Is it appropriate to select all partitions on Ghost & simply leave it

whs said:

GMul said:

My laptop hard drive has three partitions:

PQService
System Reserved
C:\\

When Norton Ghost is set up to do imaging, the three partitions are shown as selectable to back up.

(Macrium presents similar to Ghost while, curiously, Win7 Backup and Restore does not give the option to select partitions).

Is it appropriate to select all partitions on Ghost and simply leave it that way?

When doing a recovery, should I recover all partitions? Or just C:\\?

Thanks, Gary

1. I would not use the Windows7 imaging. It has quasi no optiions and I have seen a lot of people having trouble with it. Plus it is not easy to use.
2. I used Norton Ghost for 2 years. That worked well after I got used to it (which took a while - LOL). But it is a good program. For Win7 you need Ghost15.
3. Macrium is my choice. it is easy to use, reliable, fast and has plenty of options (multiple partitions, scheduling, multiple images, etc.). It does not have differentials which I do not like anyhow. You lose one in the chain and you lost the whole chain.
4. Regarding your question: I do not know what your "system reserved" is. If that is the 100MB active boot partition, I would image it once only because it never changes (unless you decide for a double boot). Thus you have it "in stock".
The PQ service probably the same - though I am not sure what it is.
C: you should image as often as you feel necessary, but at least weekly. And that is the only one which needs to be recovered - unless you have to install a new disk.

whs, I think you're mistaken on the differential backup. I use differential always, and delete the previous day's every day (when I remember) after the latest backup. This according to the Macrium Help file:


Incremental
Copy only Partition/Disk sectors that have changed since the last backup.

Requires a previous backup to be present on a locally attached drive. Greatly reduces backup time and reduces backup image size. When restoring from incremental backup, you need the most recent full backup as well as EVERY incremental backup you've made since the last full backup.


Differential
Copy only Partition/Disk sectors that have changed since the last full backup.

Requires a previous backup to be present on a locally attached drive. Restoring a differential backup is a faster process than restoring an incremental backup because only two backup container files are needed: the latest full backup and the latest differential.

Obviously, this is straying from the gist of the OP's questions, but I was sort of worried when I read your statement and had to make sure that I understood. Since my restores have always gone without a hitch, I guess I should have known.

Cato, you are absolutely right. I mixed up incremental and differential. Forgive an old man who has already enough trouble operating in a foreign language half of the day. I will try to correct my posting so that nobody gets mislead. Thank you for pointing it out to me.

whs said:

Cato, you are absolutely right. I mixed up incremental and differential. Forgive an old man who has already enough trouble operating in a foreign language half of the day. I will try to correct my posting so that nobody gets mislead. Thank you for pointing it out to me.

No problem. I'm an old man, too, and if I had to converse in your language all day, I'd be SOL. The closest I could come is saying I have a German Shepherd Dog.

If you have either a Seagate or Western Digital drive, they offer a backup program free. Both are reduced versions of Acronis. I won't go into what I do because too many here have already heard it, but suffice it to say that you are not even close to paranoid - I hold that honor.