System Image creation question

[geascian]

Hi all.

Running a nice shiny new copy of win 7 home premium and have set about backing up the install.

The system has two disks, both sata, a 230 GB basic disk for the OS and boot partitions and a 1TB dynamic for my data.

When i try to create a system image of the system drive (C to a partition on the dynamic disk it warns me that restore functionality will be limited.

Any ideas what that means in term of what the issue is?

Many thanks

 

[Brink]

Hello Geascian, and welcome to Seven Forums.

When restoring a system image from a dynamic volume, the disks on your computer cannot be formatted to match the layout of the disks on the backup. To have full functionality, select a volume (partition) on a basic disk as your backup location instead.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

 

[geascian]

Hello Geascian, and welcome to Seven Forums.

When restoring a system image from a dynamic volume, the disks on your computer cannot be formatted to match the layout of the disks on the backup. To have full functionality, select a volume (partition) on a basic disk as your backup location instead.

Hope this helps,
Shawn

Thanks for that.
Not 100% sure what that means though, not totally up on basic and dynamic disks.

The backup is only of the basic system disk, I back up the data disk to USB attached disk manually.

Will a system image of that basic disk stored on the dynamic disk still restore OK back to a basic disk if I boot from the restore / Rescue CD?

 

[Brink]

The best idea would be to have the system image saved to a Basic disk instead.

The problem occurs when the system image is saved on a dynamic disk. It will be able to restore your system image if save on a dynamic disk back to the basic disk, but it cannot format the drive to match how the drive(s) were laid out at the time the system image was made.

 

[jimbo45]

Hi there

I'd use a backup program like Acronis -- you can then restore if you have to from bootable media. Gets round the "dynamic disk" etc problem as well.

If you don't want to pay try Paragon (works but slow) or Macrium -- people seem to think its good --never tried it myself but it "appears" to work.

The W7 built in facility is better than nothing but its really basic and restrictive. This is definitely one of those cases where almost any 3rd party solution is better.

Cheers
jimbo.

 

[geascian]

Thanks for all the replies.

For the moment I have stuck another disk in, quite a bit smaller but enough to hold some system backups, and left it as a basic disk.

I will take a look at the third party solutions you all mentioned.

Many Thanks