Imaging strategies

[kado897]

As you say. You can never have too many backups and Macrium does make it painless.

 

[whs]

hey, nice article. with computers, nothing is written in stone and each of us has their own way of getting things done. but this article gives the basics of save, save, save which we all need to do. i have been using macrium free with a win pe rescue disc and they work great together. and i have almost exactly the set-up you portray. ssd main drive with two partitions, operating system and stuff. 2nd internal hdd, two partitions, operating system and stuff. and an external ter hdd set the same way. everything is simple and easy to image and restore. thanks again for the nice article.

You are welcome. As you say, this is one way of doing things - but there are many other valid approaches. The main thing is that one backs up at all. Unfortunately the majority of PC users do not do that. They operate a PC like a washing machine.

 

[wanchoo]

Quite true. They do so even after any number of lessons.

hey, nice article. with computers, nothing is written in stone and each of us has their own way of getting things done. but this article gives the basics of save, save, save which we all need to do. i have been using macrium free with a win pe rescue disc and they work great together. and i have almost exactly the set-up you portray. ssd main drive with two partitions, operating system and stuff. 2nd internal hdd, two partitions, operating system and stuff. and an external ter hdd set the same way. everything is simple and easy to image and restore. thanks again for the nice article.

You are welcome. As you say, this is one way of doing things - but there are many other valid approaches. The main thing is that one backs up at all. Unfortunately the majority of PC users do not do that. They operate a PC like a washing machine.

 

[rwmol]

Is it possible to create an image from a laptop through a wireless router to a slave drive on a desktop?

 

[whs]

If you can access that drive from the laptop, e.g. as a shared drive, it should be possible. But given the amount of data an image has, it might be very slow. You will, however, not be able to recover from that image. The WinPE recovery disc does not have that kind of facilities.

If that does not work, make an image to a folder in a seperate partition of the laptop and move that image to the outboard drive. But here again, for the recovery that drive must be physically attached to the laptop.

 

[cyrilhubert]

Quite true. They do so even after any number of lessons.

hey, nice article. with computers, nothing is written in stone and each of us has their own way of getting things done. but this article gives the basics of save, save, save which we all need to do. i have been using macrium free with a win pe rescue disc and they work great together. and i have almost exactly the set-up you portray. ssd main drive with two partitions, operating system and stuff. 2nd internal hdd, two partitions, operating system and stuff. and an external ter hdd set the same way. everything is simple and easy to image and restore. thanks again for the nice article.

You are welcome. As you say, this is one way of doing things - but there are many other valid approaches. The main thing is that one backs up at all. Unfortunately the majority of PC users do not do that. They operate a PC like a washing machine.

Thank you whs and wanchoo for the reminders. Many don't backup regularly until trouble strikes due to:
a.backing up costs $$$$$ as you need to buy CDs, DVDs, USB flash drives, HDDs and other media.
b.time is needed as the info bloated when we saved all kinds of info and needed to delete or filter all those we deemed useless.

We fly the plane until it drops out of the sky. That's why!
Then we remember backup!backup!backup!backup!backup! as always appeared in PC magazines.

 

[Fejinwales]

Really good advice, thanks. I have a regime which incorporates some of the ideas you have put forward.

For a long time I've been making images to protect myself. I used to use Drive Image a long time ago, I learnt through experience how frustrating it could be when you have to re-install everything. Putting back the OS and configuring that is not too bad but the configuration, and installation of all the remaining software over and over again is a pain. Especially for me because I am really fussy! I do make life a little easier by saving the setting files for some of the programmes as I rarely, if ever change the settings once done.

In Vista I switched to Acronis TrueImage, it never let me down and although not as fast as Drive Image used to be it was still a lot faster and lighter than Norton Ghost. I turn off the Windows Restore as soon as it is installed and now since Windows 7 I have had to upgrade to the new version of Acronis as the old version did not support Windows 7. One thing though, on my PC now this new version makes and validates a backup of my SSD in around 2 minutes while a restore of the 100MB and MBR and OS take 3 to 4 minutes. I always include the 100MB partition in my images.

My partitions are created as follows: (initially saved to my secondary internal drive and then moved to externals)

First I make 3 'fall back' images and keep them on external drives only
1 - Installation of Windows with no alterations or configuration
2 - Then with the installation of the drivers for the hardware
3 - Then with all the settings and configurations done and all Internet, Email and VPN set up.

Now I make Three more images:

4 - All my software installed and I restore those to my preferred with my settings files (moved to external Drives only).
5 - Then with all the settings and configuration done for the remainder of software including firewall access. (moved to external Drives only).
6 - The same as above but cleaned and optimized with TuneUp Utilities. (saved to internal secondary HDD and copied to externals)

Really, it is only the last image I usually ever need to access and this one I update incrementally each month.
But I keep the others just in case I ever need to go back that far, and sometimes I have needed to.

Every Year in January I make a new 'full' image and do a monthly incremental update and then delete all the previous incrementals for the old year backup and I name the new image for the year, so for this year its "2013_full_b1_s1_v1".
After a few months of stability I will delete the old full backup from the previous year which this one replaces.

I store only the last full and its corresponding incremental images on my internal D: drive as it is the most likely image I will ever need to restore.

The previous 5 are saved on two external drives, one desktop 2TB drive and a portable USB 3 drive which is only ever used for this purpose and plugged in only when needed. So far I have never needed to access an image on this drive.

I know it seems a lot but really, after the initial 5 are made the rest is a simple once-a-month process. As far as I am concerned it is time well spent.

 

[kado897]

Hi Fejinwales glad we could be of help.

The only minor issue I would have is the 12 months incremental chain which can easily become broken. Far better to use differentials if possible or even, with the backup speeds you have, to do full images each month.

 

[Fejinwales]

@Kado897. I never knew they could get broken but to be honest I have considered doing new full ones each month though never really decided to actually go ahead and do it. I am unsure about the differenced between differentials and incrementals which is why I just opted for one without consideration.

I agree completely, I have just made a new full image to see how long it took, just over 2 minutes including validation. Your suggestion is now my norm. Thanks.

I will now do a bit of a clean, make sure all updates are done and on October 1 will make a new backup and change my routine.

 

[kado897]

Differentials are identical to the first incremental. They only need the last differential and the base image to restore. Naturally this means that differentials get larger with time but because there are only ever two files involved they are more robust than incrementals.

 

[Fejinwales]

Ahhh. well without a doubt this would have been far the better option all this time. I was always a little concerned at the build up of the eleven extra files each years worth of backups, this was why I began keeping them in three different places, one of which was never used for anything else. Now of course I understand that I was worried about them being broken although that was a term I had never come across regarding this subject before.

I think you are right though, the time in which I can make an image is comparable to those I used to make of my Windows 98 and XP down in DOS with Drive Image, around 2 minutes so I might as well make full ones. and I've decided to do them once every three months because I do not like change, and my system rarely changes enough to warrant a full backup every month while incrementals sometimes did.

I use GoodSync for all my user files (from my D to the two externals) so that is already sorted.

Your advice and insight has been invaluable, thanks. I've rep'd you for being so helpful.

 

[kado897]

The advantage of doing a monthly image is that it ties in with Windows update.

 

[LittleJay]

The advantage of doing a monthly image is that it ties in with Windows update.

I totally agree. I do new images right after any updates, or new software installations.

 

[Fejinwales]

Good point. But I only update my OS rarely, perhaps once each quarter.

 

[whs]

I really see no advantage of doing differentials or incrementals. Disk space is cheap and the imaging can run in the background - thus not using any real time.

Full images are safe and are much easier to manage. I now make a full image of my system partition about twice per week and of the data partition when needed.

 

[synth]

Hi, I have just read whs' initial post on this thread and it is very informative, but I just have a few questions.

Just a little background information, I'm a young IT Professional who's working for a company that is not so big but can't really be considered as a "Small and Medium Enterprise". I have just recently started my employment with this company as an IT Support/IT Assistant. Our department consists of merely 4 employees including myself. One is the Systems Administrator and the other one is the Assistant Systems Administrator and then two IT Assistant's, again, myself included. We mostly refer to our Sys Ad as the most senior in our department, he is also mostly the one responsible for our company's networking with a little help from the Assistant Sys Ad. As for the other IT Assistant and I, we mostly focus on the on-site support for our users. We mostly deal with day to day troubleshooting and other daily tasks.

Anyway, since I started working for this company, I can't help but notice that some of their methodologies and/or strategies can still be improved to lessen our work load specially on busy and hectic days. One of the things I noticed that takes a lot of our time is when a workstation encounters problems and eventually needs a new hard drive or is need of a clean install. What they we/they normally do is reformat and reinstall everything via DVD, which I do find very tedious and time consuming mainly because you still need to change DVDs when installing board drivers, video drivers, and other applications. Although we do have some of the software installers tucked in one of our data servers but still, you have to copy them to the local drive and still install them and wait for them to finish.

Now, I do know for a fact that this can be done since I have tried it and witnessed it. I have worked on two bigger companies as an IT Support Intern that had way more computers and a much larger IT Department and what they used to do there instead of reformatting and reinstalling every single software and/or drivers, they both used images of one computer from a certain department and stored it on their servers and they just pulled it up whenever a computer needs a clean wipe instead of doing all of it manually. The only problem is I do not have the specific knowledge nor experience to handle a project this big and this is why I'm here in hopes of some of you experienced IT Professionals can help and give me some advice regarding this matter.

I also have a couple of questions on my mind about how all this imaging thing works, and here they are:

a. First of all, when imaging, what exactly does happen to the OS's Serial Number/Product Key? Will we get any problems if we just image one computer with a different serial and then restore that image on another computer? We mostly use Windows 7 Professional and Windows XP Professional, but we have more Win 7 Pro PC's than Win XP.

b. In an office environment, where would be the best place to store them that would be easy enough for us to access, a server perhaps? or an external drive? What are it's pros and cons

c. We use custom built computers that mostly have different hardware, meaning, different hardware. It means if we might have more than 3 images for certain PC builds, with this being said, would my idea of imaging systems would still be a good idea or would it be more of an hassle for me and my colleagues?

d. Lastly, since we do use custom built PC's with mostly different hardware, and if you think that this idea would just provide more headache and hassle could you recommend other ways in where I can pursue this basic idea?

That would be my questions for now and I would certainly follow up when I do think of other questions. Thank you so much in advance.

- Synth

 

[whs]

I think you are right. The way they are doing it is antiquated. Imaging is the way to go.

For your company you need the Macrium Pro version. But that should not be a problem. For prices see here:

http://www.macrium.com/business.aspx

a) You would use the 'Server Redeploy' function for that - see here:

http://www.macrium.com/pages/features.aspx

Not sure though whether you have to put the product key in again. I don't have that setup and never used that function.

b) You can use either one. Whatever is easiest to access.

c) In Macrium, the imaging can be scheduled. No manual intervention would be required. The images will be made at the day and time you specify - provided the system is running.

d) This can easily be done with the Redeploy function.

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50144.aspx

 

[synth]

Thanks for this!!

I shall read more about Macrium then and prolly pitch the idea to one of my seniors.

Btw, just one more thing, about the serials again? How would that work exactly? I mean would there be issues with that?

 

[whs]

I don't think there would be an issue as long as you have the product key. But as I said, the detailed mechanism I don't know. Why don't you send a mail to Macrium and ask.

 

[synth]

Will do! Will read more and ask questions about it! Thank yo so much for this!