Discussion on:

Use Windows 7 System Image Recovery to restore a hard disk

Have you run through the System Image Recovery procedure before; what was your experience?

I am using another way to recover my Windows 7 Ultimate instead of using System Image Recovery method. I use Macrium Reflect backup and restore with a USB hard drive which I had partitioned before using it. I had back up 'C' and 'D' drive separately everytime once I'd install a new program and ran it for a week to make sure there's no problem or issues. Of course, I also use the Windows Restore Point before install any new software.
Anyways, I found this maybe the best for me because it does not take too much time to use Macrium Reflect to back up and it is better then the others that I had use before; like 'Ghost'.
Oh, best of all, Macrium Reflect is FREE.

A friend of some 75 years of age took my advice and made a system image of his HP all in one MS215. 2 months later HD crash. So we replaced HD and restored the system - all ran perfectly. Last week another hard disk crash and I was called to perform the 'magic' again! Except this time I found his External back up disk had been used by the lady of the house for photos etc.
He had a set of HP cds which failed to format the drive correctly and after 2 hours of restoring sent him back to square one!. Luckily there is a program "sp44645.exe" (Cyberlink Recovery Disk Utility) which prepares a new or wiped hard drive for the HP disks. It was rather tedious to feed the HP cds one by one but after they had all gone in the restore took another couple of hours! Basically the PC is returned to factory condition with a factory back up image in the D: drive. Then the long haul to re-install all his own software and files and uninstall all the unwanted HP bloat!
At the weekend we go to buy a new external 1TB drive onto which we will image his system and use for incremental backup.
Then the next time he has a problem..........................

Interesting, although I have never used the W7 Recovery.
I use Easeus Disk copy or Easeus Todo and copy to my old IDE's in an enclosure.
Simple to use and also free.

I had been using the Win 7 disc imaging system for a few months quite successfully then for some reason it all started taking far too long to complete, some 12 to 18 hours!! (for only 85 GB) Despite researching for a long time I could find no satisfactory answer to this other than Microsoft saying that there is a problem with this system. I now use Macrium Free which takes 40 minutes...

This is a little surprising, as Win 7 System Image takes less than a couple of hours for 135 GB, so there may be an issue if it is so slow... I still didn't need to restore my system yet, but I do an image every couple of months... but I use Macrium on my XP home PC...

12 to 18 hours to image 85GB? That's really wierd. There really must be something wrong with your installation. My 50GB installation only takes about 30 mins with Win 7 System Image backup and it was imaged to another partition on the same hard drive. You should consider doing a clean install to fix whatever is causing it to be that slow.

Oh, BTW, I have also used EaseUs ToDo Backup free edition. It offers different levels of compression to save save at the expense of speed. Perhaps I should try Macrium and compare the results.

I was surprised when the comment came that the recovery might take a few hours. I am still sticking to XP and have my drives partitioned with working files on the second partition and the system and program files on the C: drive. A reimage of the C; drive takes under ten minutes using DriveImage 2002 running from a bootable CD/DVD with the image also burnt to to the optical media. I think the built in offering in Win7 needs some work but at least it is available!

Hi... I am intending to upgrade my hardware. So can i use this tool to image and replant it in the new hardware? will it work? Can anybody please answer me.

thanks in advance - Regards.

You will most likely experience a lot of BSOD as the image contains device drivers for the old hardware. You'll have a hard time forcing it to work on a new configuration PC unless the difference is just the RAM, hard drive, optical drive, mouse, keyboard and the RAM. Those don't require special drivers.

Hii Bill, Thanks first for the response.

I am a expert 'user', not a tech. expert.
So in simple words I assume it will work with some difficulty... right?

your article was informative, thanx. i have a windows 7 (64 Bit) computer. what have never understood in these situations is this: when you use a sytem image recovery process, doe the image contain the latest updates like the service packs and othe office updates, if not, how do i make an image whith these included in it, so that i can save money and time in dowloading these updates after the recovery process?
of course, you might have surmised from my comment that i am not a computer expert! you are right.

The system image can only contain everything that happened up to the time it was created. It doesn't include things that have happened after that.

That's why you have to make system images on a periodic basic to keep abreast to newer changes. If you put a daily, weekly or monthly schedule on Windows 7, you don't need to worry too much about it. The choice is up to you.

I'm amazed by the clever terminology here. My Dell PC came with two partitions - the OS/Win7, and a "recovery" partition. It is still unclear to me how to use the recovery partition. Does the system image include this recovery partition?
And even more importantly, does this include a way to return the PC to a factory-delivered configuration? Since there were no cds/dvds or any other media with the PC it seems vendors are leaving us to our own failures. And terminology is scarce that really addresses this issue.

Most OEM's now either require you to make a set of recovery disks from a prompt or just include the recovery partition you are seeing. Generally, pressing the F11 key during boot will access the recovery system and let you restore to a factory state (including all of the bloatware). Of course if the drive has a real failure you may be out of luck if you didn't create your own external backup.
It's always a good idea to get the system the way you want it - remove all of the factory "extras", install your desired software, etc. - and make your own backup to that state. Just update it every so often, depending on your use to determine frequency, and you can always get back up and running with minimum downtime in the case of a drive failure.

As for "most systems" helping you make recovery disks - mine two purchases did not. We got Samsung for my wife, and at least they have a supported way of making a 5 DVD set complete backup of the HD. Not sure how this affects the Windows version which is also available. What I have found and works is a Linux CDROM that is short sweet, and supports all OS. I'm amazed at PING and it seems it could do everything talked about that people are paying for here. I have used it for one project and test it for that only. I wonder why people continue to use proprietary mechanisms. Here is a link: http://ping.windowsdream.com/

...for ping. I notice that my new Satellite seems to have a custom Toshiba recovery program that allows one to restore to a partition that is smaller than the whole disk, as long as it is large enough to contain the data.

I could only wish that they would make the next step, and furnish an HD with the OS, etc., on one partition large enough to contain them, and another for data.

I have used the image backup utility by Paragon several times, both to restore after some kind of glitch or to move from a standard hard drive to a new SSD hard drive. I only image my OS, programs and settings. My data is on a separate partition that gets backed up every couple of hours.

Thanks for the article. It gives me some confidence and peace!
I use the Win 7 facility to image my system to an external hard disk. At the end of the procedure you're promoted to make a bootable CD. I don't do that very often under the assumption that this CD mostly contains just the OS. Is my assumption good, or should I make a new CD with every backup?