Image based backup is a pain

Panagiotis,

That is interesting. I haven't read that before. I thought all SRPs were 100 MB.

In my main computer I installed Win7 into a 20 GB partition so there is no SRP. My test computer has a 40 GB HD. What sized HD do you need before you get a 200 MB SRP?

 

There's nothing in Brian's commands to add recovery. Anyways if it missing or need to repair, there's several ways to add it.
http://forum.acronis.com/forum/6758#comment-13383

 

Panagiotis,

I searched in the SRP and the C: drive and I can't find winre.wim. I'm showing Hidden files and Protected OS files. I have C:\Recovery which is empty.

Edit.... The Win7 on my main computer has winre.wim (about 140 MB) in a folder in C:\Recovery. I don't know why I can't find it in the test computer as the F8 Recovery works.

 

Brian,

I have no idea how windows decide the size of the SRP.
In a virtual machine it will always create a 100mb system recovery partition, even if you have 1tb free space.
But, on my real systems when, I create an OS partition of 100gb, creates an srp of 200mb that has the recovey folder inside.

The only thing that I'm sure of, is that if you extend your srp to 200mb or higher in a virtual or a real machine, windows will install the recovery enviroment in the srp and not in the OS.

Panagiotis

 

Check your other partitions. Windows must have placed it in another partition. It happened on my laptop, windows created an SRP of 100mb and a 60gb OS partition and then I created another partition only for data (windows decided to place the recovery in my data partition ).

Panagiotis

 

Found it. Well, not from Win7 because it told me C:\Recovery was empty but wouldn't let me open the folder. From a WinPE CD I found winre.wim in C:\Recovery. It was there all along but the test computer lied to me.

 

There is a easy way to add the recovery to the main boot menu. Load EasyBCD, select add new entry. Under WinPE it say Wim Image(Ramdisk). Change the name to Repair and specify the location to the file boot.wim in the c:\recovery folder. Click add entry in EasyBCD. If boot.wim not there. Copy it from the windows 7 DVD in the sources folder to the recovery folder, or even better specify another drive location for boot.wim . Change the default OS to 5 seconds in Edit boot menu and save settings.

 

There is a winre.wim in c:\windows\system32\recovery
When recovery gets initialised on install, winre.wim gets copied from there to c:\recovery

If running x64 then c:\windows\syswow64\recovery is used.

I've made a script to install recovery wherever you like.

 

A simple method to get up and running again for a novice:
If you have at least 1 WD disk go to : http://support.wdc.com/product/downloaddetail.asp?swid=119&wdc_lang=en and get the free "Acronis True Image WD Edition", now assume you have a disk with "C:/windows 7", and "D:/data" ;
1. start Acronis True Image WD Edition.Choose "Clone disk"
2. "Wd recommends using automatic mode in most cases. The manual mode can be useful if you need to
change the disk partition layout.
If the program finds two disks, one partitioned and another unpartitioned, it will automatically
recognize the partitioned disk as the source disk and the unpartitioned disk as the destination disk. In
such case, the next steps will be bypassed and you will be taken to the cloning Summary screen.
and choose "clone disk" .
So if the novice has one systemdisk and one unpartitioned disk , all one has to do is choose"automatic"and a clone will be made.
3. In "manual"you choose the disk to "clone from"and "clone to" and there are more options , like changing partition sizes etc.
Ofcourse, when disaster strikes this clone (which sits somewhere on a shelf)is not up to date ; so you put in the new disk ,you have a recent image of the two partitions , which you put on the new disk.
I tried it myself this afternoon ; i made a clone of a WD 640 disk ,2 partitions ,170 gig,.
i choose "manual"because the "clone"disk is 500 gig ,and i manually resized the partitions,because in "auto"mode the C partition would get very small because " the new disk space will be proportionally distributed among cloned partitions" .
no problem with same size or larger disk to go for "auto".
Making the clone took 2 hours, i rebooted with the new disk .
rebooted again and put the "Drive Snapshot" image back which i had made this morning.
So, no hassles with SRP, or the repair option of Windows.
As long as you have a recent image it takes 2 steps and a few hours and you are up and running with a new hd.