For all who have OS trouble with their PC/Laptops

Witchfinder_General

Why, oh why, oh why, do many of you never have a decent (and it doesn't have to be current) disc image to hand. So you can reinstall your OS after a disaster (and many of you do seem to have disasters).

I use Paragon drive image, but there are a few out there from the likes of Norton and Acronis.

Got fed up reformatting, installing XP/Vista/Win7, downloading updates, installing Firewall/Anti Virus, downloading updates. Reinstalling other programs and updating (and thats with up to date program updates saved to CD), It took two days usually to get everything the way it was.

Drive Image software has restored the lot in just under 10 minutes. (Re-installed via their bootable CD which acts like the old Windows System disk. As long as it can find the drive you have saved your backup to, removable or otherwise).

Standard (non-imaging) backups are file-oriented: Each file you're backing up gets copied to the backup medium, one file after another. That's OK, as far as it goes, but it usually means it's difficult or impossible to copy any files that are in use by the operating system itself or by the user; your backup may not be as complete as you think!

There can also be problems when you restore a standard backup: Again, in-use files may not be able to be restored properly, even if they were originally saved OK. Plus, whatever files can be restored will be overlaid onto an existing setup, so you end up with a mix of freshly-restored files alongside old files. This means restoring from a standard backup may not be able to correct some software problems, and may not be able to bring your system back to "like new" condition, no matter what you do.

"Imaging" a hard drive is very different. It's disk oriented instead of file oriented: The imaging tool copies the first sector of the hard drive, no matter what it contains, then copies the second sector, and so forth. This means that the image contains not just a bunch of files, but an exact copy of your hard drive's complete contents AND structure.

This means that an image gets EVERYTHING, including the placement and order of files on the drive. Thus, if you image a defragged hard drive, and later restore that image, you'll also be restoring the drive to the freshly-defragged state. In contrast, restoring a normal backup usually results in increased fragmentation.

In practice, this means that if (for example) you make an image of a fresh install of an OS, with everything tuned; tweaked, and optimized to perfection, you can restore the drive to that perfect condition at any time just by reverting to the stored image. Think about it; No matter how scrambled or messed up your system is, just restore the image and you're back to like-new perfection in a matter of minutes!

But a good imaging tool can do even more: It also will let you selectively restore individual files, if that's all you need: You don't "have" to restore everything in the image, unless you want to.

You can see why imaging is such a big deal: It not only provides all the benefits of file-by-file traditional backups, but also gives you much more - the ability to totally restore your system to a 100% perfect state, in minutes.

So go on, all you people who seem to have nothing but snags, spend a couple of bob on some decent imaging software, you know you want to.

RussJK

In other words, he's saying once you've reinstalled and set up everything the way you want it, then you can clone an image of your hard drive.

With this cloned image you can restore an exact copy of it if anything ever goes wrong.

I use Clonezilla (full featured, free):
http://clonezilla.org/

also Redo Backup look easier for newer users with its graphical UI:
http://redobackup.org/

Dave_C_2

Sadly it's human nature.

Those of us who have been around a bit are tech savvy enough to restore from scratch if the need arises. At the same time we know how to avoid many of the problems seen by the newbies by using virus scanners, back-ups and so forth, so the need to restore never or rarely arises. *

Newbies however, just use the PC without any precautions whatsoever and will only worry when it actually crashes or goes extremely slow.

For every poster wanting help on this forum, there must be dozens who will take the PC to a repair shop or simply buy a new one!


* Now that I have almost said that it won't happen to me, I will now look at getting some disc image software - just in case.

Dave

spud17

Do the disk image but.....
With XP, after say 12mths, I'd say go for the re-install, to eliminate all the carp which accumulates.
Especially if you like trying new software.:D

However now I've got Windows 7, it somehow doesn't seem to get bunged up, it's still as quick 17mths after the original install.

Hammyman

For a start, mine goes so long between the times it knackers up to the point it'd need a re-install that any re-install from an image would require so much updating that I might as well do a clean from scratch. To give you an idea, one of my clients is still using a Windows XP install I did in around 2004 so you can guess how well I do mine and how little they need doing.

Windows Vista - installed once
Windows 7 - installed once.
Mac OS X - installed twice - only because of HDD upgrade.
Windows XP MCE2005 on sons lappy - installed once