Solved Image your system with free Macrium

[stonebear]

https://www.cleverbridge.com/80/?scope=cart&id=WiXkS2K8gW&crel=displayCurrencyId


That is worth £13 to me right now, IF it can transfer a system image as well as an OS.

 

[stonebear]

....which it can't. Oh well, I will have to do it the complicated way.

 

[whs]

It is ironic (!) that Windows own imaging can do what I need without the added complications caused by the 100mb system reserved but I can't use Windows own imaging because the 100mb system reserved is too full to allow me to do it!

Catch 22 again! If the 100mb system reserved wasn't so heavily recommended by the installer I would not have wasted the hours I have.


http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-restore/181573-not-enough-room-create-system-image-but-there.html

You can always restore just C as active partition and fix the bootmgr there. That avoids mucking around with the 100MB partition. But you still have to predifine an aligned partition which is at least the size of the originating C.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

But if you have the SSD in a desktop or if you can stick it into an external enclosure, the Paragon Migration tool is the easiest. It does everything for you. But you stll need the system running on the HDD.

 

[stonebear]

http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-restore/181573-not-enough-room-create-system-image-but-there.html

You can always restore just C as active partition and fix the bootmgr there. That avoids mucking around with the 100MB partition. But you still have to predifine an aligned partition which is at least the size of the originating C.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

Yea, I could just restore the C and then use the recovery CD or OS CD to "repair" and create a new MBR etc.

But if you have the SSD in a desktop or if you can stick it into an external enclosure, the Paragon Migration tool is the easiest. It does everything for you. But you stll need the system running on the HDD.

The system is on the SSD.

Thanks.

 

[JDH1]

Hello All-

Having bought a new laptop running Win 7 64 bit, as someone said earlier here, I want to make images for two basic purposes -- (1) System broken but not the HDD, and (2) HDD broken.

My computer's single drive configuration is currently:

1) Recovery Partition, 13GB, 100% Free

2) System Reserved (System, Active, Primary Partition) NTFS 100MB 70% Free

3) C: (Boot, Page File, Crash Dump, Primary Partition) NTFS 220GB 91% Free

Obviously I understand drive C:, but less so the other two partitions. And since I wish to add another partition to gain a drive D: on this single physical drive, I'll eventually have four partitions to deal with.

Years ago I depended on Ghost.exe (ver 8.3), then later on Acronis True Image Home/ATIH (ver 9), two programs I trusted. Numerous restores via Ghost.exe were universally perfect for WinXP systems. And I was covered whether I wished to restore to the same drive or to a brand new one, whether larger or smaller than the original (obviously as long as a smaller one was large enough to hold the restored image). Oh yes, and neither Ghost.exe nor ATIH added any virtual partitions, nor did either one play with my drive lettering.

However from the bad press both Ghost and ATIH have been recently receiving (for Ghost, possibly due to the recent changes in NTFS drive alignment/offset, and for ATIH, maybe due to basic 64 bit compatibility problems), I no longer trust these two programs.

Can someone advise me as to the best solution to do all the above, free or paid, whichever is best, Macrium, Paragon, or another?

 

[whs]

Here is what I recommend:

1. Use Macrium because it is the easiest, fastest and very reliable. Here is a tutorial on how it works: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

2. Make 4 folders on your backup drive.

-- 100MB partition
-- Recovery partition
-- C partition
-- D partition

3. In Macrium, make a definition and image of each of those partitions to their respective folders on the backup drive. The 100MB partition and the Recovery partition you need to image only once for the case that your physical disk breaks. The C and D partitions you should image as often as major changes have been made there. E.g updates or new program installs on C or new data on D.

PS: free Paragon is also a good option. But it is a bit more complex and involved.

 

[mjf]

http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-restore/181573-not-enough-room-create-system-image-but-there.html

You can always restore just C as active partition and fix the bootmgr there. That avoids mucking around with the 100MB partition. But you still have to predifine an aligned partition which is at least the size of the originating C.
http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/105541-startup-repair-run-3-separate-times.html

Yea, I could just restore the C and then use the recovery CD or OS CD to "repair" and create a new MBR etc.

But if you have the SSD in a desktop or if you can stick it into an external enclosure, the Paragon Migration tool is the easiest. It does everything for you. But you stll need the system running on the HDD.

The system is on the SSD.

Thanks.

What you could try if you are starting with a clean SSD. Make a ~200MB primary partition and the rest another primary partition called C: say. Restore your old C: to the new C: and do NOT mark it active. Mark the empty 200MB partition active and run the system repair x3. This should build the MBR and the required boot files on the 200MB partition (bootmgr and [Boot] containing the BCD]. With 200MB you should never experience the problem of running out of shadow storage space.
Alternatively dispense with the system reserved if you have little use for bit locker and/or the F8 function.

 

[mjf]

Hello All-

Having bought a new laptop running Win 7 64 bit, as someone said earlier here, I want to make images for two basic purposes -- (1) System broken but not the HDD, and (2) HDD broken................

I'd do basically what WHS suggests. But note because disk management may say your (hidden) recovery partition is 100% free it will probably contain ~8GB or factory recovery data. It's just what disk management does. Other tools will show its true contents.

 

[JDH1]

Here is what I recommend:

1. Use Macrium because it is the easiest, fastest and very reliable. Here is a tutorial on how it works: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

2. Make 4 folders on your backup drive.

-- 100MB partition
-- Recovery partition
-- C partition
-- D partition

3. In Macrium, make a definition and image of each of those partitions to their respective folders on the backup drive. The 100MB partition and the Recovery partition you need to image only once for the case that your physical disk breaks. The C and D partitions you should image as often as major changes have been made there. E.g updates or new program installs on C or new data on D.

PS: free Paragon is also a good option. But it is a bit more complex and involved.

First, thanks for your helpful and rapid reply!

So both the Macrium and Paragon programs are rock solid as regards Windows 7 64 bit. And evidently they both know how to do restores to the new drive alignment (I believe the data used to start at 63 or 64 sectors from the beginning of the drive, but now it's at an even 1 megabyte). Well this sure is good news, especially considering the problems people say Ghost and True Image are having!

Your suggested procedures seem very similar to what I would have done using Ghost -- the only obvious difference being the need for a separate folder for each partition's backup (not that this is any big problem). However since I like to keep layered backups, I assume I can put multiple backup files in each folder and keep them separate by simply using different file names (as would be done with Ghost)?

If you see no benefits offerred by Paragon for all the tasks outlined in my first post, and if Macrium is in some ways simpler, I will most certainly read/look at your tutorial on Macrium as soon as possible!

 

[kado897]

Here is what I recommend:

1. Use Macrium because it is the easiest, fastest and very reliable. Here is a tutorial on how it works: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

2. Make 4 folders on your backup drive.

-- 100MB partition
-- Recovery partition
-- C partition
-- D partition

3. In Macrium, make a definition and image of each of those partitions to their respective folders on the backup drive. The 100MB partition and the Recovery partition you need to image only once for the case that your physical disk breaks. The C and D partitions you should image as often as major changes have been made there. E.g updates or new program installs on C or new data on D.

PS: free Paragon is also a good option. But it is a bit more complex and involved.

First, thanks for your helpful and rapid reply!

So both the Macrium and Paragon programs are rock solid as regards Windows 7 64 bit. And evidently they both know how to do restores to the new drive alignment (I believe the data used to start at 63 or 64 sectors from the beginning of the drive, but now it's at an even 1 megabyte). Well this sure is good news, especially considering the problems people say Ghost and True Image are having!

Your suggested procedures seem very similar to what I would have done using Ghost -- the only obvious difference being the need for a separate folder for each partition's backup (not that this is any big problem). However since I like to keep layered backups, I assume I can put multiple backup files in each folder and keep them separate by simply using different file names (as would be done with Ghost)?

If you see no benefits offerred by Paragon for all the tasks outlined in my first post, and if Macrium is in some ways simpler, I will most certainly read/look at your tutorial on Macrium as soon as possible!

You can put all your partitions in the same backup file with Macrium but you have to restore them one at a time.

 

[stonebear]

http://www.sevenforums.com/backup-restore/181573-not-enough-room-create-system-image-but-there.html

Yea, I could just restore the C and then use the recovery CD or OS CD to "repair" and create a new MBR etc.

But if you have the SSD in a desktop or if you can stick it into an external enclosure, the Paragon Migration tool is the easiest. It does everything for you. But you stll need the system running on the HDD.

The system is on the SSD.

Thanks.

What you could try if you are starting with a clean SSD. Make a ~200MB primary partition and the rest another primary partition called C: say. Restore your old C: to the new C: and do NOT mark it active. Mark the empty 200MB partition active and run the system repair x3. This should build the MBR and the required boot files on the 200MB partition (bootmgr and [Boot] containing the BCD]. With 200MB you should never experience the problem of running out of shadow storage space.
Alternatively dispense with the system reserved if you have little use for bit locker and/or the F8 function.

Yea, that is how I decided to do it - if I need to. With or without the system reserved I could just do the system repair 3x thing to get it to boot

 

[stonebear]

"if you have little use for bit locker and/or the F8 function."

I use F8 to use safe mode when needed, I wouldn't loase that ability would I?

 

[whs]

JDH1, The reason I suggest to make the 4 folders is because then you can tell the images easily apart. And since you normally never restore the 100MB partition or the recovery partition, that is handy. It is also convenient for managing the restore points.

Over time you will accumulate a certain number of images for C and D of which you may want to delete some of the older versions. If all images are in the same folder, you do not know which is which.

Into each folder (via the XML) you can place as many images as you want. They are easy to distinguish by date.

With free Macrium you always get full images - which I prefer because they are easy to manage. With free Paragon you can also make differentials or incrementals. To manage those (e.g. delete older versions) is a lot more tricky.

 

[mjf]

"if you have little use for bit locker and/or the F8 function."

I use F8 to use safe mode when needed, I wouldn't loase that ability would I?

I'm pretty sure you loose the F8 function when you dispense with system reserved. However, a system repair disk will give you the same capability.

 

[stonebear]

"if you have little use for bit locker and/or the F8 function."

I use F8 to use safe mode when needed, I wouldn't loase that ability would I?

I'm pretty sure you loose the F8 function when you dispense with system reserved. However, a system repair disk will give you the same capability.

OK, thanks. I can lose that, seems a shame though. I will be doing a fresh install with no system reserved soon so I will find out for sure.

 

[Bill2]

"if you have little use for bit locker and/or the F8 function."

I use F8 to use safe mode when needed, I wouldn't loase that ability would I?

I'm pretty sure you loose the F8 function when you dispense with system reserved. However, a system repair disk will give you the same capability.

F8 function "Repair your computer" requires only 2 things to function- the RE files (these are automatically installed on the computer when win7 is installed on the computer) and some bcd entries. It is not dependent on the Sysres partition.

All you need to do after making whatever changes you are making is- first check whether "Repair your computer" is present or not. If not the 2 simplest ways of creating it are by using reagentc or with easybcd (easybcd doesnt create the F8 thing but it can be used to create a bootmenu entry for the recovery options which is as good).

 

[stonebear]

F8 function "Repair your computer" requires only 2 things to function- the RE files (these are automatically installed on the computer when win7 is installed on the computer) and some bcd entries. It is not dependent on the Sysres partition.

All you need to do after making whatever changes you are making is- first check whether "Repair your computer" is present or not. If not the 2 simplest ways of creating it are by using reagentc or with easybcd (easybcd doesnt create the F8 thing but it can be used to create a bootmenu entry for the recovery options which is as good).

That's good, thanks Bill.

 

[JDH1]

Here is what I recommend:

1. Use Macrium because it is the easiest, fastest and very reliable. Here is a tutorial on how it works: http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

2. Make 4 folders on your backup drive.

-- 100MB partition
-- Recovery partition
-- C partition
-- D partition

3. In Macrium, make a definition and image of each of those partitions to their respective folders on the backup drive. The 100MB partition and the Recovery partition you need to image only once for the case that your physical disk breaks. The C and D partitions you should image as often as major changes have been made there. E.g updates or new program installs on C or new data on D.

PS: free Paragon is also a good option. But it is a bit more complex and involved.

First, thanks for your helpful and rapid reply!

So both the Macrium and Paragon programs are rock solid as regards Windows 7 64 bit. And evidently they both know how to do restores to the new drive alignment (I believe the data used to start at 63 or 64 sectors from the beginning of the drive, but now it's at an even 1 megabyte). Well this sure is good news, especially considering the problems people say Ghost and True Image are having!

Your suggested procedures seem very similar to what I would have done using Ghost -- the only obvious difference being the need for a separate folder for each partition's backup (not that this is any big problem). However since I like to keep layered backups, I assume I can put multiple backup files in each folder and keep them separate by simply using different file names (as would be done with Ghost)?

If you see no benefits offerred by Paragon for all the tasks outlined in my first post, and if Macrium is in some ways simpler, I will most certainly read/look at your tutorial on Macrium as soon as possible!

You can put all your partitions in the same backup file with Macrium but you have to restore them one at a time.

I don't know whether one backup file would be more or less confusing than using separate folders and separate files. WHS's recent post (#213) explains his reasoning on this quite well. I want to go over WHS's tutorial materials today -- hopefully things will make more sense to me after that <g>!

A different but related matter here is using Macrium to go from a HDD to an SSD. Obviously they have dissimilar structures, so maybe this is impossible to do. However if I eventually have three separate image files of the three partitions I now have on one physical HDD, I hope I will somehow be able to transfer all these to one physical SSD.

 

[kado897]

First, thanks for your helpful and rapid reply!

So both the Macrium and Paragon programs are rock solid as regards Windows 7 64 bit. And evidently they both know how to do restores to the new drive alignment (I believe the data used to start at 63 or 64 sectors from the beginning of the drive, but now it's at an even 1 megabyte). Well this sure is good news, especially considering the problems people say Ghost and True Image are having!

Your suggested procedures seem very similar to what I would have done using Ghost -- the only obvious difference being the need for a separate folder for each partition's backup (not that this is any big problem). However since I like to keep layered backups, I assume I can put multiple backup files in each folder and keep them separate by simply using different file names (as would be done with Ghost)?

If you see no benefits offerred by Paragon for all the tasks outlined in my first post, and if Macrium is in some ways simpler, I will most certainly read/look at your tutorial on Macrium as soon as possible!

You can put all your partitions in the same backup file with Macrium but you have to restore them one at a time.

I don't know whether one backup file would be more or less confusing than using separate folders and separate files. WHS's recent post (#213) explains his reasoning on this quite well. I want to go over WHS's tutorial materials today -- hopefully things will make more sense to me after that <g>!

A different but related matter here is using Macrium to go from a HDD to an SSD. Obviously they have dissimilar structures, so maybe this is impossible to do. However if I eventually have three separate image files of the three partitions I now have on one physical HDD, I hope I will somehow be able to transfer all these to one physical SSD.

Yes I see your point. I have 4 partitions on my laptop internal HDD. I backup Recovery and HP tools together because they wont change and do System and C together regularly because they are a "working set". Other disks I do file and folder backups as and when needed (I have the paid version).

 

[JDH1]

JDH1, The reason I suggest to make the 4 folders is because then you can tell the images easily apart. And since you normally never restore the 100MB partition or the recovery partition, that is handy. It is also convenient for managing the restore points.

Over time you will accumulate a certain number of images for C and D of which you may want to delete some of the older versions. If all images are in the same folder, you do not know which is which.

Into each folder (via the XML) you can place as many images as you want. They are easy to distinguish by date.

With free Macrium you always get full images - which I prefer because they are easy to manage. With free Paragon you can also make differentials or incrementals. To manage those (e.g. delete older versions) is a lot more tricky.

That things were usually done a bit differently with Ghost isn't really important. Your explanation about the separate folders for Macrium makes perfect sense to me. Right, the less confusion, the better <g>.

On Paragon vs. Macrium, I too have always preferred full images even if my current backup regimen allowed differential or incremental backups. For me, the extra time to do full backups never outweighed what I perceived to be a simpler and more straight forward approach.

Am I thinking of a different program, or doesn't Paragon use some kind of "capsule", apparently a virtual, hidden or possibly temporary partition. I have read about users having a drive letter D: partition inserted, and this new partition then bumping their existing partition D: to the new letter E:, effectively destroying any drive letter dependent links, shortcuts, etc. Maybe this was with another program and not Paragon, but if Macrium never adds partitions for its own use and never changes my drive letters, I would find that far preferable to any program which did do this.

Do you see any reason to get the paid version of Macrium? And what about migration from a HDD to an SSD?

Sorry about all the questions, but please know that you are helping out a lot here -- and it's appreciated!!!