able to back up windows 7 and use from a usb flash media?

[emekadavid]

is it possible to be able to back up my system, windows 7, so that I can beable to run the backed up image when my disk is corrupted without recourseto installing windows 7 from afresh using installation dvds? Brief: I wanta situation where I can back up to a media, like a usb flash and the back up is bootable from any computer, so that the usb flash serves as windows 7system waiting in the wings for an eventuality. This is due to a recent event,https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt/fxgHcFgsS5A, although it did not affect my system files, but once bitten twice shy.

 

[emekadavid]

"Bootable from any computer" is the critical phrase. Ask yourself

"Would Microsoft design an OS that could be installed on one computer,

then copied and booted from any computer without having to pay for a

license to have it function on that 2nd (or 3rd, or 4th, or 5th) computer?",

and you'll have your answer.



*TimDaniels*

So, what's the use of a system image? Does it mean having it somewhere, I can be able to recreate the configurations and settings on my system again if i reinstall or recreate them on another system running windows 7?
Got your pun, Tim. thanks.

 

[emekadavid]

So, what's the use of a system image? Does it mean having it somewhere, Ican be able to recreate the configurations and settings on my system againif i reinstall or recreate them on another system running windows 7?

Got your pun, Tim. thanks.

so, I have this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_image. and this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disk_image. problem 3/4 solved. Question: can anyone recommend a disk imaging software that is faithful, even with passwordsand security configurations on windows 7? thanks.

 

[Flasherly]

is it possible

to be able to back up my system, windows 7, so that I can be able to
run the backed up image when my disk is corrupted without recourse to
installing windows 7 from afresh using installation dvds? Brief: I
want a situation where I can back up to a media, like a usb flash and
the back up is bootable from any computer, so that the usb flash
serves as windows 7 system waiting in the wings for an eventuality.
This is due to a recent
event,https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt/fxgHcFgsS5A,
although it did not affect my system files, but once bitten twice shy.


-
But of course, we great ease and aplomb in and a manner most natural
to congenial recourses. In fact I've been doing precisely for untold
years.

First you need to understand something of hard disk structures,
notably partitions and Master Boot Records. Not extensively, but only
so far as how Windows, as well, works with them so as avoid a conflict
of interst.

Second you'll need a binary imager, a program such as Norton Ghost
which adds compression capacities as well as adaptive restoration when
a disk partition, formerly imaged and copies, has been resized (it's
also IT oriented and capable of extensive operations when propagating
images automatedly through network channels).

Personally, I use only the DOS variant of Ghost, so in first
preestablishing my rules as to how Windows perceives the HD, or in
planning for a boot arbitrator as to not conflict with Windows and its
manner and style of working within the MBR for similar, though less
exact means and programs I prefer. ...a *Nix arbitrator ...

Smart Boot Manager 3.7.1 Installer Copyright (C) 2000 Suzhe, Lonius
This is free software, you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2.

If working in DOS that means HIREMS, which further means outdated
programs, since Corporate Copyright Pigs would sooner see valid and
beneficial utilities rot in the Pervasive WasteLands, than to forgo
interest in shareholder dividends through useless improvements
purportedly disguised as planned obsolesence. To sum, that means an
older HIREMS discs, in DOS, before the Corporate Heat was applied On
High to HIREMS and shift was made, due to survival, to *NIX based
discs.

Easy as rocket science, perhaps not, but harder than a cross-word
puzzle, yes, such as it and at times most definately.

 

[emekadavid]

Forget those links. Understand that the terminology is uh, "fluid" in IT,

but in most of the newsgroups, "clone" is a sector-for-sector copy of what

is on the disk or partition, and "image" is a clone that has been turned into

a compressed file for efficient storage. Images are convenient for archiving,

but they have to be "restored" (expanded) to a disk (or SSD) before they can

be used as an OS. Clones, OTOH, can be booted right where they reside,

provided that they are on the same kind of medium that the original OS was

on, and they are most useful as a quick fall-back OS if the primary drive fails

while the rest of the system continues to run. To be explicit, they need the

rest of the hardware system to survive the HDD failure, because the booted

clone must think that it is the original OS running on the same system that it

was installed on or it starts to get suspicious. The same applies to restored

images, BTW.



In my stock day trading days, I always had a set of 4 clones on a 2nd

HDD inside my computer system, each clone representing the state of the

system at some time in the recent past. Since the OS was Windows XP and

since I understood the boot menu well, I could simply go into the BIOS and

put the 2nd HDD at the head of the boot priority queue, causing the 2nd HDD

to boot. The partition containing the most recent clone was always set as the

"active" partition, so the boot manager in that partition would boot. The OS

in that partition was always set as the default, but the menu also always

included pointers to each of the other partitions, and if I wanted, I could boot

any of the OSes in the other partitions. If my HDD were to ever fail or if a virus

damaged any system files, I could have a clone that had been made of the

system in the recent past up and running in just a few minutes. That is the

beauty of a clone - it's another software system all ready to go. The downside

is that it takes up exactly as much disk space as the original, and it must reside

on a Primary partition in order to contain a boot manager.



If it was just a file in any of the partitions that I wanted to recover, whatever

OS was running (which could be the original or any clone) would view the other

partitions as just file hierarchies, and I could access them like any other file.



If you can spare the HDD space, I recommend making clones. They don't

need a "restoration" phase or any running software to do that restoration.

But with Vista and Win7/8, there is a more complex BCD boot manager to

understand and BCDedit to use to manipulate the boot menu, and if you're

unfamiliar with multi-booting, it would be best to just stick to cloning just the

OS partition to one partition on the backup HDD, or simply cloning the entire

primary HDD to the backup HDD. Recovery would then require just resetting

the boot priority of the HDDs in the BIOS to be up and running in a couple

minutes.



Backup software has gotten highly developed with time, and there can be

not only incremental backups to images and clones, but they can be scheduled

to run automatically and periodically in the background, and they can use

"The Cloud" for storage. As a result, they've gotten more expensive and complex,

and a pain to understand. In this space is Norton Ghost (which is currently being

revised), Acronis's "True Image", and Future Systems Solutions "Casper". For

doing just a simple clone without all the bells and whistles, I've heard that the

free version of Macrium Reflect does a good job.



Have fun!

*TimDaniels*

Enough for an IT technicians degree, Tim. One huge uncertainty has been lifted off my shoulders. Thanks to everyone.

 

[Flasherly]

Here is something you might want to investigate,
perhaps by emailing the sales dept. at Acronis and
Future Systems Solutions - given that a system can
boot from a USB device (either external USB HDD
or USB thumb drive), can a clone be booted from
those USB media, provided that the clone was a copy
of a Windows OS installed on the same system?
If you get a reply, please post it here.

*TimDaniels*

I've those on a HIRENS disc, scaled down XP, non-essential drivers
removed, &etc. It mightily blows up to spew puke. USB, DVD, whatever
or however.

Better to customize the image to the particular situation and
computer. But I only do binary sectors for a 1:1 copy of the OS,
proper, and none of this static shut-down type imagery, which in a
sense reminds me of "hibernating" imagery for storing and later
retrieving an OS state.

Another thing that hasn't been broached is segregating the OS from
resources deployed onto it, e.g. the placement of all subsequent
programs, when applicable and idealistically, as portable applications
without further OS implications.

Creampie sweet, besides adding the dimension to a binary image
restorations, being so focused for as efficient as possible;- I'm
doing HD platters to a SSD memory of the OS at a whole 15sec., at
best, faster than a HD-HD platter implementation of said methodology,
which least to inveigh a 45-sec. system restoration of Windows XP
Service Pack1.

One of the more salient aspects of computing without the normal
disassociative melange of kludge, such as near-obligatory suites of
lucrativeness hold in propositions of software integrity, to low-level
driver, antivirus suites, by way of assurances to enure hackers or a
general malfeasance among widespread practises from industry
programmers solely poised to exploit the ignorant.

Excuse me, the Logically Challenged;- not everyone obviously has the
capacity, will or time to devote to some requisite preparation to
harden-in a system before structuring it in as an integral of binary
backups (I run three generations). Hence, bear witness to the next
generation of computers worn and operated from smart wristwatches and
designer sunglasses, from Distributive Cloud Centres, fashionably
stocked with games and all the programs imaginable, conceivably at
some equitably compensatory stipend, shall we say as much to start
with at $80US for monthly subscription rates;... As they do deserve
that, at least, I believe.