Images are a rigid file not affected by virus or failing hard drive?

[Thebeholder]

Hi everyone

If I have sorted all my Macrium images on a drive on the same physical hard drive that Windows boots from, would all my Macrium images be lost if the drive failed?
I have been expecting that any images are a rigid file not affected by virus or failing hard drive

However, as you see in this screenshot below, I am told if the drive failed all my data will be lost.
So my question is even all images created by other backing up software, such as MAcrium etc.

If Images are affected, then I think it will not be useful to store all images on the same internal drive.

But if all your images are stored on an external hard drive and your external drive is not in hand because you are traveling, so if you needed restoring images, it will be impossible.

 

[richnrockville]

TheBeholder, Yes, if your drive physically fails, your images would be gone.

That's why the warning block pops up.

Macrum and other system images are nothing but huge files and are liable to be corrupted or destroyed.

Keep them on a portable hard disk works fine.

Rich

 

[whs]

If you want to safely store your important family papers and instead of keeping them in the office you put them into the bedrooom in the same house, those papers will be lost when the house burns down.

That is the same situation if you store the images on the same disk as the system in case of a disk failure. But for any other problems (viruses, OS malfunction, etc.) an image on a seperate partition on the same disk can be useful when travelling.

The best strategy is to make an image to an external device and at the same time to a partition on the system disk (especially for laptops). Then you are covered for disk failures and on trips you can at least handle all the other situations. The external device should be disconnected when not in use.

 

[Mark Phelps]

What I've found works well for me is to do both -- store backup images on the same drive, and archive them to an external drive.

My laptop has a large enough drive that I can save the images to a data partition without space problems. I do this so I always have a recent "good" image in case I have to restore the laptop when on the road. I also run the retail version of Macrium Reflect that allowed me to add a MR Recovery boot option to the drive.

But, that said, I also copy every image to an external drive and retain several of them offline. That gives me a fallback at home in case the most recent image doesn't restore properly.

 

[gregrocker]

I concur that a good method if you need the image while traveling is to save one to a Primary partition on the same HD, and another on external. Just be sure if using WIn7 backup imaging to make a new image to the same HD and another to the external because it may not work from a copied image.

Another file backup method which makes your files available from anywhere via the internet: Sync, Backup and Store your Files to the Cloud with Skydrive - Windows 7 Help Forums

 

[Thebeholder]

The best strategy is to make an image to an external device and at the same time to a partition on the system disk (especially for laptops). Then you are covered for disk failures and on trips you can at least handle all the other situations. The external device should be disconnected when not in use.

Thank you all of you very much indeed,

I've really tried creating an image of the OS partition, and let it be saved on a partition on the same internal hard drive where OS partition is. Also, I have tried creating another image of the same OS partition. But this time I have let it be saved in an external hard drive.

But I have really been experiencing these two problems below:
1- I found there is a striking difference in the time of restoring an image located in a partition on the same internal hard drive on which the OS partition will be overwritten by an image and the time of restoring an image located on an external hard drive.
When I restored an image located in a partition to another partition on the same internal hard drive, I found that restoration took about an hour and a half. However, when I restored the same image located in a another external hard drive to a partition on the internal hard drive, I found that restoration only took about 25 minutes.
These, could anyone please explain for me what the mystery is?

2- Also, I didn't find any way to let an image be created in multi destinations. For example, I need Macrium to save the same image to be created in many destinations.

 

[whs]

ad 1) That is normal because you get a lot of contention on the same disk - the arm has to swtch all the time between the image location and the C partition location. There is nothing to worry about.

ad 2) That is not possible. You can only have 1 output device at any 1 time.