Restoring from external drive

I was wondering about copying a full image to a exteral drive and how to restore this image to a new hard drive. Exactly what do I need to do this? I have a full image copied and need to know what else I need before my current hard drive fails. Thanks in advance for any advice you may have.

 

I am using windows 7 and have a 2 terabyte Seagate external drive. My windows7 has a 1 terabyte hard drive.

 

Motherroad, exactly HOW did you copy that "full image" you mention above and where does the image currently reside (on the 2tB external??)?

 

I copied to the external Seagate drive using Windows 7 full system backup.

 

If you've used their standard Backup and Restore function... AND have saved a SYSTEM IMAGE (not files, etc.), the following should help.

Restore Your Computer From a System Image Backup

 

OK thanks for the info. I have a full system image on a external Seagate drive and wanted to make sure if my hard drive fails I will be able to re-install what I have on the external drive to the new drive including windows. Thanks.

 

Motherroad,

You might not be there yet. Try this test. Boot from your Windows DVD and see if you can find the image on your external HD, using the Imaging app. As if you were doing a pretend restore. Let us know what you discover.

 

Motherroad, what you (plan to) do is more or less the same I do:

1) I have in use a certain hard drive (let's call it "hard drive 1"). In case of a defect of this hard drive I want to be sure that all its contents is saved (OS, programs, data etc.).

2) So I make regularly a full system image of this hard drive (using Paragon Backup & Recovery). This image I save (like you) on an external drive ("drive E").

3) Moreover I already have another (internal) hard drive ("hard drive 2") which will replace hard drive 1 in case that it does not work any longer. (Until then hard drive 2 is in an external enclosure.)

In order to have this spare hard drive 2 at any time ready for use (after installing it within my desktop PC) I do regularly the following:

Usually, after creating a new image (saved on drive E) I restore this image immediately on hard drive 2. (How this restore exactly works is something you have to find - and try - out by taking a look at your image software [obviously you use Windows 7 itself, so you can use for example the link given above by TheRollbackFrog]. In case of Paragon the restore process is relatively simple.)

So I have two different backups of my system:

a) The image (on drive E) which I can restore on my drive 1 as long as this drive has no (physical) defect but the restoring is necessary for some other reason (e.g. problems with a software).

b) A full "copy" of my system on hard drive 2 which I would install in my PC in case that drive 1 does not work any longer. After this installation I could continue immediately to work without any loss of data and without the necessity of setting up my system again. (At least I hope so - fortunately up to now I was not in the situation that I had to change my hard drive. )

 

Peter 123,

I suggest you try to boot the OS on this HD. It might not boot as it will have a different Disk Signature from your primary HD. Better to know now than later.

 

Perhaps a silly question: How do I do this? (By starting the HD with a boot CD?)

Until now, in order to test if the image was restored correctly on hard drive 2 I connect this HD with my PC and then I take a look at some of the data on this HD. But I think when doing so I use the OS on my PC (= on HD 1). Or am I wrong?

 

Hi, what is importance of disk signature? Should they be restores as well?

Thanks

 

Remove the internal HD and replace it with the HD currently in the USB case. Turn the power on. See if the OS boots.

 

It doesn't matter with WinXP but with OS that have a BCD store you need the original Disk Signature for a successful boot.

When you are restoring an OS image to the same HD you don't need to restore the Disk Signature as the correct one is already present in the MBR (LBA-0). The Disk Signature is one part of the MBR. The other two parts being bootstrap code and the partition table.

When restoring to a new HD you should restore the Disk Signature. But avoid having both HDs in the computer and seen by an OS as there will be a Signature Collision.

 

Thank you.

 

Thanks. That was new for me. In that case I suppose any modern imaging software should do it automatically while recovering an image. Do have any info about this

Tahnks

 

Restoring the Disk Signature is usually a manual choice. Restore/Not Restore. Depending on your imaging app, the BCD could be automatically edited to enable booting if the Disk Signature is "wrong".

 

Some of this a little over my head but got the information I need to check for my backup. As always Wilders has come through again. Thanks everybody.

 

Motherroad,

Have you checked whether that HD boots? Better to know now rather than later.

 

Thanks.

 

I will check later in the weak. I also will have to remove RollbackRX to do this.

 

I have been doing something similar for over 10 years now to backup my laptop's HDD. My worst nightmare is switching on my laptop and, after a long delay, seeing only a blinking cursor, the message "No operating system on disk", or something analogous indicating the OS won't start, for whatever reason. I've had this happen about 10 times in 20 years, usually when I've got more important matters to deal with.
I have other computers that can read data off the disks when necessary, plus duplicate software that can process the data.
I always buy laptop HDD's in duplicate: one to run, another of the identical size, to create an image of my current OS on. I also store my current image on another machine's HDD. Once when my laptop refused to boot, when I was far from home, I swapped the defective HDD for my spare using a small screwdriver - took 5 minutes, and at that point I was good to go.
I verify the cloned HDD by swapping it out and booting it.
Very little of my data changes from day to day. Nearly all of that is backed up with Dropbox online, and automatically syncs when an HDD with older versions of the data connects to the internet.
I haven't had a mere data file screw up in over 10 years - all my critical HDD data failures have manifested themselves by failure of my laptop to boot.

 

artfd,

Which imaging software do you use? Just curious. It's nice to have something that works everytime.

 

I have been using the free software provided by Seagate, downloadable from its website - it's an older version of Acronis, "crippled" to the extent that a Seagate drive must by part of the system upon which the backup is done. You can use other manufacturer's HDD's, as long as the source or the destination is a Seagate HDD.
Probably other imaging software could work too. The key simplifiers for me are buying HDD's as identical pairs. I have a Lenovo Thinkpad R500 with an easily removable drawer called an Ultrabay that holds another HDD, that way I can backup my R500's HDD on the same machine. http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s...o&lndocid=MIGR-73170&velxr-layout=printLenovo

 

Hi,
My desktop is a win7x64 with a Seagate 1TB (3 partitions), I would like to make a copy of the entire drive to a brand new Western Digital 1TB (for safe-guard)
Can I hook this WD hdd inside my computer, using Paragon Drive Copy Pro12, migrate the current system (minus 2 data partitions) . Unhook the WD hdd before restart computer (will replace the Seagate hdd to test later , to see whether computer will boot with new WD per Brian K suggestion above) . Will this work ? will I have to do anything to overcome the "disk signature" mention above?
(The reason I have to do this way because I do not have an USB enclosure.)