I did not read the whole thread so forgive me if this was already covered.

I loved Ghost 2003. But for Windows 7 64 bit I tried several programs to ghost a bootable Windows 7 64 bit to another HDD and then boot form it. Clonezilla was the only one that did the trick for me.

Edit: The destination drive is a SSD (solid state drive) The source and destination drives were identical or at least nearly identical in size.

Second edit: I booted from a CD with Clonezilla 1.2.5-5 AMD64.150 to do the Ghosting or cloning. There were a few settings which apparently I selected correctly and it worked. Not sure if I can repeat this success.

Hi there, I'm new to the forum and this is my first post.

I would just like to let people know that if they have a Western Digital hard drive, a WD version of Acronis True Image is available for free download from their site

I haven't tried it yet, but I'm guessing that it will only work with WD drives.

It works with any drive as long as there is a WD drive attached for saving purposes.

Acronis trueimage works but you can also use Windows 7's built in Image Backup if you use Windows 7.

I tried it once and it's too slow, but I guess it works.

Just a note regarding Macrium Reflect Free: you can't restore an image to a smaller partition (meaning even if the original image has enough free space, of course).
Other than that, I restored quite a few images so far and can say that restoring to the original HDD within the same system works pretty much as expected. But switching HDDs.. I've had some issues with moving an XP partition from a PATA to a SATA HDD (nothing serious, just the GUI theme switching on restart). Not really sure if it's because of Macrium Reflect, tho.



I tried making an image with the W7's built in Image Backup and the image files are bigger than with any other program. Other than that, I can't comment on its quality.

Thanks to ManyTone, koolkeys, others that have in the past (and in other threads, too) pointed out the WD/Seagate versions of Acronis. Saved me some $$ with this new build and it is appreciated.

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I have tried it with win7. The only problem was the startup recovery disk
I made would not work. It's a known problem to do with some gfx card stuff.
It doesn't affect many people but is hard to sort out and is a known issue.

This is how I got around it, and I wasn't playing about - my system
got hosed - it saved me a lot of work -
I did a base install of win7 and then installed the paragon free and
re-imaged from there. Worked perfectly..

Obviously it is better to do cold-imaging as opposed to hot imaging, so
you will need some kind of boot cd to boot from the bios should your
drive go down or things get corrupted.

I am trying to resolve the gfx issue with Paragon because it is a very
good backup program - I know it saved my bacon. It was a pain doing the
base install of win7 but at least it worked - perfectly and that is all
that matters.

I wished I had been so lucky with my other new machine, but that is another
story.........

I have had problems finding some kind of cold-imaging setup should the
worst happen again. So far this is the best solution I have found (free
that is) - Hiren's boot cd. First off there are a lot of dodgy copies of
this flying round the net - you don't want any of them. You want the
origianl boot cd from hiren's site: http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

What has happened is others have 're-compiled' his boot cd with illegal
software - out of his control. Burn the cd from the site I linked to
above and you will be fine. It has about 10 different backup
programs for cold-imaging your hard disk. Plus it has a ton of other
really useful system tools and utilities.

It has Macrium reflect on there which is one of the top imaging tools
according to CNET, and even has Seagate discwizard if you have a Seagate
drive in your system. The Backup program I know and would recommend though
is DriveImage XML. It works around the concept of Microsofts VSS - volume
shadow services and is rock solid if a little slow and no incremental
backup. You can download DriveImage XML seperately if you should wish
and do a hot-imaging within windows, but I haven't tried that. It is best
not to mess about and just do a 'cold-image' from outside your running OS.
Because that is what you will be doing to restore should disaster strike.

DriveImage XML is no frills but has a good reputation and you can then
look at your files or extract stuff from your image within windows should
you wish. It will work with XP, Win7 obviously coz it is outside your
OS, and just back up the bare binary of your drive which is all it's about
really. The problem is getting a guaranteed boot disk to work in the first
place with a program on it that you made the back up with.

Like I said there are about 10 different imaging programs on there so try
a few out to see what suits your needs. I'm sticking with Drive Image XML,
coz it works perfectly for me and now I have Hiren's boot cd, I know
I can restore using that program without need for the OS drive to fire it
up. At least you have the option of doing it both ways with this program.

I will still be making a second backup with Paragon and even if I can't
sort out the boot cd issue, I know I can do a base install from my
Win7 disk and do it from there. And I know it works - perfectly.

There are issues with Macrium Reflect and I have even heard a lot of
bad things about Acronis True Image these days. The later versions seem
to have a lot of problems. I think it was Scott from ADK PRO Audio
who suggested Paragon (sorry if I got that wrong Scott), but it was
one of the big boys who build computers that hang around here.

There are a load of disk diagnostic tools on that cd as well as a few
MBR type programs that could be essential for you should the worst happen.
Obviously don't mess about with these if you don't know what you are doing.
I have used HDHacker 1.4 to check, fix and backup my HD after my little
disaster. It is simple and worked for me, so I would recommend on that
basis. Maybe someone else can take a look at that list of programs
and say which if any are no good and shouldn't be touched. All of them
will wipe your disk if you don't know what you are doing. But you knew
that anyway didn't you. You do have your MBR backed up don't you?
There are other boot fix utilities on there too.

There are other partitioning and registry tools on there too.

http://www.hiren.info/pages/bootcd

Do not download it from anywhere else - they are illegal copies as they
contain un-registered software and this is totally legit freeware/shareware.

The ads on the page will tell you that, so please don't go off on one
about the other many dodgy copies that are floating round the net.
They are totally unnecessary as this boot cd will do all you need and more.


cheers.

Since I've been recommending Macrium Reflect Free I feel obligated to issue a little warning:

The image restoring option in the Free version is a bootable Linux based program. At least as of right now, it doesn't work with all hardware (if it doesn't you're not even able to start the restoring program). The paid version of Reflect comes with the additional Windows PE option for restoring images, which should always work.

So my advice is to check if the Linux based image restore program works on your system before relying on it.

1 - Always try the emergency offline bootable CD because it may not work on your computer
2 - Try to use TWO backup solutions and alternate them (like every week a different one)
3 - Try to use an offline version (with boot CD)instead of a Windows program

All the suggestions are already listed

My favs :
The free Acronis based
Macrium Free

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I am very new to this forum and tried to search this thread for my suggestion, but came up with no hits!

So, if you want a free imaging program Clonezilla is good. Then watch for coupon-code offers on Acronis products, while using Clonezilla. The latter has a better GUI.

I just thought I would add my thanks for the suggestions here. I've just finished recovering from a really bad virus/rootkit that made my winxp installation unusable. Ended up reinstalling windows to a new hard drive.

The plan was to then save an image of this new install so I had the same install on two different hard drives, so when I went to try to recover my data (yeah, it was mostly backed up, but not completely) I would have another clean install, sitting there in case the hosed hard drive re-infected everything again.

I have Acronis 7, but it was saying it would take 5-6 hours to create the image. I believe it. Once started, the progress bar hardly moved after an hour. I think maybe Acronis 7 is too old and won't work with SATA drives.

Next up was DriveImageXML with BartPE. I was able to create an image and was able to browse that image, and recover it to a drive, but I could never get that drive to boot at all.

Then I downloaded Seagate Diskwizard. It worked perfectly. Saved and restored the working installation in about 20 minutes! I could have saved myself a lot of time messing with BartPE and the old Acronis.

Diskwizard also allows you to redo partitions, and do disk to disk copying, so it's turned out to be really useful.

Thanks again for the suggestions. I've nearly recovered everything I needed, and haven't been reinfected, yet. This will definitely become a part of my backup strategy!

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but Clonezilla is a very powerful free open source imaging and cloning utility.