Imaging, cloning...need advice

[paulobao]

Hi again,

I'm confusing with this terminology (imaging, cloning,..). Anyway I need a big advice, please!
I got my first BSOD in my 6 month Toshiba laptop (Tecra R840-16J) that I could not recover from (I'm sure the experts could but I don't ). I tried safe mode, go to a previous good state,..nothing worked! I hade sveral dozens of GB of applications installed (and all those settings too) that are gone! Of course I have all the SW in an external USB3.0 HDD and I will reinstall everything...!!!

Please, give me a strategie they I will follow (not for avoyding BSOD) but in the case this happens again I could, in a simple maner, have my laptop functional again with all the software and settings I had before the crash!

I have Ghost 15.0 but I unistalled all my Norton sw and I want to keep far from that!
I tried the built in Win7 restore with no sucess since at the end an error occured saying that the image was not created sucessefully!

Please let me know what steps should I follow to:
- create an image (clone ?) of my entire machine
- restore my machine to the exact state before the crash

Thanks a lot,

paulo

 

[richnrockville]

Paulo,
1. Cloning is copying the whole disk to another disk. If don't properly, it should be a complete mirror image of the source disk and bootable, just like the original disk.
2. Imageing is creating a single file in some program that is everything on your source drive in one file and requires a program to restore the image to another drive.

Norton ghost is an imaging/clone commercial program similar to Acronis. There is a couple of free ones that are available.

Rich

 

[paulobao]

Thanks again!
You know what...afterall the win7 works great for imaging and restoring if I use a partition in my main HDD! If I try to use an external Iomega USB3.0 Prestige HDD it will not end properly!
I just made an image of my system via the win7 built in image and restore, then removed some sw and then restore it via the same built in application! all went smooth and my system is as it was before! Shame it not work with my external drive!

paulo

Thanks,

 

[richnrockville]

Paulobao, There has to be something wrong someplace for your windows 7 internal image to not write the image to an external drive. If the drive is not formatted NTFS, that would do it as well as not enough space.

I have successfully used the windows 7 imaging software to an external USB hard disk and restored it to a replacement hard disk. Must be of the same size or larger though.

I mostly use and trust Acronis home imaging sofware and it just works the way I want it to.
One problem that I have seen is that people buy the small backup devices and run the software that is included which will prevent the Imaging software from working. I normally just buy the SATA external cases and pick up small large hard drives to put in them. I format from the windows 7 options and have been successful all of the time.


Rich

 

[paulobao]

Maybe! I use an Iomega Prestige USB 3.0 external drive! No sucess until now!

paulo

 

[richnrockville]

Maybe! I use an Iomega Prestige USB 3.0 external drive! No sucess until now!

paulo

Paulo, something tells me that you installed the Iomega backup software????

Rich

 

[whs]

Have a look at this. It will do what you want. I recommend to image at least once per week (or more).

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

 

[paulobao]

No Rich, I've not installed Iomega backup!
Thanks for the Macrium link . Do you think Paragon suite will be fine too?
Now I can image right away via win7 to the new parition but nor for my external disk!

paulo

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Paolo:

Cloning is not a backup strategy. It's normally used when things are going well and you just want to move to a new hard drive.

Imaging is a backup strategy and is normally used when things are NOT going well and you need to recover to an earlier state.

It sounds like imaging is what you need.

Macrium and Acronis are the most commonly used imaging programs. Macrium can also clone. I'm not sure about Acronis. Either of those is easier to understand and use than the built-in Windows program (which doesn't clone as far as I know).

 

[SIW2]

Macrium and Paragon both do good free versions.

The drawback with Macrium free is that it doesn't support gpt style drives.

Acronis is a popular program - but they don't really do a free version (there is a sort of limited free version available - but only if you have at least one Seagate, or WD drive )

 

[paulobao]

Thanks
Yes I understand it now!
I will need to make an image of my system when everything is just fine to use it when (if) the thinks go really wrong and i need to restore the system to a good state!
About backup: I usually do not have much data in my computer! About everything is in an external 1TB portable HDD! I just use the laptop for control my astronomy gear (and for that I use a huge amount of differente sw) and for processing the data I collect. The data and the resulting processed files are in the external HDD. The problem is the astronomy sw and the processing sw (PS CS5 suite and a lot of specific ones...). All those took time to get the right settings for...And it is precisely for that, that I need to make an image of a stable system for the worst case scenario.

Is my thoughts correct?

You may call me crazy but usually I do not like free sw! So I will pay for a sw capable of imaging my system to a USB 3.0 portable HDD . And if that imaging sw is simple (not necessarly the less expensive) the better

Regards,
paulo

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Thanks
Yes I understand it now!
I will need to make an image of my system when everything is just fine to use it when (if) the thinks go really wrong and i need to restore the system to a good state!
About backup: I usually do not have much data in my computer! About everything is in an external 1TB portable HDD! I just use the laptop for control my astronomy gear (and for that I use a huge amount of differente sw) and for processing the data I collect. The data and the resulting processed files are in the external HDD. The problem is the astronomy sw and the processing sw (PS CS5 suite and a lot of specific ones...). All those took time to get the right settings for...And it is precisely for that, that I need to make an image of a stable system for the worst case scenario.

Is my thoughts correct?

You may call me crazy but usually I do not like free sw! So I will pay for a sw capable of imaging my system to a USB 3.0 portable HDD . And if that imaging sw is simple (not necessarly the less expensive) the better

Regards,
paulo

You are generally correct.

Do you have a backup of the data on the external drive?

Regardless of where you store the data (C, internal, external, whatever), you are foolish if you don't have it backed up somewhere else---you should have at least 2 copies of all data.

If you prefer to pay rather than get something free, I would buy the Pro version of Macrium:

http://www.macrium.com/personal.aspx



Note: imaging is not foolproof. Know what you will do if it does not work as expected.

 

[paulobao]

Thanks. Yes I have it backed up in a Buffalo usb2 hdd too

I will learn to do it properly...I think!

My concern now is (and still is, what SSD to choose that will give me the least amount of problems the possible , starting with the compatibility with my Tecra R840). Too much info in the www!!!

paulo

 

[paulobao]

Ok, i bought acronis home...2010! The site sent me for the portuguese site and the only version there was the 2010!
I do not find it specially user friendly!!!
I made some kind of backup for my no trouble laptop (a Toshiba MX30 running XP where I have a copy of all my software and all settings...I mean a perfect functional computer with all stuff running great!). I would like to make an image of this stable machine for my external HDD. The result was a file called "System" that I hope is the image of my system!!! Now I need to know how to use it in the case of a major crash!

Paulo

 

[ignatzatsonic]

Did you have any particular reason to choose Acronis over the free edition of Macrium, which IS user-friendly? Maybe 5 mouse clicks to make an image. You then burn a boot disk and boot from it to make a restore.

I haven't looked at Acronis in several years, but the comments here about it are pretty good if you understand it.