should I disconnect from web while restoring from a system image ?

Greetings:

I backed up partitions CDEFG and also a system image, to an external USB drive.

I now want to restore the system image and partitions CDEFG to a new hard drive.

Can I remain connected to the internet while doing this restore, or should I disconnect during the restore ?

Will much appreciate advice.

P.S. Are the partitions included in the system image ? Or are they separate entities ?

I use Macrium Reflect to backup (make full disc images) and have restored while connected and no problems. However, you are not "on line" while doing the restore, just "connected" via the Ethernet or possible wireless connection.

I don't disconnect my internet connections. They only matter once the system image restore completes and you reboot. Even then I'd only disconnect if I wanted to change the Windows update settings before an unwanted update download.

I use a paid version of Macrium Reflect Free for imaging (and the occasional clone) and I've never disconnected from the internet when restoring an image. With Macrium Reflect, both the paid and free versions allow you to choose to include one or more partitions in an image. I only have the System Reserved and C: partitions on the boot drive of my desktop machine and I include both of them in my images. On my single drive notebooks, I have four partitions on the drive: System Reserved, C:, Data, and the factory recovery partitions. I only image the System Reserved and C: partitions (I use another method for backing up the Data partition) except for the first image I made; I also included the factory recovery partition in that one.

Lady, do you have to pay for upgrades once a year using Macrium Reflect?

Jack

Hi Fireberd, mjf, Lady Fitzgerald:

Many thanks for your responses. Thanks for making clear that disconnecting from the web is not necessary.

As it stands I was impatient and went ahead with the restore with the puter physically disconnected from the web.. no ethernet wire, no wireless. There were no obvious problems.

I used the native Windows 7 backup utility, to create an image backup file and also specified I wanted backups of drives DEFG.

Two things may be worthy of note.

First, that while I specified backups of the image and of partitions DEFG, the restore did not restore the DEFG partitions properly. It only restored the C: partition, and part of the D partition, and did not restore any part of E, F, or G.

Second, that while I was restoring from a 1 terabyte USB drive, the restore software required a second USB drive with lots of space to write and read temporary files, which fortunately I had on hand.

Many thanks for taking time to reply to my question. Must run.

Layback Bear said:

Lady, do you have to pay for upgrades once a year using Macrium Reflect?

Jack

Yes and no. If I want the latest and greatest version, then yes, I have to pay for the upgrade. However, If I'm satisfied with the version I'm currently using, then no, I can continue to use it for as long as I like, I just won't receive anymore updates. Since updates for MR are not security related, they are not essential, especially since, after a year with the same version, any bugs will have been worked out.

Of course, the free version is just that; free. You can upgrade to the next free version every year for free; you just won't have as many features as the paid version. Most people do just fine with the free version.

boblite said:

...I used the native Windows 7 backup utility, to create an image file and also specified I wanted backups of drives DEFG.

Two things may be worthy of note.

First, that while I specified backups of the image and of partitions DEFG, the restore did not restore the DEFG partitions properly. It only restored the C: partition, and part of the D partition, and did not restore any part of E, F, or G.

Second, that while I was restoring from a 1 terabyte USB drive, the restore software required a second USB drive with lots of space to write and read temporary files.

Many thanks for taking time to reply to my question. Must run.

I've seen far more complaints about Windows native backup utility than I have for Macrium Reflect. Even the free version is far superior to Windows backup and will easily handle multiple partitions and drives.

However, I do not recommend using imaging for backing up data. Imaging is essential for backing up System files (i.e. OS and programs) but it is too time consuming and consumes too much space. Data is best backed up using a folder/file syncing program, such as FreeFileSync (the one I use) or SyncToy (another one I often see recommended). Folder/file syncing programs, when set to Mirror mode (not the same as RAID 1, btw), will compare your source drive (the drive in your computer) to your backup drive with your destination drive (your backup drive). Any folders and files on the source drive that are not on the destination drive will be copied from the source drive to the destination drives. Any files on the destination drive that are not on the source drive will be deleted from the destination drive. This will essentially give you a clone of the source drive on the destination drive without having to write all the data on the source drive to the destination drive.

Many folder/file syncing programs also have a feature called versioning (FreeFileSync is one that does). When enabled, it will send files deleted by the folder/file syncing program to a drive or folder you designate. This will protect you from losing accidentally deleted files or one that were deleted to the source file being corrupted. Depending on the setting, it will also save earlier versions of a file.

For a folder/file syncing program to be effective, one must segregate their System files from their data. Data should go on its own drives or partitions and only the OS and programs should be on the C: drive. Also, one should not use multiple data partitions to organize data on a single drive. Using multiple folders within a single partition is far more efficient.

boblite said:

Hi Lady Fitzgerald:

Thanks much for these tips. Especially

Currently my data is stored on partitions DEFG... presumably I should create these partitions on the new drive before using FreeFileSync (?) Or does FreeFileSync automatically create partitions ? (I must say I don't like backup programs that force partitions to be at least as large as the pre-existing partitions... greater flexibility would be very useful. )


Regards

Boblite

Why are you using four partitions for your data on one drive?