Externals for back up

[momoffduty]

Thanks Peru! Exactly what I needed, a tut with photos Good to note that with the Image you can have files stored on the external whereas the Clone you cannot. I think I will get a dedicated 3 external for just the Image of C. That way I don't have to worry if the D gets too full and everything won't fit.

Another question: the emergency disc. If you have an image of your C drive why would you need the emergency disc?

[Bob]

If you have an image of your C drive why would you need the emergency disc?

The C drive is your system drive. You can't restore the system drive from a running system. That means you have to boot from another drive in order to restore C. The emergency disc contains an operating system and the restore utility. When you boot from the emergency disk, C is no longer active and can be restored.

[Peru]

Another question: the emergency disc. If you have an image of your C drive why would you need the emergency disc?

NOTE: Disk is a hard disk drive. Disc is a CD or DVD.

If it were a clone (an exact copy of your internal hard drive made on a disk that could be physically put in place of your existing hard drive), you wouldn't need a boot disc.

But if you have an image (which is a compressed file), if your internal boot disk won't boot, you have no way to restore the backup. The boot disc is put in the disc drive, and if your BIOS is set to boot from the disc drive first (usually the default, for just this purpose), when you start the computer with the disc in the drive it runs a minimal version of an operating system, so you have something on the screen to see and work with.

If your internal hard drive is OK, but just won't boot, you can restore back to the same internal drive. If the internal drive failed, then physically install a new internal drive and turn the computer on with the disc in the drive. You will get a menu or prompt asking you what you want to do.

[Peru]

You can't restore the system drive from a running system.

Actually, you can:

Emergency Boot Disk
If you decide to try EaseUS, remember to immediately create the offered emergency boot disk after installation.
This will allow you to boot into EaseUS Recovery and restore a backup in the event that your machine cannot boot into Windows.
However, if your machine is able to fully boot into Windows, you can then restore your backup from your installed program.

I've done that with Easus Todo, Acronis, and Macrium Reflect.

[Bob]

Just to be clear:

A clone is a physical copy of a disk drive. At the end of the process, you have a 2nd disk which is a duplicate of the 1st.

An image is a logical copy of a disk drive stored in a file. The logical copy can be restored to a physical disk by the restore utility or emergency disc. You need the emergency disc to restore the system drive.

I would not recommend attempting to restore the system drive while the system booted from it is running. That is a terrible idea and you are begging for trouble. Running program modules and data are cached in ram and the paging file. Restoring over the system disk can result in a mismatch in versions of modules and can invalidate pointers to disk locations that the system is utilizing. Overwriting the paging file will also lead to unpredictable results. I would hope that the restore utility would check and refuse to do that. Restoring other drives from the running system should not be a problem as long as no applications are accessing them.

[Peru]

Just to be clear:

You need the emergency disc to restore the system drive.

I have restored the system drive without the emergency disk. There is a sort of "hidden partition" within the backup program which can restore the system files without using the emergency disc.

[Bob]

The reserved system partition can be restored that way. The main partition should not be.

[Peru]

Bob,
I've done some research on Google and as I understand it:

The reserved system partition contains the boot portion of the disk.
The main portion contains the operating system.

Is that correct?

If the image restoration only restores the reserved system partition, why was I able to fully restore the drive?
At least one of the machines which I restored using an image did not contain a separate reserved system partition, yet I was able to fully restore it.

Can you shed some light on this for me please?

[TreeTopsRanch]

Isn't that reserved system partition hidden? Also isn't that the partition that OEM's put a system backup with their proprietary stuff?

[Bob]

Depending on how the system disk was created you may or may not have a reserved system partition. If present, that partition contains the Boot Manager and Boot Configuration Data Store which are responsible for controlling the boot process and initiating the loading of Windows from the system drive. One wrinkle, the boot drive is not necessarily the same as the system drive. it's entirely possible for the reserved system partition to reside on a different drive than the running system's drive. If a reserved system partition is not present on the boot drive, those files are stored in the main partition of the system drive.

If you encrypt your hard drive with BitLocker drive encryption, the Bitlocker initialization files will also be placed in the reserved system partition which must reside on the drive.

The system reserved partition is not assigned a drive letter. You can see it in Disk Management but you won't see it in Windows Explorer.

The main partition is where the OS resides. But, it typically also includes the installed programs, registry, page file, configuration and temporary files, and any user data you place there,

If you do a full disk restore, all partitions (if present in the image file) will be restored.

It's no problem at all to restore non-system drives from a running Windows system as long as nothing else is accessing those drives. Restoring the system drive itself is tricky because the OS itself is actively using the drive. Using the emergency disc to restore the system drive is the best and safest way to do it. The OS on the system drive will not be running, there will be no locks on files, no modules cached in ram, no dynamic changes, and the entire partition can be wiped and overwritten without issue.

If you restore the system drive from the running Windows system on the same drive, you can't do a complete wipe and restore. If your backup image was a complete sector by sector backup, you can't restore it at all. You can do a logical file by file restore, but there will be some files that are in use and locked that can't be replaced and some things that shouldn't be overwritten. If the restore software is smart enough it could keep track of those and setup a script to execute after rebooting to complete the restore -- similar to how Windows Update works on certain kernel updates. But, I don't know whether this software is capable of doing that. If the restore software bypasses Windows to get around the locks, all bets are off as you are pulling the rug out from under Windows, so to speak. if the version of Windows and updates you are running is not the same as the version you are restoring, you can get a mismatch of modules. Think, for an extreme example, what would happen if you were running Windows 8 64-bit and, from the running Windows system, restored the disk to Windows xp 32-bit. The OS routines cached in memory would have no relation to the ones on disk. Unless you reboot after the restore, you'll eventually load a module not cached in memory and probably crash.

It's entirely safe to do a partial restore of your user data files on the system drive from the running system as long as you are not concurrently accessing them.

[momoffduty]

Getting ready to create an image of the C drive on the new 3rd external. I am creating an emergency disc too. On their website regarding creating the disc, I am not sure of the last instructions #5:

5. Reset the BIOS setup sequence. Press "Del" when you are restarting the computer. Move "Removable Devices" or "CD-ROM Drive" beyond Hard Drive. Press "F10" to save and exit.

6. Then you can boot from EaseUS Todo Backup bootable disk.

http://www.todo-backup.com/products/fea ... -winpe.htm

[Peru]

This might help:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6i16HtZnQvw

More here:
https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=c ... 0from%20cd

[Bob]

Some computers are set by default to boot from a dvd if one is present in the drive. You might create the emergency disk and then try it to see if it boots. If it does, you don't need to change your bios/uefi boot order. If it doesn't, you'll need to boot into the bios/uefi and change the boot order.

To boot into the bios/uefi, you need to restart the computer and press the right key while the bios/uefi is initializing and before Windows starts loading. Unfortunately, there is no one key that works for all computers. Some use the "del" key, some use "F2" or "F1", some use other keys or even two key combinations. "del" and "F2" are probably the most common. Generally, there will be a brief message displayed during startup that will indicate the correct key for your computer. How you change the boot order will differ depending on whether your system uses bios or uefi.

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

...Generally, there will be a brief message displayed during startup that will indicate the correct key for your computer...

(For info only) On my PC the message is "For SETUP press DEL". That message is at the foot of the startup screen but it isn't on the screen for long

[momoffduty]

I've created an Image of C on the new 3rd external and burned an emergency disc. The external used 10G yet C is 32G. Is the Image compressed? I was under the impression that you could see all the files using Image. I haven't changed the BIOS yet, but thanks for the previous answers.

EDIT: I can see the files. But, why the disparity in the amount of GB's used?