Drive Imaging Rescue CD problems

[Sope]

Hi, I'm in need of some advice please.

I've been looking for an alternative backup and recovery program to the one built into Windows 7, so far without success.

I've tried Paragon Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition and the latest Macrium Reflect Free Edition but my PC won't successfully load either of their recovery CD's.
With Paragon, I can get to the first options screen but none of the options offered will load for me.
With Macrium I've had no success with either the standard or the Compatibility Mode versions of the rescue CD.

I'm reluctant to buy a commercial alternative such as Acronis True Image Home 2010 in case I have the same issues. I know I can trial Acronis free of charge but I've read that it embeds itself deeply into the OS and there may be issues if I have to uninstall it. Also of course, free would be better.

All I really need is reliable full disk and individual partition imaging and recovery, but speed, image compression and the ability to perform differential backups would be good.

I've read that creation of a BartPE disk is a possible option but I'm unsure whether I would be able to do this, or even if it would solve my problem.

Any advice appreciated................what would you suggest?

 

[IggyAZ]

Hi, I'm in need of some advice please.

I've been looking for an alternative backup and recovery program to the one built into Windows 7, so far without success.

I've tried Paragon Backup & Recovery 10.1 Free Edition and the latest Macrium Reflect Free Edition but my PC won't successfully load either of their recovery CD's.
With Paragon, I can get to the first options screen but none of the options offered will load for me.
With Macrium I've had no success with either the standard or the Compatibility Mode versions of the rescue CD.

I'm reluctant to buy a commercial alternative such as Acronis True Image Home 2010 in case I have the same issues. I know I can trial Acronis free of charge but I've read that it embeds itself deeply into the OS and there may be issues if I have to uninstall it. Also of course, free would be better.

All I really need is reliable full disk and individual partition imaging and recovery, but speed, image compression and the ability to perform differential backups would be good.

I've read that creation of a BartPE disk is a possible option but I'm unsure whether I would be able to do this, or even if it would solve my problem.

Any advice appreciated................what would you suggest?

I use Terabyte Unlimited Image for Windows which I make my full HD image backup to a spare HD while in Windows. Now the image can be recovered also in Windows if you can but lets say you lost your primary HD and wanted to recover your last backed up image. Terabytes Image for Windows make a recovery disk CD, DVD or floppy with the program that will be bootable. It also has a BartPE plug in.
This way you can select whichever image you want to recover.
It also has a great program called TBIView which allows you to look at the saved images and look inside and recover any directory or file you want on the fly.

I have been using it for 6 months and have tried all the rest but this has been easy and simple for me to use.
Here is the website for mor einformation.
TeraByte Unlimited :: Boot Manager :: Partition Manager :: Drive Image :: Disk Copy :: Drive Wipe :: Hard Drive Utilities

 

[karlsnooks]

This doesn't really answer your question but you may find this interesting:
Backup and recovery strategies for IT pros

 

[Acronis]

I'm reluctant to buy a commercial alternative such as Acronis True Image Home 2010 in case I have the same issues. I know I can trial Acronis free of charge but I've read that it embeds itself deeply into the OS and there may be issues if I have to uninstall it.

Hi Sope, in case you will have any troubles uninstalling Acronis trial version - use the special Clean Up Utility. Description, instructions and download link can be found here: Acronis True Image Home 2010 Clean Up Utility

Hope you'll give Acronis a chance

 

[mvnsnd]

Depending on your level of comfort, take a look at imageX. Not truly a 'backup' software, but it works well for making images. Plus you can mount the image file in a folder and look at it, get to files, etc.

What is ImageX?

 

[Sope]

Thanks everyone for the replies.......wow, there's a variety of different things to look at there!

I've actually been using Acronis True image 9.0 with my XP setup for a long time now and have been happy with it. I think I'll probably give the latest version a try out now I know there's a dedicated uninstall tool available for use if necessary.

I suspect that in the event of needing to recover my system from an image I may find it a bit too taxing/stressful trying to handle it from the command line! I would certainly be more comfortable with a GUI.

I may still invest some time researching the BartPE approach further.
Also I'm still interested to know if anyone else has had the same difficulties as me, and if so, how you overcame them?

Cheers.

 

[karlsnooks]

Sope,
I really don't understand why you don't want to use Win 7's Backup and Restore but that's your call.

Even Vista's Backup & Restore was problematic but the Backup & Restore in Win 7 is excellent! Furthermore since the Backup produces a VHD file, then you can "mount" the VHD (see Dsikmgmt.msc) and view and extract any number of files you want from there. In other words, you don't have to do a full restore just to recover a couple of files.

Take a look at Disk2VHD from the SysInternals folk, Windows Sysinternals: Documentation, downloads and additional resources

 

[Sope]

Sope,
I really don't understand why you don't want to use Win 7's Backup and Restore but that's your call.

I originally thought Win 7's Backup and Restore feature would be enough for my needs but I've read that it can be problematic in the event you need to restore just one partition, whereby it would use the whole HDD, potentially writing over any other partitions that you may want left untouched. Please correct me if I'm confused on this point?

My HDD is set up like so :-


All I really need, is to be able to backup and restore the whole disk or individual partitions as necessary. Ease of use and reliability are important.
I have had a play with Win 7's backup with regard to mounting images and retrieving individual files but I'm uncertain of it's capabilities when it comes to recovering whole partitions.

 

[karlsnooks]

Sope,

Due to the behaviour of Backup and Restore in earlier versions, I thoroughly tested the Win 7 version thereof. I am very pleased and satisfied. Yes, I did the full restore, I did the data restore, I extracted files from the vhd. Tried out all of the features.

My experience has been that Win 7 Backup and Restore is rock solid. I have stopped using all other products for backing up and restoring. There are so many features of Win7 that work for the first time with MS. Win7 rocks.

 

[Wishmaster]

Ive been using Acronis 2010 with 7x64 and couldnt be happier.
But everyone has thier own preferences.

If you initiate a restore from Windows will it work then? Should activate the loader to resume restore at boot.


AS far as not being able to boot from the Rescue CD:

Do you have you bios switched to AHCI mode?

Some boards, will always boot the OS first, regrdless of whether you set it to boot from CD 1st or not.
If you board is one like this, you just need to switch back to IDE Mode, Boot from the disc & do the restore. Shutdown and switch backk to AHCI Mode.

 

[thathagat]

well albeit its a subjective notion Win 7 Backup and Restore is damm good... but the best paid prog i found is ShadowProtect Desktop........Backup Software | Computer Backup | Disk Backup | ShadowProtect

 

[IggyAZ]

Sope,

Due to the behaviour of Backup and Restore in earlier versions, I thoroughly tested the Win 7 version thereof. I am very pleased and satisfied. Yes, I did the full restore, I did the data restore, I extracted files from the vhd. Tried out all of the features.

My experience has been that Win 7 Backup and Restore is rock solid. I have stopped using all other products for backing up and restoring. There are so many features of Win7 that work for the first time with MS. Win7 rocks.

Thanks karlsnooks for the review. I think I may try it out again.

 

[Sope]

Sope,

Due to the behaviour of Backup and Restore in earlier versions, I thoroughly tested the Win 7 version thereof. I am very pleased and satisfied. Yes, I did the full restore, I did the data restore, I extracted files from the vhd. Tried out all of the features.

My experience has been that Win 7 Backup and Restore is rock solid. I have stopped using all other products for backing up and restoring. There are so many features of Win7 that work for the first time with MS. Win7 rocks.

Thanks karlsnooks for the review. I think I may try it out again.

+1

Yep, thanks for that, you've given me more confidence to give Win7 B&R a closer look.

 

[Sope]

AS far as not being able to boot from the Rescue CD:

Do you have you bios switched to AHCI mode?

Some boards, will always boot the OS first, regrdless of whether you set it to boot from CD 1st or not.
If you board is one like this, you just need to switch back to IDE Mode, Boot from the disc & do the restore. Shutdown and switch backk to AHCI Mode.

I can successfully get the system to attempt to boot both Macrium and Paragon's rescue CD's but sadly neither load to the point where they become operational.

My BIOS does have the AHCI feature but my SATA drive is configured in IDE mode by default.

I'm currently getting some great help with the creation of a custom Win7PE disk to include both Paragon BR10 and PM10 over on another forum, which seems very promising. It's here if anyone else is interested or is in the same position as me. (I think the person responsible for all the hard work may well be a regular here too).

It would be great to have the choice of being able to use both Win7 BR and Paragon BR10 successfully, if required.

 

[PeteC]

I use Acronis TI 2010, and it works well...after having to install a fix that is known to be an issue on certain machines...if you are interested in trying it out, although your concerns about Acronis' having deep hooks into the OS are correct, their removal tool, which was posted previously here works just fine.

Having said that, I must tell you that although Acronis gives you a much richer palette of options, Windows 7 Image/Backup & Restore works exceedingly well! The only reason that I opted to go with ATI 2010 is that my version of Win 7 (Home Premium) does not support backing up to network drives (damn!).

I did in fact have to re-image my drive C: partition, and it did so without so much as a hiccup, with Win 7's back up.

 

[tompatrick]

I was in the same sort of problem few days ago then one of my friend suggested me stellar phoenix. The software was really useful it worked fine with Windows 7 and the imaging feature of that software was quite amazing it created the image of the data with in no time, I used the boot cd stellar phoenix data recovery software to recover my data, on the site I found CD/DVD data recovery software too.