Solved Is it possible to create a back up of an entire hard drive will two bo

[StrykerChaos]

I have windows 7 and windows 8 installed on one hatd drive different partitions. I would like to make an image or some sort of back up that will restore everything to the current condition, applications files drivers. Is this possible and what is the best way to accomplish this. Thanks in advance!

 

[StrykerChaos]

My problem was I already had both os's installed and I got a nasty virus and I couldn't accomplish anything on the computer so I wiped the hard drive with the clean all command and reinstalled everything, I dont want to do all of this again and im not sure if a disk image will work for the entire hard drive or just the os it was created in. On the same note I created a disk image after I originally installed everything but I couldnt get my computer to read it when I tried to use it last night so I did the fresh install.

 

[Victor S]

Look into Macrium. I use Ghost 15, but it's not free. There are others.
Win 7 often can't locate images, for one reason or another.

I don't have 2 OS's so I can't speak about how booting is handled. But it's mostly likely handled by the active and bootable partition, so that shouldn't be an issue.
Imaging always worked at a partition level for me. So you should just be able to image both "system" partitions separately, then restore them separately.
That's how I'd do it. Somebody might know of a way to do it all at once, but it won't save you much time/effort anyway.

Just pay attention to the imaging software options for setting a partition active and bootable.
The only other "gotcha" I can think of is changing the partition sizes between taking and restoring an image.
The imaging software I've used won't restore an image to a partition smaller than the original.
"Best practice" for me is knowing the partition size the image was taken from, in case I want to change the partition. I always make sure my system partition is the same size as what the image was taken from.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

You're making it sound too complicated. The free version of Macrium Reflect is an excellent suggestion. One of our own, whs, has made an excellent tutorial on how to use Reflect. I've found Reflect easy to use after the first couple of times I used it and it has yet to fail me as long as I verify each image after making it. You will also have to make a rescue CD when you first use Reflect. It's easy to do so don't let that scare you away.

When making your image(s), you can either make a separate image of each OS or one of the entire HDD, whichever you want. You don't need to keep track of partition size when you wipe a drive if you just wipe each partition so the partitions remain intact but empty. You can store the image in a folder on a data drive in your machine or to an external drive (I do both).

 

[StrykerChaos]

Thanks

Thanks for all of the help I have imaged the entire drive with all partitions and I am now going to image each partition separately.

 

[Lady Fitzgerald]

Glad I could help.