How to make a complete recovery disc

[david555]

Interesting because when I started to make a restore image using the inbuilt Win 7 program it informed me the image size would be 21gig, so I opted for the Macrium image which was 10gig.

 

Yes, I know what you mean about not being able to tell someone how you did it. I often find I'm searching the net for information on how to do something I've already done a couple of times in the past but have totally forgotten the steps.

PM with manual send for Bootble stick Windows , for the software , name is NOVICORP

[The Sly Fox]

Thanks again David. I have actually played around with the bootable sticks in the past when i had a netbook with no CD/DVD in it. But I'm cool with this new Toshiba it has a DVD drive built in. 

 

So far I have a Win 7 only image on a DVD.

A Macrium image of the C drive as it was when I left the shop - with tons of software onboard.

A Macrium image of the C drive after I dug out 3/4s of the software (the state it's in now)

 

The laptop is running well. Any probs in the future I'll no doubt format and fresh install Win 7 from the image downloaded from MS website. And rebuild it from there, just adding what is only necessary.

 

What I really wanted to know was if I could make a recovery partition on my HDD like many new machines have. And I now know that is not possible.

 

Thanks again, you've been a good help.

[Para]

PM with manual send for Bootble stick Windows , for the software , name is NOVICORP

 

 

I use Unetbootin to burn ISO's onto USB sticks works with Win7 as well as Linux distributions......

[CyberPro]

I've used tape backup solutions with bare metal restore for servers, more recently, disk imaging solutions like Acronis (and hopefully one never have to use any of those). 

 

For personal/home business use, I just get a spare laptop drive, create multiple boot partitions with one or more data partitions. Either image copy the source drive to the spare or install from scratch, remove the spare, store safely or put into an external housing and file copy updates periodically to the now external drive. 

 

The WD black 750 GB laptop drive I recently bought has 4 boot partitions: 1 each for two mid-towers, a laptop and something else, probably Windows 2012 server. Lose a hard drive? Pop in the spare laptop drive and you're good to go. Lose all your local computers? You are also copying critical files to the cloud or some other offsite solution, yes? If privacy is a concern, encrypt before storing on a cloud. 

 

http://www.acronis.com/solutions/home/

 

http://www.thetop10bestonlinebackup.com/cloud-storage

[Para]

I cant believe I didn't think of this before.

 

Create a 30GB partition on your laptop then create a MS system image and save it to the local partition.

 

If you need to restore you can simply do it from pressing F8 as Windows boots and selecting system restore!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Personally I would also have a backup on an external drive just in case your disk totally dies.

 

There you go the ability to restore from a image held on your laptop with a hot key...

[The Sly Fox]

I cant believe I didn't think of this before.

 

Create a 30GB partition on your laptop then create a MS system image and save it to the local partition.

 

If you need to restore you can simply do it from pressing F8 as Windows boots and selecting system restore!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Personally I would also have a backup on an external drive just in case your disk totally dies.

 

There you go the ability to restore from a image held on your laptop with a hot key...

Well brilliant Para, that's exactly what I want to do, I'll have a go at setting that up soon. No time today as I've leaving for Laos in a couple of hours.

[CyberPro]

"I cant believe I didn't think of this before.

Create a 30GB partition on your laptop then create a MS system image and save it to the local partition."

 

Good catch and one of few (in the opinion of some) good reasons to run Windows 7. 

 

I recently attended a Windows 8 road show type event put on by Microsoft where the presenter said that Windows 8 will detect file corruption, changes made by viruses, etc, and do a restore automatically on boot.  Good feature for a lot of users. I'll probably pass and jump to Windows 2012 Server to avoid all the desktop OS fluff.  

[Para]

Guys just so you know I tied a number of different apps yesterday looking for a solution and totally screwed my computer up in doing so. Took me a good 4 hours to get it back booting.

 

Who do I send the bill to!