How to make an image file of main hard drive?

[highnote]

Does anyone know how to make a backup image file of a main hard drive that can be used in the event the main drive crashes or gets a virus and needs to be reformatted?

I reformatted my drive and reinstalled all my important software from a backup external hard drive.

In the future, if this drive ever needs to be reformatted, I'd like to be able to copy the image file it so that I wouldn't have to reinstall windows and all the other basic software I use.

It took about 14 hours to reformat and reinstall everything. I would think an image file could be copied over in a couple of hours max.

[GameTheory]

If you have Win7, it is built-in (image backup).

Otherwise, or for more flexibility even with Windows 7, Acronis makes a very nice commercial product that "just works".

On the free end, use something called DriveXML. That works great, but there are a few gotchas you need to know when trying to restore a boot disk. Namely you have to make a boot CD that has a version of DriveXML on it and change the hard drive ID just before rebooting after a restore. (Otherwise, your files will be restored but your system won't boot.) As long as you have a second machine available (with a burner), you can actually wait to prepare that stuff only when you need it (i.e. after a crash), but the DriveXML people themselves give a poor job explaining how to restore a boot drive so that it will boot again (a non boot drive is a piece of cake). I can point to some detailed restore instructions if you're interested, but making the actual backups is easy.

I have restored whole systems in a jiffy with both Acronis and DriveXML (and the Windows 7 built-in image backup)...

[bigmack]

Free: http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm

$45: http://www.drive-image.com/

[JustRalph]

drive image is nice

make sure you get the one that works best for our version of Winders

I have an old version and it pukes or makes hissing noises on my latest computers........but the damn thing worked pretty good back in the day

Norton Ghost was my old favorite........ but it has fallen off

[Red Knave]

I've been using Casper for several years and it 'just works' too.

http://www.fssdev.com/

[GameTheory]

Been playing around with the free version of ToDo Backup that mac posted for a couple weeks -- it is very nice and has "image" options that I've not seen from a free program (including incremental images, the ability to mount those images from different points in time etc). I had used a previous 1.x version of their program and didn't like it -- it was actually a clone of another brand so I think their developers split off and forked it or something. But this is a completely new program (version 2.x) and recommended. (That company also has good free partition tools and some other stuff.)

Still can't find a free program that does incremental file backups the way I like. ToDo backup and others will let you pick a *point in time* that you want to grab a previous version from, but none of the free programs will actually let you browse the available different versions of a file (you have to remember or guess what day it was when the file was in the state you want to go back to). Some of the commercial programs have this feature, which I think is a must for incremental backups because if you can't find the version you want to restore (without spending hours), the backup isn't much good to you.

[PeteKoch]

If your OS is Windows 7, good news. I've used their built-in drive clone utility with good results on my netbook.

If your OS is XP (which I'm still using on my desktop), I would recommend Power Quest Drive Image 7.0. I think Norton bought them out and then killed the product, so it hasn't been updated since the Clinton administration (I exaggerate), but it has never let me down. Used it just yesterday to restore my C-Drive after I picked up one of those redirect trojan viruses. If you're really lucky, you might find a copy on eBay (or elsewhere) for little more than the shipping.

BTW, I'm a big believer in hard drive partitions. My C-Drive is for Windows; everything else goes on the D, E or H (second hard drive) or on removable media, e.g., thumb drives. That way, after an image restore, I'm pretty much done with the recovery.

Good luck.....

[Dave Schwartz]

I have never done an image backup. Tell me this...

Imagine your hard drive fails and you have to replace it. When you replace it, probably you will replace it with a newer, faster, or at least bigger model.

Second possibility - Your motherboard fails and you decide to replace the computer. Or, you replace the motherboard, processor and, of course, RAM to (again) bigger, faster, better, newer.

So, my question is this - Will that disk image actually get you back up and running or will the drivers be an issue?

Regards,
Dave Schwartz

[DJofSD]

I have never done an image backup. Tell me this...

Imagine your hard drive fails and you have to replace it. When you replace it, probably you will replace it with a newer, faster, or at least bigger model.

Second possibility - Your motherboard fails and you decide to replace the computer. Or, you replace the motherboard, processor and, of course, RAM to (again) bigger, faster, better, newer.

So, my question is this - Will that disk image actually get you back up and running or will the drivers be an issue?

Regards,
Dave Schwartz

Let me tailgate on Dave's email.

I recall working with my brother to recover a PC using the same strategy -- having a physical image copy of a boot drive. He attempted to recover the system by taking that drive and putting into a new system unit. It did not work, and, if I recall correctly, it was because there were significant differences that the HAL could not handle. We basically learned that recovering a system meant reinstalling Windows then recovering the user's files.

That was some years ago -- I don't even remember what flavor of Windows -- it could not even apply any longer.

[Native Texan III]

I have never done an image backup. Tell me this...

Imagine your hard drive fails and you have to replace it. When you replace it, probably you will replace it with a newer, faster, or at least bigger model.

Second possibility - Your motherboard fails and you decide to replace the computer. Or, you replace the motherboard, processor and, of course, RAM to (again) bigger, faster, better, newer.

So, my question is this - Will that disk image actually get you back up and running or will the drivers be an issue?

Regards,
Dave Schwartz

Same computer - new hard drive - image works.

Different/ new computer - for the boot drive only the drivers will be wrong and the version of Windows the old computer's version. What you can do then is just install the data files from your image - you do not have to install every file on the image. Once that is done, take a new image of the new computer and you are back in business. If you originally put all data on another partition than the boot partition it is even easier.

There were problems with once reliable software such as Acronis that just never caught up with change. Easus Todo free or paid is one of the very best of the modern - one click ones.

[GameTheory]

Yeah, new hard drive in old computer, you can usually be back up & running in no time. Otherwise, if a whole new machine then

A) You can try to restore it as the system drive -- depending on what's different if may be able to start up and get the new drivers it needs, etc. (If it won't start, try safe mode to remove old drivers.)

B) If it just isn't going to work, you can go ahead and do a fresh install on a new drive, then do your restore it to a secondary drive (even though it has an OS on it doesn't mean you have to boot from it) and just copy over what you need.

Besides the obvious benefits of restoring from a broken drive, images allow you to recover to the SAME drive but just to go back in time a day or two after you've done something stupid that corrupted your system or you got a virus and what to make sure it is gone (if you know when you got it). The image program built-in to Win7 is sufficient for this. But programs like this Todo Backup or DriveXML allow you to also pick and choose what to restore. Most of the programs are black boxish as far the the format of the saved data -- the selling point of DriveXML is that the data is saved as plain-text xml files so if there is some corruption or something of your image files, a clever programmer could still read most of the files.

When using an image program, the first thing you should do is make sure you understand the recovery process so you've got everything you need when an actual problem occurs. Make an image, and then go ahead and restore it over your current system. This will be nerve-wracking, but once you see how easy it is you will trust the system.

[Dave Schwartz]

GT & Native,

So, if the machine changes you are going to be forced to re-install all your software anyway.

IMHO, that defeats the purpose of the image backup.

I would prefer to just back up my data files and then restore them. Besides, the backup is so much smaller, which seriously matters if you are looking to store offsite (i.e. cloud storage - which is a great topic for another thread, BTW).

Dave

[GameTheory]

So, if the machine changes you are going to be forced to re-install all your software anyway.No, most of the time the restore will work. Windows is pretty good about that now. It may ask you to "reactivate" your Windows, but in general it works fine. Usually any driver problems occur JUST after booting (most of the time there actually are no driver problems because it recognizes the hardware has changed and doesn't even load the old drivers), and those can be gotten around by using safe mode. But if it is really really stuck for some reason, unless you've actually thrown away the old computer or everything has been destroyed or stolen, then before restoring to your glorious new machine then go ahead and restore to your old one and then either remove most of the hardware drivers then (and do a new image of that) or use one of those migration programs to get your new machine going. I think you're overstating this old/new hardware issue. It really doesn't come up much.

IMHO, that defeats the purpose of the image backup.When your OS gets corrupted and won't boot, and your image gets you back up and running in 10 minutes, you'll appreciate it, I promise.

I would prefer to just back up my data files and then restore them. Besides, the backup is so much smaller, which seriously matters if you are looking to store offsite (i.e. cloud storage - which is a great topic for another thread, BTW).You should do both. You can restore an image to get back up and running quickly and fix any major OS issues, and then restore from your file backups (which are probably done more frequently) to get all the non-system files back up-to-date.

[Dave Schwartz]

GT,

I completely agree if, as you said, most of the time you can restore the disk image.

But, if that is the case, then I should be able to take a disk image and take it a different computer and simply install it even if the hardware is totally different.

True?

[GameTheory]

GT,

I completely agree if, as you said, most of the time you can restore the disk image.

But, if that is the case, then I should be able to take a disk image and take it a different computer and simply install it even if the hardware is totally different.

True?More or less. It would work as well as if you actually took your hard drive out of one computer and put it into another -- if you are doing a planned migration there are better options though. You will have to change drivers, etc, but that just isn't as impossible as most make it out with modern Windows (although you do have to know what you are doing). You can't actually make a clone computer and have both keep working because of Windows activation issues, but yeah it's just a copy of a hard drive so that's what it is like. Also, in some cases certain applications won't like the change because they have their own license services that are also monitoring hardware and so you'd have to reinstall or get a new code from the manufacturer. That is rare though.

You can also come up with some scenario where you can't just plug it back in, but so what? Most failures are due to:

A) virus/trojan messing up OS
B) hard drive total failure
C) corrupted data on drive from power failure or whatever
D) bad install, doing something stupid where you just wish "if only I could go back to the way it was yesterday!"

Images get you back to where you what to be much faster than a big reinstall in those cases, and with incremental images, you don't have to do a whole image each time.

[JustRalph]

My experience is the same as GT

If you don't have any really fancy hardware on the new box, it's almost seamless

Even if you do have something windows doesn't recognize, you can download the driver for almost anything.....and a ten minute delay is about all you will incur

[PeteKoch]

You should do both. You can restore an image to get back up and running quickly and fix any major OS issues, and then restore from your file backups (which are probably done more frequently) to get all the non-system files back up-to-date.

Great advice. In my case, though, I had all my userfiles either in a different partition of my primary drive or on my secondary drive. Voila! My non-system files were not affected by the restore and were up-to-date. Gate to wire in 10 minutes !

If you don't want to partition or don't have a secondary, I would recommend an external SSD. They're fast, they've come down in price, and you can get tons of capacity cheap.

[headhawg]

If you don't want to partition or don't have a secondary, I would recommend an external SSD. They're fast, they've come down in price, and you can get tons of capacity cheap.Tons of capacity cheap??? 512GB SSD drives are around $900. 256 gig drives are still in the $450 range. Perhaps you meant a regular drive with an eSATA or USB 3 connection? You can get 3TB solutions for around $150.

[tupper]

Does anyone know how to make a backup image file of a main hard drive that can be used in the event the main drive crashes or gets a virus and needs to be reformatted?If you just want to make an exact copy of your hard drive, try Clonezilla: http://www.clonezilla.org/

Clonezilla is a free liveCD/USB. It handles almost all types of partitions (Windows, Mac, Linux, BSD, etc.) It worked flawlessly for me, and it is as quick as you can get (ie. it works as fast as your hardware can copy). Pretty simple and easy.

In regards to difficulties transplanting drives from one computer to another, I have never had any serious problems booting transplanted Linux drives. However, I recently tried move an OEM XP drive into a new machine, and I couldn't get it to boot -- not even in safe mode.

[GameTheory]

In regards to difficulties transplanting drives from one computer to another, I have never had any serious problems booting transplanted Linux drives. However, I recently tried move an OEM XP drive into a new machine, and I couldn't get it to boot -- not even in safe mode.There is a trick involving Windows boot drives which I was talking about at the beginning of the thread in regard to DriveXML. The fancier programs handle it automatically as part of their restore process, but some don't. There is a "DriveID" in the boot record which when you restore to a new drive needs to be changed to a new value (most would assume it needs to stay the same). If you don't change it, it usually won't boot.

That's why I say make sure you understand the restore process for the particular product you are using and give it a practice run before you actually have a real problem...

[PeteKoch]

Tons of capacity cheap??? 512GB SSD drives are around $900. 256 gig drives are still in the $450 range. Perhaps you meant a regular drive with an eSATA or USB 3 connection? You can get 3TB solutions for around $150.

I guess it depends on your definition of tons. Personally, I don't need much. I bought a 120GB external SSD online (USB connection) at Walmart for @$35. My biggest use of space is actually the drive image files. Next is about 8GB for my music. That's a lot of music; it would take almost 4 days to play it all on my iPod. I have very little video to speak of, just a few short clips. No movies. Probably why I don't quite get why anyone needs 5TB, unless he's running a business.

[GameTheory]

I guess it depends on your definition of tons. Personally, I don't need much. I bought a 120GB external SSD online (USB connection) at Walmart for @$35. My biggest use of space is actually the drive image files. Next is about 8GB for my music. That's a lot of music; it would take almost 4 days to play it all on my iPod. I have very little video to speak of, just a few short clips. No movies. Probably why I don't quite get why anyone needs 5TB, unless he's running a business.
Digital photography!

[PeteKoch]

There is a trick involving Windows boot drives which I was talking about at the beginning of the thread in regard to DriveXML. The fancier programs handle it automatically as part of their restore process, but some don't. There is a "DriveID" in the boot record which when you restore to a new drive needs to be changed to a new value (most would assume it needs to stay the same). If you don't change it, it usually won't boot.


Somewhat related: had a rather dicey situation when I created a dual boot for XP and Linux. Creating the dual boot was a snap. Getting it back did require manual intervention in the boot record. Most of my devices got remapped in the process, which also took a bit of work to reconfigure back. Now I run Linux from a live CD. Takes a while to boot, but after it does, Firefox probably still runs faster from the CD than on XP running from the hard drive. If I weren't so dependent on Excel with VBA, I'd convert my desktop to straight Linux. Then I probably wouldn't have to worry about creating and restoring image files.

[headhawg]

I guess it depends on your definition of tons. Personally, I don't need much. I bought a 120GB external SSD online (USB connection) at Walmart for @$35.What brand/model # is it? I have searched and searched for SSDs -- internal or external -- and they nowhere near approach that kind of low dollar amount. I mean, 40GBs are still near $80 bucks. The best price that I could find was an internal 60GB for $85 after rebate. Either you got the deal of the century or you're mistaken about the kind of drive. That 35 bucks for an SSD is a "flea market" price.

[tupper]

There is a "DriveID" in the boot record which when you restore to a new drive needs to be changed to a new value (most would assume it needs to stay the same). If you don't change it, it usually won't boot.
That's why I say make sure you understand the restore process for the particular product you are using and give it a practice run before you actually have a real problem...I wasn't restoring to a new drive -- I was taking a Windows boot drive out of an old machine and trying to boot it in a new machine. It didn't work.

[tupper]

Somewhat related: had a rather dicey situation when I created a dual boot for XP and Linux. Creating the dual boot was a snap. Getting it back did require manual intervention in the boot record. Most of my devices got remapped in the process, which also took a bit of work to reconfigure back.Not understanding "Getting it back."

Did you install Linux and the boot loader after Windows? or vice versa?

[PeteKoch]

Not understanding "Getting it back."

Did you install Linux and the boot loader after Windows? or vice versa?

It's been over a year, so I don't remember exactly. What I do remember is spending quite a bit of time making sure I did it in the correct sequence.

I am no longer interested in a dual boot or installing Linux straight up. When I do run Linux, it's from a live CD on my netbook. That PC is a bit underpowered and Linux runs a lot faster than Win7, even from the CD (although waiting for it to boot does require patience). And since I was able to run my essential stuff on the netbook when my desktop died (see the thread about opinions on backup software), I'm going to leave it alone.

[tupper]

What I do remember is spending quite a bit of time making sure I did it in the correct sequence.It's not that complicated to create a dual boot of Windows and Linux. However, it is much much easier to install Windows first (making sure it's defragged), and, then, install Linux second.

Windows doesn't play nice with other OSs, so if you install it second, it borks the universal boot loader and the master boot record.


That PC is a bit underpowered and Linux runs a lot faster than Win7, even from the CD (although waiting for it to boot does require patience).You can speed-up boot times by booting instead from a live USB and/or using a quicker distro.

An easy way to create a live USB version of your Linux distro is to use UNetbootin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNetbootin) (there is a Windows version).

If you are using Ubuntu on your live CD or one of the other mainstream Linux distros, you could probably speed up the boot time merely by choosing simpler, faster-booting distro. Your distro choice depends on what you want to do and on your Linux skill level.

If you just want to browse the web safely with your hard drives unmounted, you could boot something like Parted Magic (http://partedmagic.com/doku.php), which is a small live CD mainly used for partitioning/rescue, but it boots quickly (and doesn't ask any configuration questions), auto-connects to your LAN and includes a web browser. It doesn't mount your hard drives unless you ask it to, so they can remain totally isolated. I use Parted Magic when I bank online.

There are a lot of other distros that boot quickly. Aptosid (http://aptosid.com/), comes to mind, and it is almost a full featured live CD, as I recall. Of course, there are quick-booting tiny distros such as Slitaz (http://www.slitaz.org/) and Tiny Core (http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/welcome.html). Slitaz is probably the more "user friendly" of those two.

[Track Collector]

Free: http://www.todo-backup.com/products/home/free-backup-software.htm

$45: http://www.drive-image.com/

I have some questions (not necessarily specific) to R-Drive Image.

Given that some viruses and browser hijackers delay before doing their damage, how does get a good image backup (i.e. one that does not have the harmful files on it)?

Also, any recommendations for external hard drives (for back up purposes), and how much bigger in size should they be relative to the disk being backed up?

[Track Collector]

I have some questions (not necessarily specific) to R-Drive Image.

Given that some viruses and browser hijackers delay before doing their damage, how does get a good image backup (i.e. one that does not have the harmful files on it)?

Also, any recommendations for external hard drives (for back up purposes), and how much bigger in size should they be relative to the disk being backed up?

Anyone?

[Red Knave]

Given that some viruses and browser hijackers delay before doing their damage, how does get a good image backup (i.e. one that does not have the harmful files on it)?
That is always a possibility and now you know why you should always have more than 1 backup. ;) Your best defense against this is good anti-vrus/anti-malware software. Hope for the best, plan for the worst.

Also, any recommendations for external hard drives (for back up purposes), and how much bigger in size should they be relative to the disk being backed up?
I have several backup drives, all about the same size as the disk(s) I'm backing up. Let your wallet be your guide here. For an image type backup, you probably should have at least the size of the disk your backing up. I don't know if any of the software mentioned can actually compress an image and I know I wouldn't trust one that did.