System Image Recovery

What kind?

There are a lot - I mean a lot of posts about the image not being recognised - even when it is clearly visible to the operator. Restore is then not possible.

I suspect it happens if the location of the image appears to be in a different location - perhaps due to repartitioning, or adding another Hd, etc.

I haven't really used Windows System Image - except just quickly - apart from the reliability question - it is just not flexible enough for me.

Some people may find it does all they need. I think it's a good idea MS included it.

It seems to be there so the average Joe - who has never heard of making an image - will do so when prompted. They won't need any fancy functions - and are unlikely to start making changes to their systems that will confuse it.

I don't imagine for a second MS are trying to outdo Paragon and Acronis.

They are providing basic functionality.

Good for them.

MS also provide a very nice app. called Paint. Many will be happy with that. Anyone who takes that kind of thing seriously- or as an interest - is clearly going to use something more capable.

Hi Shawn ,

How do you get it to pick up a different Image?

Selecting Different image doesn't help here. It just shows the images you have made with it's own function.

I can't see a way to Browse to a vhd created by another app. e.g. Paragon, and restore that.

Also, how do you select a different Target to restore the image to?

I guess if you removed the original HD and put a new one in it's place - it would restore to the New one - thinking it was the old.

Also, I imaged only my second partition. Would it have restored to the second partition, or would it have restored to the HD - i.e. to the lower address spaces, overwriting the first partition?

Very unclear as to what it would do.

Thanks.

Hi Shawn ,

Thanks - Paragon is perfectly capable of restoring/extracting files from any vhd images.

Just curious if one could make Paragon vhd' s- then use the restore function of Windows Sys Img - obviously, it refuses to do that.

You can do it the other way - Paragon AR will pick up any vhd you browse to.

How do you get Win Sys Img to restore the image to a different HD?

Thanks.

That's a shame - it can't do most of the things I would want an image program to do.

There doesn't seem to be any way of just imaging a partition of choice, either.

It seems to always want to image the System and Boot partition - you can add others - but I can't see a way of doing them individually.

Thanks Shawn,

The fact you can't select which partition to image - and you can't select where to restore it to - is really limiting.

It's a good fist step from MS to include this feature, I hope they expand it's functionality. I'm having troubles like someone discribed here already. I want to make an image and put it on a different HDD, but if the new HDD is smaller then the original it won't work.

I don't want to make it smaller en create a new image etc. Trying a 3th party program for this.