New upgrade install - cleanup before backup

[Stan Brown]

Oops, premature clicking :-(

And upside-down posting. Please quote and respond in the standard
way.

 

[Stan Brown]

It all depends on which mode you have Acronis set for when you make
the
system image. It has 2 modes, drive and partition where in drive mode
it creates an image of the entire contents of a drive, and partition
mode only images a specified partition on a drive.

There's also a file mode.

I do mine in drive mode where it won't matter if there is just one
partition or twenty, everything on the drive is in the image file
that Acronis creates. Also in drive mode, if the drive is bootable
when the image is created then it will also be bootable when the
image is restored to that drive or to a new drive.

Yes, and I wish I had done that. But, as discussed here in detail a
few weeks ago, Acronis (2011, at least, which is the version I have)
does not make the distinction AT ALL clear.

And to make things even worse, the backups list refers to a partition
backup as a "disk backup".

I liked Acronis 2007 on my XP system, but the user interface in 2011
is a big mess. If I had known it was going to be this way I would
never have bought it.

 

[Char Jackson]

It all depends on which mode you have Acronis set for when you make the
system image. It has 2 modes, drive and partition where in drive mode
it creates an image of the entire contents of a drive, and partition
mode only images a specified partition on a drive. I do mine in drive
mode where it won't matter if there is just one partition or twenty,
everything on the drive is in the image file that Acronis creates. Also
in drive mode, if the drive is bootable when the image is created then
it will also be bootable when the image is restored to that drive or to
a new drive.

Like you, I use drive mode exclusively on my boot/system drive. When I
need to do a restore, I want it to be immediately bootable, without
messing around with a system repair disc. Drive mode gives me that,
while partition mode would not.

 

[SC Tom]

Like you, I use drive mode exclusively on my boot/system drive. When I
need to do a restore, I want it to be immediately bootable, without
messing around with a system repair disc. Drive mode gives me that,
while partition mode would not.

Which is probably why I've never had an unbootable restoration. Since I only have the one partition on my drive, I've
never even seen the "partition mode." And I think that if I did have multiple partitions, I'd use drive mode anyhow
since anything down to a single file can be restored from a drive image.

 

[SC Tom]

And upside-down posting. Please quote and respond in the standard
way.

I did that the last couple of replies; just didn't bother with the cut and paste this time.

 

[- Bobb -]

It depends on which mode you were using when you created the system
image. In partition mode it only makes an image of specified
partitions, and in drive mode it images the entire drive which includes
the MBR which is a key element in making the drive bootable.

I plan to image the drive to have a bootable backup file so this will be
fine
Thanks for the input.

To confuse things, what I really plan to do:
Now - image the drive
In the FUTURE periodically backup the partitions to other files.
( Usually after a lot of updates/ Service Packs to keep 'up to date')
Reason - I do an image of the 300gb drive but partition d is only ~25gb.
When/if I mess up D - restore the "d.img file" partition. If I blow up the
drive, then re-image drive (to make bootable) , then restore the partition
to restore that OS.
Hopefully I'll never need to do either , but I test a lot of software and in
the past routinely " wipe/restore a partition to get back to normal" after
beta testing. But it's always been XP / Vista. now I've built another box
with Vista / Win7 and need to make orginal backups/images. ... In the past,
I used Ghost 2003 in XP and Vista and it worked fine, but target test drive
originally was FAT32. Now, with 3TB external backup drive and both Vista and
Win7 being NTFS - I thought I'd go with True Image (2009). I like it's
interface much better than Ghost 14, 15 ( which I also have)
Thanks again.
I'll do it this weekend and report back

 

[Roy Smith]

There's also a file mode.

And there's also an email backup option for MS Outlook as well.

Yes, and I wish I had done that. But, as discussed here in detail a
few weeks ago, Acronis (2011, at least, which is the version I have)
does not make the distinction AT ALL clear.

And to make things even worse, the backups list refers to a partition
backup as a "disk backup".

I liked Acronis 2007 on my XP system, but the user interface in 2011
is a big mess. If I had known it was going to be this way I would
never have bought it.

What's so confusing about it as it seems rather obvious to me... First
you start off clicking Disk and Partition Backup;

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/1443/20111215-1q5b-93kb

Which then opens up this window:

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/1443/20111215-voei-57kb

which by looking at it is obviously in partition mode, and if you click
on the line in the upper right that says switch to disk mode you see this:

http://my.jetscreenshot.com/1443/20111215-isyt-51kb

In this window you see your internal drives listed by their model info
with a listing of the partitions it contains. These screenshots were
from Acronis True Image Home 2011.


--

Roy Smith
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit
Thunderbird 8.0
Wednesday, December 14, 2011 7:31:09 PM

 

[- Bobb -]

New Win7 user, so any advice on the best way to do this from experienced
folks appreciated.

I installed Win7 Pro , Office 2007 and went to Windows update - installed
about 75 updates. Rebooted - update, then it installed SP1. ..... when all
done, I activated.
Now I want to do a full backup of the completed install, less stuff I
wouldn't need after a restore. I noticed that by doing the update that the
used space on the drive had grown by about 6gb. I did some research online
( looking for equivalent of NT$Uninstall file info) and found info about
the Winsxs folder: "If you destroy the DataStore, the cache (for hundreds,
if not thousands) of updates must be rebuilt; the installation history
cannot be rebuilt."
Another thread I found online said that in about 10 days that folder
should get purged of "old" files/folders.

Is it OK to first rename and then if no issues in a week, just delete it ?
http://social.technet.microsoft.com...s/thread/f5744a18-d4ca-4631-8324-878b9225251d
WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN - AUTOMATICALLY
is that after 10 days those files get purged as "no longer needed" by the
WSUS process

http://everythingsysadmin.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/cleanup-winsxs-after-windows-7-sp1-install/

Better way to clean up the disk ? Once scrubbed then I'll use Ghost 15 or
True Image to do a full backup - from XP ? ( not sure if they'll work on
Win7)

I turned that PC back on a few times since original post and WINSXS folder
is still 6+gb: not purged after 10 days. More reading online says ..
necessary.. in future if I add a device that Win7 KNEW about but I deleted
that folder = corruption/reinstall of Win7. So, I guess I'll have to image
the drive as-is to have it be functional.

 

[Jarvis]

I turned that PC back on a few times since original post and WINSXS
folder
is still 6+gb: not purged after 10 days. More reading online says ..
necessary.. in future if I add a device that Win7 KNEW about but I
deleted
that folder = corruption/reinstall of Win7. So, I guess I'll have to
image
the drive as-is to have it be functional.

The automatic purging refers to the folder
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download, where windows updates are saved
before they get installed. But the WinSxS folder just grows and grows!

 

[- Bobb -]

The automatic purging refers to the folder
%windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download, where windows updates are saved
before they get installed. But the WinSxS folder just grows and grows!

And this is their latest/best fix ? They think that the solution is to have
a permanent folder that grows until it fills the disk ( speculation of
course but that seems to be the concept )

Any logical for that WinSXS folder so that I could just leave it on a rarely
used part of the drive ( maybe it's own partition) ?