Drive image question!

[Alsenor]

Years ago I used a little IBM app that put a complete drive image on a floppy, and took less than half an hour to transfer. It had to be an IBM drive though.
When I try to make a drive image nowadays the proggie usually tells me it can only do it to a drive of at least equal size.
Can one not make an image of a partition only, and restore it to a partition of equal size?

 

[zigzag3143]

Years ago I used a little IBM app that put a complete drive image on a floppy, and took less than half an hour to transfer. It had to be an IBM drive though.
When I try to make a drive image nowadays the proggie usually tells me it can only do it to a drive of at least equal size.
Can one not make an image of a partition only, and restore it to a partition of equal size?

You can but not with the built in tools. You need something like Acronis true home, or paragon disk suite.


I use Acronis for all my imaging. I back up OS partition only and have restored it several times.

A complete restore takes about 20 mins for 80 gigs

Ken

 

[Alsenor]

Years ago I used a little IBM app that put a complete drive image on a floppy, and took less than half an hour to transfer. It had to be an IBM drive though.
When I try to make a drive image nowadays the proggie usually tells me it can only do it to a drive of at least equal size.
Can one not make an image of a partition only, and restore it to a partition of equal size?

You can but not with the built in tools. You need something like Acronis true home, or paragon disk suite.


I use Acronis for all my imaging. I back up OS partition only and have restored it several times.

A complete restore takes about 20 mins for 80 gigs

Ken

I have Acronis, and would like to try that. But I would rather make a partition with OS plus all installed apps on one partition, and make an image of that. That should save the trouble of re-installing all applications after a restore, shouldn't it?

 

[Ztruker]

Yes, that will work. It's what I do. What version of Acronis do you have?

 

[DeaconFrost]

You shouldn't need to have target drive the same size, unless you are cloning (even then it wouldn't have to be the same size, but size is a consideration). If you were simply creating a drive image, it would be compressed, and you'd only need to have room for the image file, which in Acronis should be a .tib file.

 

[SledgeDG]

That's exactly what I did: Install W7, set it up the way I wanted, installed and configured all programs I deemed necessary and finally backed up the whole partition with acronis true image onto an external drive. So in case of a total crash I have the system back in working order within 20 or so minutes.
-DG

 

[Alsenor]

Yes, that will work. It's what I do. What version of Acronis do you have?

Acronis True Image Home 2010.

 

[gregrocker]

You can make the image smaller by putting your User folders on a separate data partition (also backed up - I drag and drop to external). This also keeps your data safe in its own "vault" in case of irreparable OS failure.

Then if you need to reimage your OS/programs partition, just reimage the OS partition and your data is next door waiting to go.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/18629-user-folders-change-default-location.html

 

[Alsenor]

You can make the image smaller by putting your User folders on a separate data partition (also backed up - I drag and drop to external). This also keeps your data safe in its own "vault" in case of irreparable OS failure.

I just ran a backup image on Acronis, aand there is so much room left on my 500GB second drive that for now it's no problem at all.
I will look for an external enclosure and take that drive out of the tower, so it won't be running all that time for nothing.

 

[Alsenor]

Just bought the enclosure on Ebay. Geez, that stuff has gotten cheap!
BTW, about the difference between a compressed img backup and cloning.
Cloning takes more space, but I should be able to take the clone drive and boot it, right?
Can you clone partitions too, or only whole disks?

 

[gregrocker]

Not sure you can clone a single partition as it is a direct copy HD>HD. Imaging is a better solution as you have a stored copy rather than having to keep the old HD as storage of itself.

You can image your choice of partitions although WIn7's backup imaging will require you to include the partition which contains the System MBR. Others give you that choice. I use Win7 Backup imaging for 6 home computers, with image stored in a primary partition on each backed up to external. No probs so far.

Also have Acronis for my XP/Vista imaging. It has a lot more choices but not ones I need for my Win7 images.

I like having the built-in imaging. The 100mb System Reserved partition places the Repair console on F8 Advanced Boot Tools menu, so I can reimage from stored image partition without the DVD/CD if there is enough RAM to load image into memory using F8 Repair tools. This means I could reimage my laptop on the beach if needed, but might need to use my stick to boot repair console if image wouldn't load into memory using F8.

 

[Alsenor]

Not sure you can clone a single partition as it is a direct copy HD>HD.

That is what I thought. Which is unfortunate, because my main drive is larger than my second drive.

Imaging is a better solution as you have a stored copy rather than having to keep the old HD as storage of itself.

Well, except that in case of a catastrophic drive failure you can't just pop it into the tower and be back in business. You always need to restore the image to another drive first. I have also experienced restore problems when it is not the drive that it came from, which is particularly annoying.

 

[gregrocker]

Try shrinking the source drive partition leaving the rest Unallocated, just to see what happens with cloning. Others may know.

Good point on keeping a clone-source HD backup, if you dont' need the HD. Why not?

 

[Alsenor]

Try shrinking the source drive partition leaving the rest Unallocated, just to see what happens with cloning. Others may know.

I always thought the target drive has to be at least equal size to the source drive. I'll have to try that.

Good point on keeping a clone-source HD backup, if you dont' need the HD. Why not?

Well, the drive is tied up either way, with backups or as a clone.

 

[karlsnooks]

You desire to backup your drive to restore, possibly to a larger size drive.

Is this correct?

 

[Alsenor]

You desire to backup your drive to restore, possibly to a larger size drive.

Is this correct?

Not exactly. I have a 650GB main drive, and a 500GB second drive, which I will place externally.
I have made an image backup of drive 1 to drive 2 with Acronis.
My desire is to have a clone of my main drive. In case my main drive fails I can just plug in the clone and be back up instantly, rather than getting another drive and restore the backup to it.

 

[karlsnooks]

And will you then be using another dirve, that is, a third drive as the "clone" drive?

 

[Alsenor]

And will you then be using another dirve, that is, a third drive as the "clone" drive?

No. I prefer to use my 500GB external enclosure drive to store a clone of my main drive rather than making Img backups.

 

[gregrocker]

You really need a place to back up your files more often, unless you plan to regularly clone your HD as backup.

 

[zigzag3143]

You can make the image smaller by putting your User folders on a separate data partition (also backed up - I drag and drop to external). This also keeps your data safe in its own "vault" in case of irreparable OS failure.

I just ran a backup image on Acronis, aand there is so much room left on my 500GB second drive that for now it's no problem at all.
I will look for an external enclosure and take that drive out of the tower, so it won't be running all that time for nothing.

With Acronis you can schedule several types of images. Full for the once a week. libraries for other times, whatever you need.

BTW their images are double click-able so you can view, or restore a single file.