Windows 7 - System Image Recovery

Mo,

I must admit that I'm not sure why it did not restore everything that you had when the system image was created. Everytime I have done a system recovery, it has always restored everything as it was when my system image backup was created.

I was hasty. The test I made of using dictation by speech recognition, was poor and the training was the same as when I first did the training, but now I find that there are no new training sections in speech recognition. So the system image might have restored properly with the desktop anomalies being insignificant.

Sorry about the bad call. I will try again to restore after considerable experience with speech recognition. And I could compare the Speech files, too.
Mo

Ok. No problem Mo. Please let us know how it turns out.

I built a new system yesterday, and loaded it up with a Patriot SSD for the OS and a Hitachi HDD for storage. I was told to do the firmware upgrades prior to installing the windows 7 on the SSD. After doing so, I could make an image of the OS, and then restore it onto the newly formatted SSD. I haven't quite figured out how to do that though, although I've been told that it's possible, and not that difficult (for someone who is completed computer savvy of course).

So, here is my current status. I created a disk image using the Windows 7 utility, and saved it out to my SSD. I guess I could have created a partition on the HDD, and saved it out there, but I wasn't quite sure how all of this is going to work. Now, when I choose to restore my system, i essentially want to pick the SSD, but it doesn't appear that I have that option. I don't really have any options at all, it just picks the original drive. Is there any way to easily get all of my system files over onto the SSD without reinstalling?

Use this:

Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

or this:

Free Backup Software: Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition - Overview

They allow you to choose which patition(s) to image, where to store the image, and where to restore it to.

Ok, downloaded the first one, created the disk image, tried to restore it to my SSD but the next button is grayed out whenever I select that partition. However if I select my larger disk drive, the next button becomes active again. Should be plenty of room on the SSD, 64gb free, and the image is 25gb. Any ideas?

Move the Macrium image to the HD, make sure the partition on the SSD is at least as large as the partition you made the image of.

Should restore fine from there.

You can't restore an image to the same partition the image itself is on - it would be writing over itself.

Yep, that was the case, I actually was doing some reading on the Macrium site, and it said that if you encounter this issue, to use the RoboRestore utility to restore to a smaller drive. Fired that thing up, copyied the files over to the new drive, disabled the HDD drive in the bios, and voila, it booted up on the SSD drive.

Now for my last task, since the machine will not boot with both drives enabled, what's the easiest way to format the disabled drive, boot into some kind of command mode or something?

Yes, you could use boot to the command prompt on the 7 dvd and use Diskpart.

I would suggest you use PW free boot disc - much easier to use interface and lots of functions:

Partition Wizard Bootable CD allows user to boot computer directly to manage partition.


What build of roborestore did you use - 1.06?

I didn't even look at the version, I just downloaded the one from this blog.

Macrium Reflect - Blogs and News

Even though the HDD was disabled in the bios, somehow Windows 7 still recognized that there was a drive there in the disk management tools, although it was giving me an error about having the same signature as another drive that was online. I just right clicked on Offline, and set it to online, and it cleaned itself up somehow. I was able to format it from there, and all is good to go!

By the way, these SSD drives are nice, everything is lightning quick. Glad I spent a few extra bones, hopefully it lasts