System Image Backup Strategies/Thoughts

[Victor S]

I guess that like all other electronic equipment it gradually degrades until something goes wrong with the hardware. I would have thought that a mechanical component such as the disk drive would go first.

Maybe. My own experience has been MB's failing. Two.
And unless you replace it with an identical MB, your normal images are worth dirt.
By the time they fail, you're almost certainly due for an upgrade, yours can't be found new any more, and you might not want to go on eBay to buy an identical one. That's why I do the occasional sysprepped image.

 

[kado897]

I've never done a sysprepped image. Perhaps I should.

 

[Brds7t7]

Me neither, I wouldn't even know how to! :roflmao:

 

[kado897]

There is a tutorial. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

 

[Brds7t7]

Thanks for that Kado, I'll take a proper look at that later. Doesn't seem too painful, I was expecting there to be a lot of commands involved.

 

[Victor S]

There is a tutorial. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

That's how I found this forum, and the process that I used.
Might be overkill to keep a system image that can be used on a different computer, but I REALLY HATE REINSTALLING.
I don't recommend or discourage making a sysprepped image. Just depends on what level of insurance you want. Since I always restore before making a new image, restoring is second nature, and it goes like this, all restores and imaging done cold from the Ghost recovery CD, similar to the Win 7 recovery CD:
1. Restore my last image and boot to Win 7.
2. Update what I want updated for the new Win 7 image.
3. Shut down and make new "normal" image.
4. Boot to Win 7 and run sysprep with shutdown option.
5. Make image of sysprepped Win 7.
6. Restore "normal" Win 7 image.

Steps 4, 5,and 6 are added costs for doing the sysprep. Since an image or restore takes about 4 minutes (~20gb) and I always make 2 images to different HD's, it costs me about 15-20 minutes total, counting booting and running sysprep. Sysprep runs in a minute or two on my PC, but I never timed it exactly.
There's a small learning curve, but it's all in the tutorial.
For example I had to turn off network services before running sysprep successfully.
And I had a second PC with different MB to test the sysprepped image.
I don't recommend it unless you're comfortable restoring your image, because you're stripping drivers from the Win 7 on your HD.
There are alternatives, like cloning your Win 7 to a different HD, then sysprepping
that drive and imaging it, etc, etc. I just keep it simple by using the method I outlined.

 

[Brds7t7]

There is a tutorial. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/135077-windows-7-installation-transfer-new-computer.html

That's how I found this forum, and the process that I used.
Might be overkill to keep a system image that can be used on a different computer, but I REALLY HATE REINSTALLING.
I don't recommend or discourage making a sysprepped image. Just depends on what level of insurance you want. Since I always restore before making a new image, restoring is second nature, and it goes like this, all restores and imaging done cold from the Ghost recovery CD, similar to the Win 7 recovery CD:
1. Restore my last image and boot to Win 7.
2. Update what I want updated for the new Win 7 image.
3. Shut down and make new "normal" image.
4. Boot to Win 7 and run sysprep with shutdown option.
5. Make image of sysprepped Win 7.
6. Restore "normal" Win 7 image.

Steps 4, 5,and 6 are added costs for doing the sysprep. Since an image or restore takes about 4 minutes (~20gb) and I always make 2 images to different HD's, it costs me about 15-20 minutes total, counting booting and running sysprep. Sysprep runs in a minute or two on my PC, but I never timed it exactly.
There's a small learning curve, but it's all in the tutorial.
For example I had to turn off network services before running sysprep successfully.
And I had a second PC with different MB to test the sysprepped image.
I don't recommend it unless you're comfortable restoring your image, because you're stripping drivers from the Win 7 on your HD.
There are alternatives, like cloning your Win 7 to a different HD, then sysprepping
that drive and imaging it, etc, etc. I just keep it simple by using the method I outlined.

How big are your Sysprepped images usually then Victor? I'm getting a bit low on space lately and going to have to add another external HDD soon. Worth it though.

 

[F5ing]

The company I worked for before I retired had a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy which involved several teams and I was a member of one of them. One of the things we had to do was a complete recovery of our IT systems from bare metal once per year using an offsite facility. We had to assume that the head office which contained our IT systems had been destroyed in an accidental or terrorist related event.

I was in the chemical/refining manufacturing business and involved from time to time in a similar situation. We didn't have offsite facilities which we could use to restore plant control networks. Instead we had hot running spares of all critical equipment where we could test.

The control networks were always air-gapped from the standard business network for obvious reasons and I wasn't involved with that side. But I was well aware of the machinations they went through as well.

Guess that's part of why I'm always re-analyzing my own strategy.

 

[kado897]

The company I worked for before I retired had a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy which involved several teams and I was a member of one of them. One of the things we had to do was a complete recovery of our IT systems from bare metal once per year using an offsite facility. We had to assume that the head office which contained our IT systems had been destroyed in an accidental or terrorist related event.

I was in the chemical/refining manufacturing business and involved from time to time in a similar situation. We didn't have offsite facilities which we could use to restore plant control networks. Instead we had hot running spares of all critical equipment where we could test.

The control networks were always air-gapped from the standard business network for obvious reasons and I wasn't involved with that side. But I was well aware of the machinations they went through as well.

Guess that's part of why I'm always re-analyzing my own strategy.

It does tend to stick with you.

 

[Victor S]

How big are your Sysprepped images usually then Victor? I'm getting a bit low on space lately and going to have to add another external HDD soon. Worth it though.

I can't tell, because I wasn't paying attention to size when I did it, but looking now at what I have the sysprepped image is about 2gb smaller than the closest image timewise. But I've deleted the "normal" images done close to that time, about 6 weeks ago. I have 5 "normal" images since then, so I was relatively busy with images.
I'm going to do another sysprepped image next time I restore, and I'll look for the actual size difference.
I expect it to be only some mb smaller, since it's only removing drivers. So that 2gb diff isn't right.
My images range from 17-21gb each, and I see I now have 14.
Only really need maybe 5, because only once have I used anything but the most recent.
But I always want to keep one a few months old - just in case there's a time bomb in there.

 

[Victor S]

The company I worked for before I retired had a comprehensive disaster recovery strategy which involved several teams and I was a member of one of them. One of the things we had to do was a complete recovery of our IT systems from bare metal once per year using an offsite facility. We had to assume that the head office which contained our IT systems had been destroyed in an accidental or terrorist related event.

I was in the chemical/refining manufacturing business and involved from time to time in a similar situation. We didn't have offsite facilities which we could use to restore plant control networks. Instead we had hot running spares of all critical equipment where we could test.

The control networks were always air-gapped from the standard business network for obvious reasons and I wasn't involved with that side. But I was well aware of the machinations they went through as well.

Guess that's part of why I'm always re-analyzing my own strategy.

It does tend to stick with you.

I try to forget, but that doesn't work. I was at the offsite operation twice, one a very long weekend. IME they never go smoothly, mostly because of different hardware. (Sysprep anyone?) This was all mainframe, and getting the OS and data management up always led to long delays. In the end though, even if all apps didn't get running properly, there was always enough up and running to call it a "success."
hehe.

 

[F5ing]

It does tend to stick with you.

I try to forget, but that doesn't work.

When you've seen how others have experienced data loss, and you already know how fragile the hardware and software is, it really becomes impossible to disregard.

In the end though, even if all apps didn't get running properly, there was always enough up and running to call it a "success."
hehe.

One would hope they know when to call it "quits". If they actually experience a disaster and they're willing to live with the extra work they know it'll take to do the complete recovery, I guess you have to leave it up to them to live with any consequences.

I think my problem is I strive for perfection, even though I know I could easily manage otherwise if disaster actually hit.

Very good thread! Many readers (including myself) can derive some benefit from it.

 

[kado897]

I was in the chemical/refining manufacturing business and involved from time to time in a similar situation. We didn't have offsite facilities which we could use to restore plant control networks. Instead we had hot running spares of all critical equipment where we could test.

The control networks were always air-gapped from the standard business network for obvious reasons and I wasn't involved with that side. But I was well aware of the machinations they went through as well.

Guess that's part of why I'm always re-analyzing my own strategy.

It does tend to stick with you.

I try to forget, but that doesn't work. I was at the offsite operation twice, one a very long weekend. IME they never go smoothly, mostly because of different hardware. (Sysprep anyone?) This was all mainframe, and getting the OS and data management up always led to long delays. In the end though, even if all apps didn't get running properly, there was always enough up and running to call it a "success."
hehe.

That's interesting. I never had that problem, probably because all our systems were hosted on IBM's VM hypervisor. The manager of the recovery facility said that VM users often had fewer problems than those who used IBM's native OS MVS or VSE.

 

[Victor S]

That's interesting. I never had that problem, probably because all our systems were hosted on IBM's VM hypervisor. The manager of the recovery facility said that VM users often had fewer problems than those who used IBM's native OS MVS or VSE.

I was on the application end, and paid little attention to the IBM model or OS version after the 370, but I doubt the recoveries I participated in were VM sessions. More likely the problems were natural to such a massive task, because it was a very large company with many interfacing applications. I specifically remember unexpectedly being called into one (they normally only used staff, and I was a contractor) when essential VSAM files couldn't be loaded. It's cloudy now, but it may have been the define clusters were erroring. After some time I managed to load them with a workaround, but there was obviously a difference in the off-site OS VSAM parameters that didn't exist at the home office OS. It may or may not have related to the disk drives used off-site. Really not much different from some problems you see on this forum.
To F5ing, "knowing when to quit" is exactly right.
Large company disaster recovery exercises are very expensive, and take a toll on staff, subtracting a weekend from their lives. I saw one where some staff were still off-site on Monday, and that affects the work week business operations.
I do believe that those I mentioned can be called "successful" because what didn't work was identified, and a solution for the future found and locked in.
Realistically, those in charge of disaster recovery have no illusions about it, and give upper management a sober assessment of how long it will take to get the enterprise up and running again - barring what Murphy has to say about it.

 

[boyboyds]

Hi,

I have another question - I am about to move my pictures to drive D, but I still want to have a shortcut to my pictures on my desktop. When I image my drive C using Macrium, will it pull in my pictures.....?

You understand that my objective here is not to pull my pictures in while imaging drive C.

Thanks,
BBDS

 

[F5ing]

I'm not sure about Macrium, but imaging/cloning apps typically will copy/image/clone only the data within a partition/disk. They will copy the shortcuts, links, etc. if they are in the partition/disk, but will not follow them to also copy the data they link to.

Sounds like you're really catching on, as that's pretty much the idea. You want access to the data for normal use regardless of where it's located, so you link it or add it to a library for ease of access.

 

[boyboyds]

I'm not sure about Macrium, but imaging/cloning apps typically will copy/image/clone only the data within a partition/disk. They will copy the shortcuts, links, etc. if they are in the partition/disk, but will not follow them to also copy the data they link to.

This is a good news.

Thanks,
BBDS

 

[F5ing]

You're welcome! Good luck with setting up your new strategy. You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

 

[kado897]

I'm not sure about Macrium, but imaging/cloning apps typically will copy/image/clone only the data within a partition/disk. They will copy the shortcuts, links, etc. if they are in the partition/disk, but will not follow them to also copy the data they link to.

Sounds like you're really catching on, as that's pretty much the idea. You want access to the data for normal use regardless of where it's located, so you link it or add it to a library for ease of access.

I agree with FSing. Macrium will not follow the link.

 

[boyboyds]

One more question, if this is not too much....

I created a repair/boot cd for my W7, but is there any easy way to do the same for XP....?

Thanks,
BBDS.