Recovery Partition and Repair Reinstallation

whs said:

I make a daily image of my system and data partitions at boot-up. I have set Macrium to do that automatically. It takes only 9 minutes from my SSD to the internal HDD. Every Sunday, I copy the Sunday image to an on-line external disk into a "weekly folder". Every first of the month I also copy the last image to an external disk "monthly folder" that usually stays off-line. That way I have a whole history all the way back to the initial installation.
In addition I have two 16GB sticks to which I copy my data every 3 months and put it into my bank safe. 3 months later I retrieve the first stick and deposit the latest data copy on the second stick, and so on.

I guess that's why you're a "Gold Member"...

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that. But, I was also making a little joke about the extent to which whs goes to backup his data. I assume it's ok to poke a little fun at people on here... :)

buggaby said:

Thanks for the link. I didn't know that. But, I was also making a little joke about the extent to which whs goes to backup his data. I assume it's ok to poke a little fun at people on here... :)

Better be safe than sorry. And for the 5 minutes it takes me per week I can sleep quietly. Last time I reinstalled (a 3 year old Vista which was all buggy), it took me 3 days until I fought my way thru the 400 updates, all the program installations and system and program settings. No need to do that more frequently.

Hi whs,

You might want to give this a whirl How to use DiskRestore to restore a disk image

Thanks SIW2. Another to do - LOL. It may come in handy when I transfer Vista to my 80GB Intel SSD on one of my laptops when I am back in Germany. Although I have to find out whether it can move a 150GB partition to an 80GB disk. If not, I'll just use Ghost Copy. That can adjust to size.

To restore macrium image to a smaller drive, use Roborestore - it does a file level restore and recreates the hard links and updates bcd .

64bit Download

32 bit Download

You can run it from within WiPe as well.

It does take quite a while - maybe 4 times as long as normal macrium restore.

There is a much, much easier way:

I assume you have a lot less than 80gb data on your 150gb drive?

Use Disk Management to shrink the 150gb drive to just under the size of the 80gb disk ( 75gb will do ).

Then make a macrium image.

Use Disk Management to extend the 150 gb drive out again .

The macrium image will now restore to the 80gb drive in the normal way.

[ If Disk Management won't allow that much shrink - then use Partition Wizard or Paragon to shrink it. I have done it plenty of times without the slightest problem. You have a backup image anyway. ]

Sounds like a good idea. Let me study it - I still have 4 weeks. And thanks again.

You'll have to watch the alignment restoring to an SD - I don't think Ghost would get it right.

You might want to run Paragon Alignment tool after restoring . I just realigned all my o/s partitions with it.

SIW2 said:

You'll have to watch the alignment restoring to an SD - I don't think Ghost would get it right.

You might want to run Paragon Alignment tool after restoring . I just realigned all my o/s partitions with it.

I know. That's no problem. I will align and quick format the partition before I transfer the system. But thanks of reminding me.

For anybody reading the thread, here is how you do the alignment:

1. diskpart (in cmd)
2. list disk
3. select disk X (being the SSD)
4. clean
5. create partition primary align 128
6. active
7. exit