Windows built in effort, tried once or twice when on Vista Home Prem, did'ny like it so never used on W7.

mjf said:

As I said earlier I use Windows & Macrium. I reimage all the time with Windows. I reimaged again last night after installing NIS2011 to check NIS2011 reimaged ok - certainly did.
This thread is the first time I've seen a negative Macrium comment - interesting.
Macrium linux rescue disk hasn't ever been a problem for me but I know the Macrium pe function on the Hirens (12, 13) boot CD works (works under Hiren's mini XP environment). This is equivalent to the Bartpe capability.

Acronis and Windows could be a useful combination since Acronis will find & restore the Windows image vhds !!!! Great capability since Windows sometimes screws up it's own image auto locate capability.

That's interesting. Mine is the other way round. Windows restore always finds my backup disk and Macrium only sometimes. I am using a 1TB Iomega USB connected disk. With the linux recovery CD it always reads the disk (flashing light) when it is building it's selections but only sometimes displays it.