Windows 7 - Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup

The recovery option seen on the 7 recovery or installation disk would be able to browse to individual locations there since you are booting live from disk there.

What we had been wondering was on using the restoration option while booted in a totally new clean install of 7 to see how locating and restoring an image proceeds once the original backup information is no longer present such as the automatic reassigned drive letters and other changes seen.

What is the best/easiest zip program to use when doing a backup?

night hawk,

I think what your asking (not 100% sure) is if the restore CD will find the backup image without the copy of windows 7 present that created the backup. I believe the answer to this is yes. I only tried it twice, but I performed the backup to an external hard disk, formatted and wiped the hard disk with the windows 7 installation, and restored from external hard disk. So it would seem that the backup is independent of the OS installation. I would ask everyone to verify this for themselves though as your situation might be different.

mcleod55,

7-Zip has a great command line version of the program (not the gui) for using it with batch files to automate things.

Browsing while booted live from disk assumes there is no one location to reference since you are working fresh in a sense. The drive could emptry following a reformat or you could restoring an image if Windows simply won't start up or run long to restore the image prooperly.

The other guide there touches on what is seen following the restart when restoring an image when starting the restoration while booted in Windows there after you backup the present data. Instead of reaching the desktop the restoration tool takes over where you then apparently browse for the image.

Thanks! That's what I'm looking for. Something with not too many options.

The Windows Easy Transfer tool in 7 works pretty the same way where the gui for that tool also picks up on a restart to restore files and settings. The idea is having something independent of Windows that runs live for restoring an image of an entire drive. On the resrart the recovery tool is simply loaded into ram leaving the drive free.

OK, just to clarify. The screenie shows the only image backup I have at the present time and it's named Seven-PC. I'm getting ready to do another. Is this the folder that I need to rename? I'm sure that it is but want to make for sure.

Open that folder up and look inside. You should see a sub folder with your user account name. Inside that look for the one that says "backup" and open that one up to see a group of files similar to the image here.

Ok, then the one with the date is the one that gets renamed, correct? For me, the Image backup process is fairly quick. Seems to me that the best option would be to copy that folder and paste it elsewhere for safekeeping whilst leaving the original in place to be added to incrementally.

Windows will automatically create a new sub folder in the same Seven-PC main folder. The dates are seen on the root files in the sub folder of the sub folder if you follow that. The incremental backup will name the next folder accordingly once seeing the present one.

For backing up the backup(s) you could literally copy everything over to another partition or drive to restore later in the event of any loss. I'll probably doing that as well for the image here since that won't be incremental but the fast restore image copied onto the second storage drive for safekeeping there. Leaving the original location intact will insure the incremental backups go by without fuss.