Drive Imaging Rescue CD problems

Hi, I'm in need of some advice please.

I've been looking for an alternative backup and recovery program to the one built into Windows 7, so far without success.

I've tried Paragon Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition and the latest Macrium Reflect Free Edition but my PC won't successfully load either of their recovery CD's.
With Paragon, I can get to the first options screen but none of the options offered will load for me.
With Macrium I've had no success with either the standard or the Compatibility Mode versions of the rescue CD.

I'm reluctant to buy a commercial alternative such as Acronis True Image Home 2010 in case I have the same issues. I know I can trial Acronis free of charge but I've read that it embeds itself deeply into the OS and there may be issues if I have to uninstall it. Also of course, free would be better.

All I really need is reliable full disk and individual partition imaging and recovery, but speed, image compression and the ability to perform differential backups would be good.

I've read that creation of a BartPE disk is a possible option but I'm unsure whether I would be able to do this, or even if it would solve my problem.

Any advice appreciated................what would you suggest?

This doesn't really answer your question but you may find this interesting:
Backup and recovery strategies for IT pros

Sope said:

I'm reluctant to buy a commercial alternative such as Acronis True Image Home 2010 in case I have the same issues. I know I can trial Acronis free of charge but I've read that it embeds itself deeply into the OS and there may be issues if I have to uninstall it.

Hi Sope, in case you will have any troubles uninstalling Acronis trial version - use the special Clean Up Utility. Description, instructions and download link can be found here: Acronis True Image Home 2010 Clean Up Utility

Hope you'll give Acronis a chance ;)

Thanks everyone for the replies.......wow, there's a variety of different things to look at there!

I've actually been using Acronis True image 9.0 with my XP setup for a long time now and have been happy with it. I think I'll probably give the latest version a try out now I know there's a dedicated uninstall tool available for use if necessary.

I suspect that in the event of needing to recover my system from an image I may find it a bit too taxing/stressful trying to handle it from the command line! I would certainly be more comfortable with a GUI.

I may still invest some time researching the BartPE approach further.
Also I'm still interested to know if anyone else has had the same difficulties as me, and if so, how you overcame them?

Cheers.

Sope,
I really don't understand why you don't want to use Win 7's Backup and Restore but that's your call.

Even Vista's Backup & Restore was problematic but the Backup & Restore in Win 7 is excellent! Furthermore since the Backup produces a VHD file, then you can "mount" the VHD (see Dsikmgmt.msc) and view and extract any number of files you want from there. In other words, you don't have to do a full restore just to recover a couple of files.

Take a look at Disk2VHD from the SysInternals folk, Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

karlsnooks said:

Sope,
I really don't understand why you don't want to use Win 7's Backup and Restore but that's your call.

I originally thought Win 7's Backup and Restore feature would be enough for my needs but I've read that it can be problematic in the event you need to restore just one partition, whereby it would use the whole HDD, potentially writing over any other partitions that you may want left untouched. Please correct me if I'm confused on this point?

My HDD is set up like so :-


All I really need, is to be able to backup and restore the whole disk or individual partitions as necessary. Ease of use and reliability are important.
I have had a play with Win 7's backup with regard to mounting images and retrieving individual files but I'm uncertain of it's capabilities when it comes to recovering whole partitions.

Sope,

Due to the behaviour of Backup and Restore in earlier versions, I thoroughly tested the Win 7 version thereof. I am very pleased and satisfied. Yes, I did the full restore, I did the data restore, I extracted files from the vhd. Tried out all of the features.

My experience has been that Win 7 Backup and Restore is rock solid. I have stopped using all other products for backing up and restoring. There are so many features of Win7 that work for the first time with MS. Win7 rocks.

Ive been using Acronis 2010 with 7x64 and couldnt be happier.
But everyone has thier own preferences.

If you initiate a restore from Windows will it work then? Should activate the loader to resume restore at boot.


AS far as not being able to boot from the Rescue CD:

Do you have you bios switched to AHCI mode?

Some boards, will always boot the OS first, regrdless of whether you set it to boot from CD 1st or not.
If you board is one like this, you just need to switch back to IDE Mode, Boot from the disc & do the restore. Shutdown and switch backk to AHCI Mode.