SOLVED: OS back-up and re-installation (discussion)

[Gray_Area]

So I've done and looked up some things (though haven't yet used them) :


- used Self-Image* to make an IMG of the OS partition

-- do I have to write this to disc and then boot from it?

*corrected from 'Self-Copy' to 'Self-Image'


- exported the whole regsitry

-- what would I be missing out on versus the IMG method?


What do you do?


see my last below

[MacGyver]

Look into WIAK and ImageX,  both work with various PEs out there. I boot Vista's PE from a USB stick and use ImageX to copy my XP installs to a .WIM file on the same USB stick.
Imagex can compress too and there is a GUI available for it now as well. 
The easiest way would be to use a program called "Ghost". 
The WAIK and Imagex way is free (from MS).  I bet there is a free way using DD and one of those live Linux distros too.

I avoid the PE made from Win7 because it seems to do funny things with file permissions, Vista's doesn't.

[ChrisK]

At work I use Symantec Ghost.  It's not free, however.  Clonezilla is a free open-source alternative, but it's a little more complicated to use (it asks you techy questions about partition types and such).  This is by far the easiest way to backup and restore (or clone) a system, but you can't do a backup on a running system, and it's awful if you want to restore a set of files.  It's a good solution if you want to do a backup occasionally (say once a quarter), but not if you want to do nightly.

If you copy the whole hard drive you don't need to export the registry.  The user hive lives in your user profile directory (ie: c:\documents and settings\myuser in XP) and the others live in the Windows directory.

Be wary of backing up a running system because some apps can't backup files open for write.  If your app can't you probably will miss any number of important files in your backup.

Also, don't expect to just copy all the files on a Windows partition onto a new hard drive and then boot it.  The drive needs a boot loader installed and it has to be pointed to the right Windows directory.  Sometimes the Windows recovery tools can do this for you, but they aren't the smartest.

I screw with Windows computers for a living and my preferred route for backup was to put EVERYTHING related to the cab in C:\emu, and then back that up nightly over gigabit to a second computer.  I get Mala and all my emulators, my emumovies collection, and all my roms and supporting files.  If the cabinet explodes I reinstall the OS from scratch, install supporting stuff (like codecs to play the emumovies files), copy the files back to the hard drive, and play.  I could do it in an evening, if you don't count the time it would take to copy the 300GB over the network at 80MB/sec.

If you're going to backup the whole system with the intention of restoring to a fully-working computer, MAKE SURE YOU TEST.  Hook up a second hard drive and test your restore.  It's not a no-brainer, and you don't want to be learning on the fly when your cabinet just suffered a meltdown.

[Gray_Area]

At work I use Symantec Ghost.

If you copy the whole hard drive you don't need to export the registry.

Be wary of backing up a running system because some apps can't backup files open for write.  If your app can't you probably will miss any number of important files in your backup.

Also, don't expect to just copy all the files on a Windows partition onto a new hard drive and then boot it.  The drive needs a boot loader installed and it has to be pointed to the right Windows directory.  Sometimes the Windows recovery tools can do this for you, but they aren't the smartest.

I screw with Windows computers for a living and my preferred route for backup was to put EVERYTHING related to the cab in C:\emu, and then back that up nightly over gigabit to a second computer.

If you're going to backup the whole system with the intention of restoring to a fully-working computer, MAKE SURE YOU TEST.  Hook up a second hard drive and test your restore.  It's not a no-brainer, and you don't want to be learning on the fly when your cabinet just suffered a meltdown.

Apparently, Self-Image can copy C completely.

I mentioned backing up the registry to get comparisons. If the system isn't totally hosed, the registry back-up would be a one-touch fix.

If a boot loader wasn't present, couldn't I just go into the Recovery Console and fixboot?

I back up every couple/few months. I partition system and data into C and D, so I don't have to worry about putting data back over, and re-install including apps is about an hour or two. Even so, I would prefer not to have to re-do my desktop and Start Menu settings/links/etc.

[ChrisK]

Yeah, the recovery console can do it for you.  The automatic recovery stuff will try to find your Windows partition (I believe it looks for some specific files, like c:\windows\blahblah.dll, but that's just my theory) but it doesn't always succeed.  If you're comfortable using the manual tools you should be able to recover from pretty much anything so long as you have all the files in place.  You need a boot sector (fixboot can do this), a boot loader, and for NTLDR you need a boot.ini pointing to the correct Windows partition and directory (this is where Recovery console sometimes chokes).

The only time it gets tricky is if the order of your drives changes for some reason.  I can't remember the exact syntax of boot.ini off the top of my head (on a Mac right now) but it's got a line something like disk(0)partition(1)blah(0)=c:\windows that tells NTLDR exactly where to find the Windows directory.  All you have to do is figure out which "disk" or "rdisk" and all the other variables are correct for your boot partition and you're all set.  You can even make a ton of lines in boot.ini with every possible combination and just tick through them all.  I did that once when I ran out of patience on a crazy test server we had that had multiple SCSI and IDE controllers.

That said, if you're A) only backing up every couple months, and B) don't care about losing data from the interim period, and C) want to be able to restore a system fully with no hassles, I would just bring the machine down, boot to a USB hard drive with imaging software on it, and push the image to that hard drive.  When you want to restore, just boot to the USB hard drive, restore the image, and you're off to the races.  It really is the easiest way to back up and restore a FULL system.  It's awful for traditional backups where you want to restore a few files and back up a running system, but your needs seem to be a special case to me.

Doing imaging you don't need to mess around with the registry, worry about which files are in use and were not backed up, or screw around with MBRs and boot loaders.  All you have to do is point the software at the right drive and wait.  Like I said before Symantec Ghost 11 is what I use at work, but it's not free.  Clonezilla is an open source alternative but is harder to use.  I would be you could even use Carbon Copy Cloner on a Mac if you have access to one, as that's shareware.

If you do go with a traditional file backup, everything in Windows (except the boot stuff) is just files, so when you back up all the files you've backed up the whole computer, settings and all.  (The only exception to this is a few REALLY naughty apps that write crap into your drive headers for copy protection purposes.  Adobe is the only one that I know still likes to do this.)

Either way, test your restore!  I don't mean to sound rude, but the worst feeling in the world is realizing the backup you've been doing for years is worthless the first time you need it.  Just grab a spare hard drive and do a restore to it, then try to get it booting like your original drive.  All these questions will be quickly answered when you work through using the recovery console or imaging software, whichever path you choose.  You'll feel a lot better knowing you have a backup AND you know exactly how to make it work before the whole machine melts down.

(FWIW, for my backups I've just walked away from backing up Windows and only back up the arcade files.  This works for me because I don't mind spending an hour letting XP install itself and another couple hours installing apps like video codecs and Windows Updates... at least for my home arcade I don't.)

[Gray_Area]

I pulled out a blank drive, and formatted, partitioned it via Recovery Console, then used SelfImage to copy the system drive and write a copy onto the blank one. It didn't come up in the boot list, which may be due to the NTDLR thing you mentioned. I thought all installations would just show up, and I could pick.

[ChrisK]

Hm, I haven't done this since Win2k, so my knowledge is pretty stale (especially if you're using Vista or higher), but...

What happens when you boot?  Does it say "NTLDR is missing"?  Does it say (paraphrasing) "No system partition found"  (or was it "no boot disk"?  I forget)?

Do you still have the old drive plugged in while testing?  Windows gets confused sometimes if there are two boot drives.  Either way if you aren't getting the messages I mentioned above you might need to check your boot.ini; it might have the wrong drive or partition listed.

Also, if you're using Vista or higher Windows has a sort of hidden boot partition.  I have to admit I've never needed to recover that type of system, so I'm not sure what you need to do there, but I'll bet if you don't have that set just right you're pretty well screwed.

[mathew_123456]

You could always use some of the hdd manufacturers supplied free software..

WD http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119
Seagate http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/support/downloads/discwizard

I've used acronis from WD and it was great

[elkameleon]

[Gray_Area]

You could always use some of the hdd manufacturers supplied free software..

WD http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119

I've used acronis from WD and it was great

Daamn. What an awesome piece of kit. (I've known about this and sort of forgot it.) Very simple - like you think it'd be - effective, and quick. For a 250gb drive, with 3/4 of it populated, it took maybe an hour. That's from a SATA to PATA, too. I'm using the PATA in accessing and writing this post. That also means I didn't have to [re-]log in!!

I notice that it boots into the original C drive without going to the boot menu via F12. I guess the SATA wins out. Wouldn't know the PATA wasn't the original, except that perhaps it being PATA it takes a second or two more for the desktop to come up.

The only thing is, you need another drive (or partition, if your back-up drive is big enough) for this. Note that this program is only necessary for boot drives. Data drives/partitions, you can use Self-Image to copy and write back to. (Or you can just copy all the files over, which takes a hell of a lot longer.)

(Emphasis in matthew's quoted post mine.)