Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with windows7 and restore

Backup an image of a boot drive to a RAID 1 & perform restoration?

ihavearedcouch — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 02:17:57 -0800

I have a PCI-E SSD as my boot drive, and a win7-created RAID 1 on two 3TB drives. My boot drive has my user folder on it, but my documents, music, pictures, videos, etc folders shortcut to their respectable folders on the RAID. I would like this to be a full redundancy scheme and it is, but I've run into several nags and I would like to know how to fix them and prepare a fix-it plan before any of the drives fails. The PCI-E SSD is OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB.

First the nags:
The backup is more than 240GB. I am thinking that Windows is including not only multiple versions of files but also backing up the target's shortcuts as well. This is stupid considering that the RAID 1 has already taken care of those folders. How do I make automatic periodic image backups of the boot drive only and without versions of the files? (I would still like restore points for the boot drive--but that still fits in the 240GB, right?)

Preparing for the worse:

-If my PCI-E SSD fails, I will have to temporarily resort to a mechanical drive until I replace the SSD. How do I quickly restore the boot image (stored on the RAID 1) to this mechanical drive? Lastly, once I've obtained the replacement PCI-E SSD, how do I restore the most recent boot image to that? I've heard it's super difficult. Any surefire methods and instructions?

-If one of my RAID 1 drives fail, how can I locate the bad drive, replace it and restore the mirror without putting the good drive in risk?

I am willing to spend money on software, but only if its “set it and forget it” and offers flawless restoration. Also, I because of limited case space, I rather avoid setting aside another drive or a separate partition for a perfect image copy of the boot drive.

Honestly, I feel that once these questions are answered, this HD setup is a very redundant and cheap way of keeping a hold on my life's data work and a functional computer. If anyone can offer answers to any of the questions here I will greatly appreciate it and I will give back to the community by spreading this method.

One example of this would be building computers for family and friends. I've heard too many stories of people's drives going bust, so this would make the computer I build for them very reliable. The only problem is I need to provide instructions in case something does go wrong.

Lastly, I question if there is a method to move a software raid to a hardware raid if in the future I happen to upgrade to a better motherboard that supports multiple raids (since the pci-e ssd is technically a raid as well). How would I do this?

Bonus question: Let’s say I was to install a “Hackintosh” on a separate SSD/HD. What would be the way to make the RAID visible and editable by Mac OS X? How would I do a boot drive image backup onto the RAID as well?

Many thanks.

Back me up on this

danceswithlight — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 10:28:34 -0800

What are the best backup solutions for Windows 7 these days? Looking at all types of backups - whole system restores including installed programs, manually/automatically copying data to a second hard drive/flash drive/SD card, and cloud storage. Now that I'm finally buying a swanky new laptop (the ThinkPad X1 Carbon) and upgrading to Windows 7, I'd like to overhaul my backup habits too. What are the latest and greatest backup/restore technologies? I'd like to hear about as many different options as possible. Caveat: I will not have a CD drive in my new laptop, so flash/USB options are best.

I'm specifically wondering about:

- options for a complete system restore, in case of hard drive failure or a bad virus, preferably that can run via USB (I currently use a bootable CD program called ShadowProtect, which is an IT-professional-level tool that makes a complete image of your hard drive including all installed programs and settings and data files, and can write this image onto any hard drive to restore a system to exactly as it was at the time the backup was made in about 20 minutes - is there something like this that works from a flash drive?)

- options for storing lots of music & photos & documents that I'm not changing/editing (I have about 200 GB worth, and currently I just have a second copy of it sitting on a portable hard drive - is there a better option?)

- options for storing existing files that I edit frequently and new files that I create (I currently work with about 5 GB of files regularly, scattered over 3-4 different folders, and I don't have any automatic way of backing it up - would SugarSync or Dropbox work well here?)

- options for partitioning my hard drive, if at all (I'm currently used to a setup where all programs are on C:\ and all files and documents are on D:\ which makes it easier to do a system restore [just rewrite the C drive] and a data restore [just rewrite the D drive] - is this still a useful method to follow?)

Restore netbook to factory settings

little_c — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 09:23:53 -0800

How to restore NB305 netbook to out-of-box state after installing Ubuntu, possibly on the recovery partition? I have a Toshiba NB305-N442bl netbook with dual boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 starter installed. When i try to do a system restore holding down "0" and powering on, the system hangs until i release the "0" and then boots normally.

When i am in Windows 7, i can view the HDDRECOVERY drive and all the files are there. However i can't create any recovery media using the Windows tool for doing so.

Seems like the recovery partition is fine, I just can't seem to run a system recovery through the normal channels (ie holding "0" at power on). Thoughts?

Need to resize a Windows 7 image backup

Orb2069 — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 11:06:47 -0800

Windows 7, 80gb hard drive backup of a laptop - I need to get the machine back up and running, but the largest available hard drive is 40GB - There are files I can lose on the backup to get it down to 40GB, but how do I do it? The support page claims that 'Startup hard disk capacity should be larger or same size. Even if it is smaller by a single byte, BMR will be blocked.'? Any ideas on how to get around that?

Hopefully, replies of 'Buy a bigger hard drive' should also provide some method to get a 80+GB PATA drive for an IBM T40 before 5pm tomorrow. the retail stores seem to all be SATA at this point.

What wierd thing happened while creating Windows 7 restore disks?

skidoom — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 17:37:53 -0800

A friend has a new Asus Essentio CM5671. He first transferred his data files to the new machine. Then, while trying to create the Windows 7 restore disks, he appears to have somehow reset the computer to its factory state, restoring all the crapware that had been removed and obliterating his documents and data. Any idea how he may have done this and how he can un-do it?

Restoring a Windows 7 System Image from an External Hard Drive

roomwithaview — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:41:11 -0800

How do I restore a Windows 7 system image from an external hard drive? Backstory: Just got a new hard drive for my (old) laptop. I put the factory image of Windows Vista on the new drive since I have Windows 7 upgrade disks and not the full version. Anyway, I immediately installed Windows 7 afterwards as a clean install. I was going to just reinstall all the drivers manually but for some reason I can't use my product key to activate. Windows 7 acts as if Vista was never installed on it.

Current Scenario: I've decided to try to restore a system image I created from my last clean install of Windows 7. It is about 8GB and resides on an external hard drive. I would like to restore that image but when I get to the Windows 7 restore process (after selecting it from the Control Panel and rebooting into it), I can't get it to access the external hard drive. It appears that it doesn't have the appropriate drivers. Checking in Windows shows that the external is using partmgr.sys and disk.sys. Can I copy these two files to a CD and present them to the restore utility, or will it need different drivers?

Will restoring this image even work, or will Windows 7 still think I have never had Vista? Alternatively, is there any way I can keep this current installation and activate it with my upgrade product key without going back and installing Vista again?

Thanks for any insight, Mefites!

Installing Windows 7 on a MBP with a non-working DVD drive

N2O1138 — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 23:22:32 -0800

How can I install Windows 7 (via Boot Camp or rEFIt) from an ISO? I think the Superdrive on my Macbook Pro (10.5.6) is on its last legs, because it ejects almost anything I put in it. (Meaning blank DVDs, and the DVD I burned of the ISO on my Windows XP desktop with ImgBurn). It's not extremely old (I got it refurbished on Christmas 2007), but still old enough to be out of warranty (at least I would think so). What I have available: 1tb My Book Firewire External Hard Drive 4gb 1st gen iPod Nano, that isn't even formatted as an iPod right now, so it's basically just a 4gb USB flash drive. I know I can boot from it if it's set up right, because I've been using it with this What I've tried so far:
I can't restore the iPod to the ISO in Disk Utility, so I tried to convert the ISO to a DMG (in Disk Utility and using a program called Converso), getting errors both times.

I tried mounting the ISO, erasing everything on the iPod, and copying everything straight out of the ISO to the iPod, but it doesn't appear as anything bootable.

Please help if you can