Backing up an O/S
 

I have recently reinstalled my O/S after having a few problems which i couldnt fix. I want to now back the installation onto another drive so i can just copy it across instead of doing a full install if needed in future.

Whats the best free software to use to do this?
Thanks

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

Whilst not sure about free software as I'd rather have something a bit more substantial than freeware to do what I need. Therefore I can only recommend Acronis True Image software.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

I got Acronis 2014 when I bought some hard drives from Scan the other month.

I have not used it to restore my pc yet, but the back up was really simple.

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/acron...store-sync-key

For £5 it's worth it.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

I've used DriveimageXML in the past to image servers and desktops.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

Beware that even if you make what appears to be an exact image the system may not properly boot from this disk if it is placed in C as the only HDD. The boot fails at the point of trying to load the Windows login screen or the desktop GUI.

This is because the PC allocates drives letter by letter at boot time but the OS as the final part of its load changes to HD0, HD1 etc and these are not necessarilly the same as C,D etc as they are stored on the drive itself.

The image was made on what the OS considers to be HD1 but the boot sequence expects HD0.

This information is stored in the partition \ boot data of the disk, not the filing system

This can be fixed but you need to use fdisk /mbr (Undocumented switch) This destroys the OS version of HD0 etc and forces the OS to reallocate the drives. I can't remember whether I used it from the recovery console or a 98 boot disk.

This is for XP but I think it's the same for the later versions. I know this because I increased the HDD size on an XP SP2 system without a reinstall by copying all the files across and then swapped D into C. ( NTLDR has to be the first file copied, similar to the old io.sys)

Software that operates outside the windows environment may be able to overcome this limit.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

Windows Backup. It's free and built into Windows.

It creates a full image that is guaranteed to boot properly when you restore it. There is no need to operate outside the Windows environment to do this.

heero, your information is outdated. Windows does not allocate drive letters sequentially at boot time. Drive letters are stored persistently on disk. This is what causes the problem if Windows actually mounts the clone after it is created. Copying files is nothing like creating an image or a clone. NTLDR does not exist anymore.

If you create an exact copy it will quite literally be an exact copy and behave exactly the same including booting exactly the same.

If you clone a disk from HD0 to HD1 and then boot from HD1 as the only disk like you claim, then it will boot perfectly fine because HD numbers are allocated sequentially at bootup, therefore whatever disk automatically becomes HD0 when it is the only disk.

Also do NOT use fdisk or fdisk /mbr. This is *not* an undocumented switch, it's quite well documented, but nonetheless the fdisk tool is out of date and has been obsolete for a decade. All current versions of Windows have replaced fdisk and ntldr. The correct tools to use are now diskpart and bootsect if you really need to fix the partition configuration, which you will not because a clone by definition already includes an identical copy of the MBR and boot sector.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

Well all I can say is that I successfully transferred a complete installed OS and all programs to a new bigger drive without knowledge of the Windows key or administrators password (reset ;))

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

By the sounds of it you were doing it with XP... Things have changed since then.

But hey, what do I know. I only transferred 20 complete installed OS' and all programs to a new bigger drive without the knowledge of the Windows key or administrators password... in three minutes each and without even switching them off or rebooting.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

Driveimage XML has instructions and a boot CD to fix the problem with Vista and 7 not wanting to boot after restoring an image.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

rather than backing up, I would recommend you clone the drive to an image, which can later be used to restore the drive exactly as it is should you need to. you can even restore it to a completely different drive if you like, provided it has enough space to hold the data in the image.

use something free like CloneZilla. fast and simple to use.

Re: Backing up an O/S
 

I use Acronis to clone my drives, never had an issue. Straight forward, never had any of the issues mentioned by Heero.