Not a Vista fan but....

I don't like Vista but a friend wants me to backup his system. He has Vista Ultimate and well it has that windows backup feature. Has anyone used it and does it work? Also if I remember correctly, you can restore using the Vista install CD right? I don't play with Vista much other than testing and well I personally use Acronis True Image.

dja2k

 

The Back-up works just fine,but dont Back-up to the same HD use an external, as for restoring using the Installation CD, Yes you can,as long as you havent disabled System Restore.

 

Is the backup just too slow or it doesn't work if using the same hard drive with a separate partition.

dja2k

 

If the drive goes kaput, the image won't be of much help. It's best to use a separate drive.

The deal killer with MS Backup is that it doesn't use compression, so I use Acronis instead.

 

I know that of course. Well anyways, I partitioned the drive, did the backup on the second partition, then copied it to an external. Also I would use Acronis but neither version 10 or 11 boot disk can read the chipset on this laptop.

dja2k

 

Thats interesting i've used acronis on many laptops with success. What chipset is on your laptop? (if you don't mind me asking)

 

Um I don't have it anymore, but I think it was something like Mobile Intel 965 Express Chipset Family. I tried Acronis 10 & 11 with no luck as well as Paragon Hard Disk Manager 2008 but that one, when restoring, would fail.

dja2k

 

Strange, I actually have 2 laptops here that use the 965 mobile chipset and TI 11 works fine on both. Bootup media is fast and backup/restore is very quick as well.
I have noticed that the older paragon 8.5 doesn't seem to work on either laptop.

 

I have moved to my Vista Ultimate since I got a new computer and XP is gone! Now my Acronis True Image 10 doesn't work on this chipset, so again I am looking into either buying a new product or just using the integrated Vista Complete Backup feature. Someone in an earlier post said it was fine to use it as long as you have system restore enabled, why is that? Can't I have system restore disabled and just use the Complete Backup feature and restore my backup with the Vista DVD?

dja2k

 

I don't really know, but perhaps the backup facility depends on parts of the system restore service being resident or running....

If you are at all tech or geek oriented (as most of us are here), you might give Clonezilla a shot. It does full or partial images of both Linux and Win. I have used it with great success on both, recently on Vista x64 here when my brand new 2 month old HD decided to die. I grabbed an image of it all with Clonezilla, onto a 2nd HD, right before the heads started hitting the platters. Restored onto a new HD quickly and easily, and now all is well again.

Clonezilla is also free. It's not the most intuitive interface, but if you can figure it out, it does work very well:

http://clonezilla.org/

Just burn to CD and boot off the CD and go.....

 

Thanks! I figured out that System Restore has nothing to do with the complete restore feature. System Restore is just another way to go back using the Vista DVD boot disk. I might just stick with the Vista backup utility but it is slow and I personally don't know if I can trust it to make legitimate and working backups. I am looking into Clonezilla and see what that does.

dja2k

 

I did try the Vista backup a while back which seemed to work ok.

If I remember right it backs up byte for byte with no compression needing the install disk to do a restore.

Also if you format C drive first then I think the backup on another partition can't be seen when booting from the install disk and may become useless.

Could be wrong on that though?

 

Just another quick note, Clonezilla compresses the data as well... so that's another plus. It can take some time. I think I had about 62 gigs on the Vista HD, and it did take close to 2 hours to image it all. But a restore is much much quicker, I think it restored Vista, all 62 gigs, in about 15 minutes......

 

2 Hours! Okay that is out for me; I am looking for something quicker.

dja2k

 

Ok, good luck. Compression slows it down I'm afraid. Some of the commercial apps are probably faster, perhaps a lot faster, I don't know. But 2 hours to image 62 gigs seems a small price to pay in your patience because once done, you're good. Unless you plan on taking images daily or something.

I'd check out some of the paid apps then, but it's nice to know there are free ones that work if desired....

 

Yes I am looking into imaging daily or maybe several times a week which is what I used to do with Acronis True Image 10, but thanks Kerodo for your replies. My times for ATI 10 (using XP though) were 2 min backup and 4 min to restore, but that was only a 5 GB partition. Vista is way bigger and well I am looking into least time possible. I am no stranger to imaging programs, just figured to ask about the Vista integrated backup one before I look into something like StorageCraft's Shadow Protect since Acronis True Image 11 and 12 aren't mature enough.

dja2k

 

Thanks Franklin for that info! Byte by byte I suppose is good. Having no compression is good on speed but not on space. I wonder if this backup\restore from Vista is full proof and if it ever messes up making a useless backup and\or restore. Going to use it for now until I find a better replacement and save myself some cash for the moment.

dja2k

 

You can extract the boot.wim from the install disc and boot into it from the Vista boot menu (assuming yourboot files are still OK). EasyBCD can add the boot menu entry.

 

Sounds good. Yeah, I'm imaging all my data on the Vista HD too, but true, Vista sucks up a lot more space in general....

Good luck in your research....

 

Do you know how exactly you do this? I downloaded the EasyBCD, but I am totally clueless.

dja2k

 

1)Extract the WIM to a location of your choice (I keep it in a hidden Sources folder at the root of my C: drive).

2)Open EasyBCD and click the Add/Remove entries button.

3) Click the WinPE tab at the bottom

4) Choose WIM Image (Ramdisk) and give it a name (the name never shows up on my boot menu, only "WinPE Options")

5) Add the path to the WIM file and click Add Entry.

Reboot and you should see the WIM entry in your boot menu

You can mount the WIM with ImageX and add your own programs if you like. I use a WIM modded with the Microsoft Diagnostics and Recovery Toolset giving me the ERD Commander tools.

 

Those were some very easy instructions, Thanks Espresso! I was wondering, what other backup software to date uses a Vista PE environment, anyone know? I was looking into Active BootDisk, but wondered if any others have moved to Vista PE boot disk?

Active BootDisk is just a boot disk from what I read. I wonder if there are other backup softwares that use Vista PE? Also wonder if you can make a menu with EasyBCD like this windows one so you won't have to be booting off the disk every time with any of those that use a Vista PE.

dja2k

 

Any boot disk that uses WinPE2 can be booted from the hard disk, Active bootdisk included. Just open the iso and extract the WIM file.

 

You could also try Paragon's free Backup Express http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/ One thing I don't know is how fast it would be though...

 

Thanks Espresso One question, if you keep your files in the hidden Sources folder at the root of your C: drive, wouldn't that get deleted if you ever recover an image?

Thanks HAN but I don't want to use any other recovery disk that is not based on Vista PE because it is damn slow and it probably won't see my raid 0 in the ICH10R Intel controller anyways.

dja2k