100% Backup Program

[chippyman]

Hi Guys


Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs an
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bi
of a pain,

i am a novice at this pc stuff, I was wondering if i could just back u
hard drive , then reinstall all files through the backup program, pleas
tell me is this possible , if not can you sugest my best option



many thanks for reading this post


chippy:

 

[John Williamson]

Hi Guys


Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is i
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs and
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bit
of a pain,

i am a novice at this pc stuff, I was wondering if i could just back up
hard drive , then reinstall all files through the backup program, please
tell me is this possible , if not can you sugest my best option

XXClone will do it.

http://www.xxclone.com/

The free version will make an exact sector by sector copy of your HD
onto another one. Use it as soon as you have a working system, then you
can get that back whenever you wish. The paid for version will let you
do incremental backups afterwards.

No re-installation of programs is necessary, as it will back up all the
information that makes it a working drive.

I've just used it to clone an XP installation onto a new HD over a USB
link in about an hour.

Use any backup program you wish to keep a seperate backup of your data.

 

[Ed Cryer]

Hi Guys


Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is i
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs and
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bit
of a pain,

i am a novice at this pc stuff, I was wondering if i could just back up
hard drive , then reinstall all files through the backup program, please
tell me is this possible , if not can you sugest my best option



many thanks for reading this post


chippy:|

Why do you keep reformatting? That's the crux here.
If you were to clone your HD and restore from the clone, then it would
be in exactly the same state as at the time you cloned it.
There are many backup-and-restore programs, some provided by MS, lots of
freeware.

I think you should address that question of why you reformat so often.
I don't. What I do is take regular clones, defrag now and again, and
leave the registry alone. Win7 is much better at self-regulation than
earlier Windows.

Ed

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Hi Guys


Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is i
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs and
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bit
of a pain,

i am a novice at this pc stuff, I was wondering if i could just back up
hard drive , then reinstall all files through the backup program, please
tell me is this possible , if not can you sugest my best option



many thanks for reading this post


chippy:|

Acronis True Image is very popular, as is the equivalent tool from
Paragon. However, Windows 7 has a "complete backup" option which does
the same thing (although not as transparently).

Build your 'essential' build, then image it. When desired, re-apply the
image and then restore backups of files created or changed since.
Windows 7's own backup is fine for this too.

It's a delicate balance knowing at what level to create the image. You
can have Windows 7 and Office 2007, say, and then a service pack and
Office 2010 comes along.

 

[Paul]

Hi Guys


Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is i
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs and
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bit
of a pain,

i am a novice at this pc stuff, I was wondering if i could just back up
hard drive , then reinstall all files through the backup program, please
tell me is this possible , if not can you sugest my best option



many thanks for reading this post


chippy:|

Windows 7 has some built-in features.

I don't use the backup function here, but I do use the System Image function.

http://www.davescomputertips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/open_system_image.png

That allows making one copy of your partitions.

For example, say I have two disk drives, one my internal drive with
the C: partition and System Reserved partition (no drive letter). The
other disk holds my backup info.

+--------+----------------+ +----------------------------------------------+
| SYSTEM | C: | ===> | USB external disk - holds two .vhd files, |
|RESERVED| Partition | | with backup folder one file per partition |
+--------+----------------+ +----------------------------------------------+

For example, say the disk on the left is a 500GB drive, has 26GB of files in C:
and 0.1GB files in System Reserved. After I run the System Image, the external
drive will have 26.1GB of data in a folder. One .vhd file will be 26GB in size,
the other .vhd file will be 0.1GB in size.

Now, say I drop my laptop on the floor, and the internal disk is broken.
I buy a new internal disk, but my operating system and data files are gone.

Then, I boot the Windows installer CD (or the recovery CD you burned), and
from there, there is a menu item to restore from the system image you made.
You connect up the USB drive again, before booting the computer with the
recovery CD, and then when you go to the restore prompt, the software will
scan all available disks, looking for the image made for restoration purposes.

That will put things back, as they are right now.

I use this feature, any time I'm doing dangerous experiments with the
laptop, and it has saved me twice now.

The actual Windows backup feature, is undoubtedly more complicated than that.
But the System Image feature does exactly what I want, so I don't have to
read up on the backup stuff at all. When you use backup, there will be
nice features like differential backup, which helps save on storage
space.

If you attempt to make a second System Image on your external USB
drive, it will overwrite the one that is already there. I discovered
this by accident. If you really wanted to preserve the System
Images separately, you can copy them somewhere else. And that's enough to
prevent them from being overwritten. But I only keep the one copy.
If you use the actual Backup feature in Windows 7, then that will manage
more copies for you, so you can pick what day to restore to. I'm not
interested in managing that stuff. One image is enough for me. I
just need one image, to protect me against my own stupidity.

Paul

 

[Ken Blake]

Hi Guys


Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is i
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs and
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bit
of a pain,

i am a novice at this pc stuff, I was wondering if i could just back up
hard drive , then reinstall all files through the backup program, please
tell me is this possible , if not can you sugest my best option

Several points:

1. Windows 7 (like earlier versions of Windows) comes with a backup
program.

2. The built-in Windows backup program is greatly inferior to almost
all the third-party backup programs.

3. Backing up is great for data files, but if you reformat and
reinstall Windows, having backed up programs will do you no good. If
you restore them, they will not work. Programs need to be reinstalled
from their original media.

4. If you "reformat quite often" you are making a serious mistake.
With a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to reinstall
Windows (7 or any other version). I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG
3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista,
and now Windows 7, each for the period of time before the next version
came out, and each on two or more machines here. I never reinstalled
any of them (with a single exception--a problem that I worked on for
weeks unsuccessfully), and I have never had anything more than an
occasional minor problem.

It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).

But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates, you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for
your system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work
the way you're comfortable with.

Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.

And perhaps most important: if you reformat and reinstall without
finding out what caused your problem, you will very likely repeat the
behavior that caused it, and quickly find yourself back in exactly the
same situation.

If you have problems, post the details of them here; it's likely that
someone can help you and a reinstallation won't be required.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Several points:

1. Windows 7 (like earlier versions of Windows) comes with a backup
program.

2. The built-in Windows backup program is greatly inferior to almost
all the third-party backup programs.

3. Backing up is great for data files, but if you reformat and
reinstall Windows, having backed up programs will do you no good. If
you restore them, they will not work. Programs need to be reinstalled
from their original media.

4. If you "reformat quite often" you are making a serious mistake.
With a modicum of care, it should never be necessary to reinstall
Windows (7 or any other version). I've run Windows 3.0, 3.1, WFWG
3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista,
and now Windows 7, each for the period of time before the next version
came out, and each on two or more machines here. I never reinstalled
any of them (with a single exception--a problem that I worked on for
weeks unsuccessfully), and I have never had anything more than an
occasional minor problem.

It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).

But it leaves you with all the work and all the problems. You have to
restore all your data backups, you have to reinstall all your
programs, you have to reinstall all the Windows and application
updates, you have to locate and install all the needed drivers for
your system, you have to recustomize Windows and all your apps to work
the way you're comfortable with.

Besides all those things being time-consuming and troublesome, you may
have trouble with some of them: can you find all your application CDs?
Can you find all the needed installation codes? Do you have data
backups to restore? Do you even remember all the customizations and
tweaks you may have installed to make everything work the way you
like? Occasionally there are problems that are so difficult to solve
that Windows should be reinstalled cleanly. But they are few and far
between; reinstallation should not be a substitute for
troubleshooting; it should be a last resort, to be done only after all
other attempts at troubleshooting by a qualified person have failed.

And perhaps most important: if you reformat and reinstall without
finding out what caused your problem, you will very likely repeat the
behavior that caused it, and quickly find yourself back in exactly the
same situation.

If you have problems, post the details of them here; it's likely that
someone can help you and a reinstallation won't be required.

Fully agree that the lazy "fix" is to format and reinstall, but this
reply seems unaware of the elegant solution that disk (or partition)
imaging provides. Among other things, a previously-created image allows
you to discard the existing disk, plug in a brand-new uninitialised hard
disk, connect the storage medium on which your image resides (can be
DVD, USB stick, USB hard-disk, network), boot from CD and after a few
simple clicks your PC is running exactly as it was when the image was
taken. Then you restore anything done since the image was taken
(particularly your backups of data files). I use Acronis True Image
mostly, and it regularly saves my bacon.

 

[Stan Brown]

Is there any hard drive backup program for win 7, My problem is i
reformat quite often, and then i have to reinstall all my programs and
updates and then phone microsoft for activations codes, this is a bit
of a pain,

"Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do this?"

"Well, don't do that."

Seriously, why on earth are you reformatting "quite often". It won't
fix your broken Shift key, you know.

 

[chippyman]

Hi Guys..
Many thanks for all your replies, First of all i am a newbie to p
computing, The reason i reformat quite often is i download a lot o
various programs to try, If i like them i will buy them if not i delet
them, i thought that by deleting the programs in ( programs unistal
etc,) it would not get rid of all the files, That was my main reason,
am using win 7

What i want to know is if i install a new hard drive and install al
programs updates, & activate windows then take a backup , would all thi
information be on the backup for future restores and if so would it hav
the win 7 operating system on it or would i have to reinstall window
first before using this backu

Sorry if my questions are a bit bland, not very good with pc stuff a
the moment but learning fast from all you good and helpful peopl

thank

chippy bo

 

[Paul]

Hi Guys...
Many thanks for all your replies, First of all i am a newbie to pc
computing, The reason i reformat quite often is i download a lot of
various programs to try, If i like them i will buy them if not i delete
them, i thought that by deleting the programs in ( programs unistall
etc,) it would not get rid of all the files, That was my main reason, i
am using win 7.

What i want to know is if i install a new hard drive and install all
programs updates, & activate windows then take a backup , would all this
information be on the backup for future restores and if so would it have
the win 7 operating system on it or would i have to reinstall windows
first before using this backup


Sorry if my questions are a bit bland, not very good with pc stuff at
the moment but learning fast from all you good and helpful people


thanks

chippy bob

If you do a System Image, you can put it all back.

And, without having to reinstall. You boot the Win7 installer DVD, and
use the menu item in there. (Or use the Win7 recovery CD that they make
you burn, as an alternative.)

Make the image, from here. Store it on some other hard drive
(like a USB drive connected to the computer).

http://www.davescomputertips.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/open_system_image.png

Later, when your internal hard drive breaks and you want to restore
from the image you created, you boot the installer DVD and will
see this menu. Using the "System Image Recovery" middle item,
will copy the image from your external USB drive, back onto
the brand new internal disk drive.

(Picture of the menu)

http://0.tqn.com/d/pcsupport/1/0/i/4/-/-/windows-7-startup-repair-7.jpg

*******

The program Macrium Reflect Free, does something very similar. It
uses VSS Shadow Copy (a built-in Windows function), to back up the
system to an external disk. And later, you can do a "bare metal restore"
to the internal drive.

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

http://download.cnet.com/Macrium-Reflect-Free/3000-2242_4-10845728.html?part=dl-&subj=dl&tag=button

To do a restore later, you have to prepare the Macrium boot CD. I
expect this is all laid out for you when you run the program. You'll
need some blank media to be able to burn a CD. As long as the CD
drive is in your computer boot order (it should be), then that
Macrium CD will be able to boot. The purpose of backup programs
having their own boot CDs, is so they can do a "bare metal recovery",
allowing restoration to a brand new, blank hard drive.

Paul

 

[Ed Cryer]

On Sat, 4 Feb 2012 08:08:38 +1100, chippyman ********
It's my belief that this mistaken notion stems from the technical
support people at many of the larger OEMs. Their solution to almost
any problem they don't quickly know the answer to is "reformat and
reinstall." That's the perfect solution for them. It gets you off the
phone quickly, it almost always works, and it doesn't require them to
do any real troubleshooting (a skill that most of them obviously don't
possess in any great degree).

******

The manufacturers do a similar thing with returned boxes. They diagnose
"something wrong on the mother board", and then simply put a new one in.
I'm sure that quite a few returned ones must just have blown fuses (OK,
so there's a question as to what caused the fuse to blow).
I guess the points you mentioned above apply; and it's probably cheaper
than employing skilled technicians to trace the faulty component, and
replace that.

Ed

 

[Stan Brown]

The reason i reformat quite often is i download a lot of
various programs to try, If i like them i will buy them if not i delete
them, i thought that by deleting the programs in ( programs unistall
etc,) it would not get rid of all the files, That was my main reason,

A properly written program should remove all the installed files when
you uninstall it through Control Panel » Programs and Features. If
you're a suspenders-and-belt man, you can take a system restore point
before installing each program (good practice anyway) and then revert
to that restore point after uninstalling the program.

You should in any case have a good anti-virus program, such as Avast
or Microsoft Security Essentials, and keep it updated.

Frequent reformatting is really wasted motion.

Your Shift key is still broken. Unless you're 4, please use standard
English if you want to be taken seriously.

 

[Philip Herlihy]

Hi Guys...
Many thanks for all your replies, First of all i am a newbie to pc
computing, The reason i reformat quite often is i download a lot of
various programs to try, If i like them i will buy them if not i delete
them, i thought that by deleting the programs in ( programs unistall
etc,) it would not get rid of all the files, That was my main reason, i
am using win 7.

What i want to know is if i install a new hard drive and install all
programs updates, & activate windows then take a backup , would all this
information be on the backup for future restores and if so would it have
the win 7 operating system on it or would i have to reinstall windows
first before using this backup


Sorry if my questions are a bit bland, not very good with pc stuff at
the moment but learning fast from all you good and helpful people


thanks

chippy bob

Yes - if you take a disk image, format or replace the disk and then
restore the image, the PC will be exactly as it was before: Windows
(activated), all programs, all settings, and all data, just as before.
As an alternative to imaging to a seris of files, all these tools allow
to 'clone' a disk, which you can then subsequently swap with the
original when convenient. All sorts of possibilities.

If you restore an image from some time ago, you're inevitably
overwriting files more recently changed/added, and programs
installed/reconfigured, etc. So you need to take account of subsequent
changes. Some imaging tools allow you to do "differential" images, but
I'm not convinced they save much space (especially if you've
defragmented the disk since the first image!). Disk imaging is a good
thing for you to be doing: either Windows *complete* backup, Acronis
True Image, or Paragon (can't remember the name). The latter two allow
you to create a bootable CD from which you can create or restore images,
often using an external USB hard drive. Some people migrate their data
to a separate partition from the 'system' partition, to make imaging and
restoring less bloated by all those photos and videos, etc.

Acronis True Image has a "Try & Decide" mode. I've never used it, but
it's designed to do just what you want, by the sound of it.

Another thing you might find useful is Revo Uninstaller. This excellent
tool (free version is perfectly adequate) analyses an installation
before running the proprietory uninstall facility, and then scans for
left-overs. I found over 900 files and countless registry entries left
over once when uninstalling a big-name antivirus package, and Revo
Uninstaller has never harmed a machine I've used it on (and that's many,
many machines). Recommended warmly.

Dont' worry about being a noob - we've all been there: nobody's born
knowing this stuff. You're asking the right questions.

 

[Ken Blake]

******

The manufacturers do a similar thing with returned boxes. They diagnose
"something wrong on the mother board", and then simply put a new one in.
I'm sure that quite a few returned ones must just have blown fuses (OK,
so there's a question as to what caused the fuse to blow).
I guess the points you mentioned above apply; and it's probably cheaper
than employing skilled technicians to trace the faulty component, and
replace that.

Yes, I'm sure you're right.

The same is true with us and most of our hardware. Most components are
inexpensive enough that if doesn't work, it's usually cheaper to
replace it, rather than pay a skilled technician to troubleshoot and
fix it.

 

[Ken Blake]

Hi Guys...
Many thanks for all your replies, First of all i am a newbie to pc
computing, The reason i reformat quite often is i download a lot of
various programs to try, If i like them i will buy them if not i delete
them, i thought that by deleting the programs in ( programs unistall
etc,) it would not get rid of all the files, That was my main reason,

What you say is usually true; uninstalling a program does not always
get rid of all its files and especially all its registry entries. But
note the following two points:

1. See the other replies you've gotten. Doing a recovery from a system
image will put it all back the way it was.

2. Even if you don't do what I said in point number 1, it does not
matter if you have some leftover registry entries (or even leftover
files). They aren't used and having them there doesn't hurt you. As I
said earlier, reformatting and reinstalling is almost always a bad
mistake, and this is *not* a good reason for doing so.

 

[chippyman]

I have downloaded acronis true image 2012, try and buy version, I hav
done what some of you suggested, i have done a bootable cd and als
image backup of complete c: drive on another spare hard drive i have

One thing i am not sure of is if for any reason my hard drive fails
the one with original programs, activation etc on) and i have t
rep[lace failed hard drive with new one, Do i have to install win 7 an
acronis program first before i can use the backup image from spare har
drive

Thanks again for your time

chipp

 

[Paul]

I have downloaded acronis true image 2012, try and buy version, I have
done what some of you suggested, i have done a bootable cd and also
image backup of complete c: drive on another spare hard drive i have,

One thing i am not sure of is if for any reason my hard drive fails (
the one with original programs, activation etc on) and i have to
rep[lace failed hard drive with new one, Do i have to install win 7 and
acronis program first before i can use the backup image from spare hard
drive .

Thanks again for your time


chippy

You boot the "bootable cd" you made.

Why not test the bootable cd, and see whether it boots or not ?
Bootable cds should not "do things", unless you tell them to.
It should be safe to boot, as a test.

Backup programs come with "bare metal recovery" or not. You want
a backup program that has that feature. Such a backup tool comes
with its bootable cd image. You prepare the cd, along with your
backup on the external hard drive. When your internal hard drive
dies and you install a new blank hard drive, the bootable cd is
what you use to operate the computer during the "restore" phase
of the operation. After the bootable cd has copied the external
archive back onto the hard drive, then you can boot the internal
hard drive again (to Windows 7).

So no "installing of Windows 7" is required. As long as the
bootable cd works (and you test it now, to make sure), you're
all set. Your working copy of Windows 7, is on that external
hard drive, in an image form.

Note that, some cd media is unreliable. They don't seem to make
the stuff any more where I live, but at one time you could buy
"cdrw" discs, which are re-writeable. I had some of those go bad,
after only three months. And they could not be re-written when they
failed. They were just... dead. As a consequence, any time I make
"bootable cd" for the purposes of recovery, I put a copy of the cd
onto the external hard drive as well. If the bootable cd turns out
to be defective five years from now, I just burn a new one, using
the image I stored on the hard drive. (All the DVDs to recreate my
laptop, have been backed up on a hard drive as well.)

If you need to copy the cd, and don't have any other options for
doing it, give "Imgburn" a try. It's a very good (free) burning
program that I like. Some of the other commercial programs I have,
they don't like to output an ISO9660 file when they copy a CD.
On Windows, Imgburn is the one I'd go to if that happened.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imgburn

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0a/ImgBurn_screenshot.png

On Linux, I use the "K3B" program, to make copies of bootable cds.
It's better than the horrible "Brasero" that Ubuntu includes. I
even remastered a Ubuntu image, for the sole purpose of including
K3B and removing Brasero, so I'd always have an option for running
the burner. All Brasero seems capable of doing, is showing a
greyed out icon, meaning it refuses to do stuff. Very useful.
(In the picture here, at this level it gives the impression it's
working. Click a button though, and the dumbed-down interface is
greyed out.)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/87/Brasero3-2-0.png/800px-Brasero3-2-0.png

Paul

 

[Philip Herlihy]

I have downloaded acronis true image 2012, try and buy version, I have
done what some of you suggested, i have done a bootable cd and also
image backup of complete c: drive on another spare hard drive i have,

One thing i am not sure of is if for any reason my hard drive fails (
the one with original programs, activation etc on) and i have to
rep[lace failed hard drive with new one, Do i have to install win 7 and
acronis program first before i can use the backup image from spare hard
drive .

Thanks again for your time


chippy

Put the new blank disk in the machine. Put the Acronis CD in the drive.
Plug in the USB drive (with the image on it) and power it up.

Boot the machine, using whichever function key brings up the boot menu.
It's F12 on Dells, F9 on the HP I worked on yesterday: the designated
key usually shown briefly as you boot normally, and if it's really fast
video it!

Select to boot from CD, and you'll see the crude Acronis environment
start up. Follow the on-screen instructions to restore the image onto
the new disk. Reboot normally, and it should come up exactly as it was
when you made the image. Magic.

 

[Char Jackson]

I have downloaded acronis true image 2012, try and buy version, I have
done what some of you suggested, i have done a bootable cd and also
image backup of complete c: drive on another spare hard drive i have,

One thing i am not sure of is if for any reason my hard drive fails (
the one with original programs, activation etc on) and i have to
rep[lace failed hard drive with new one, Do i have to install win 7 and
acronis program first before i can use the backup image from spare hard
drive .

When you need to, you'll boot from your bootable Acronis CD and use it
to restore the image you created. If you created an image of your
entire C drive, rather than just the C partition, your system will be
restored to its state as of the time you made the image, and it will
be bootable. If you only imaged the C partition, rather than the
entire disk, it will most likely not be bootable but can be repaired
with a Windows System Restore CD.

Now that you have Acronis and a spare drive, another option that
removes the ambiguity is to make a clone of your existing Windows
drive. With a clone, if your current drive fails or becomes badly
corrupted, you can simply disconnect it, connect the cloned drive, and
reboot.

Either way, you should do what you can to test your backup to make
sure it will work when you need it.

 

[Six Underground]

If you only imaged the C partition, rather than the
entire disk, it will most likely not be bootable but can be repaired
with a Windows System Restore CD.

Is this an Acronis idiom, or is this generally true of all drive
imaging programs?

On my primary drive, C: occupies the entire primary partition. I have
two logical drives, D: and E:, defined in the extended partition. I
generally only image C:, since the logical drives contain no data that
need to be backed up. I'm using Macrium Reflect for this purpose.

What kind of repair operations are typically necessary? I'm still on
XP, and am fine with using Recovery Console if necessary.

Regards.