Have anyone successfully restored an disk image made with Windows Backup on Vista?

[ceed]

Hi,

I've got Vista Ultimate and noticed that it comes with a whole disk
image based backup option. That's really a great way to back up since
you can get up again quite soon after a fatal hardware crash. However,
I would like to ask if anyone here have restored a computer using an
image stored on a USB drive made by Microsoft Backup on Vista Ultimate?
It's much simpler to create the image on a separate drive than to use
ton's of DVD's.

 

[Richard Urban]

Early on I did just what you are asking about. But options are limited as
compared to Acronis TrueImage HOME 10.0.4940, which I use exclusively. I
would not be caught working on my customers computers without this program
in my possession - on the bootable CD that you can create.

TrueImage HOME, along with Acronis Disk Director Suite are my major tools in
setting up and repairing computers.

--


Regards,

Richard Urban
Microsoft MVP Windows Shell/User
(For email, remove the obvious from my address)

 

[Chad Harris]

Hi Ceed--


From Jill Zoeller [MSFT] on the File Services and Storage team:

How Windows Vista Backup uses zip files to store backups (and how to extract
files from zips)
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/ar...ckups-and-how-to-extract-files-from-zips.aspx

I totally agree with Richard Urban and scores of regulars on this group as
to using Acronis. I strongly recommend Acronis. It's a smarter backup
application than Vista Backup. Vista Backup should be smarter and more
nuanced, but then you get into the area I preceive and categorize that "MSFT
could build applications into the OS that are fully competitive with 3rd
party and often it does, but there's a limit as to time and cost and legal
liability that might result, and the OS can't offer all the same
functionality as many 3rd party apps" That's just my perception--it might
not be accurate. You'll note as time goes by, MSFT will absorb companies
and make the 3rd party apps as free standing apps. One Care is an example.

If you use software like Acronis, you can back up a disk image to media, and
if you have enough space (quite common now with the size of HDs and external
HDs readily available) you can choose where to put the backup of the HD
image. You can also make a fast restoring disaster recovery partition
called Acronis Secure Zone and the Acronis CD is bootable. You can specify
the location of the backup; and also can do incremental and differential
backups with a frequency of your choosing.

Acronis Free Trial:
http://www.acronis.com/download/

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

Acronis is more nimble than Vista backup. Vista does have an Automatic
Backup feature and you can schedule how often you want it to do a "scheduled
backup." There is a "How Often" dialogue box shown in the links below:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/details/backup.mspx

Tips on using Vista Backup are here:

A Guide to Windows Vista Backup Technologies
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/09/Backup/default.aspx
"File backups aren't deleted automatically. However, you can delete file
backups manually if you're low on space. A word of advice: you should always
delete an entire backup set as opposed to deleting individual incremental
backups."


Good luck,

CH

 

[PTravel]

Hi,

I've got Vista Ultimate and noticed that it comes with a whole disk
image based backup option. That's really a great way to back up since
you can get up again quite soon after a fatal hardware crash. However,
I would like to ask if anyone here have restored a computer using an
image stored on a USB drive made by Microsoft Backup on Vista Ultimate?
It's much simpler to create the image on a separate drive than to use
ton's of DVD's.

Yup -- I've had to do that a number of times. When I'm trying out new
software, I'll usually do a complete image backup just in case the new
software crashes my setup. On a few occasions it has, so I've backed up
from the USB-drive-based image backup. It works great. One time, I was
trying to create an XP boot image on a thumb drive. XP writes markers to
the MBR of any hard drive it finds, so it wrote it to the drive in my laptop
and completely destroyed my Vista setup -- the machine wouldn't even boot.
I was able to use the hardware-based restore function to reinstall the image
from the USB drive to which I had backed it up.

 

[ceed]

Yup -- I've had to do that a number of times. When I'm trying out
new software, I'll usually do a complete image backup just in case
the new software crashes my setup. On a few occasions it has, so
I've backed up from the USB-drive-based image backup. It works
great. One time, I was trying to create an XP boot image on a thumb
drive. XP writes markers to the MBR of any hard drive it finds, so
it wrote it to the drive in my laptop and completely destroyed my
Vista setup -- the machine wouldn't even boot. I was able to use the
hardware-based restore function to reinstall the image from the USB
drive to which I had backed it up.

Thanks! That sounds reassuring. The only thing I worry about is this
recovery partition HP puts on their laptops. I do not know if the boot
configuration is custom and not something Microsoft Backup can handle,
but if the image contains all the information from the boot sector and
not only tries to re-create it based on the two partitions I should be
good. I dread testing it in case it doesn't work, but I will try just
to make sure it works.

 

[ceed]

Hi Ceed--


From Jill Zoeller [MSFT] on the File Services and Storage team:

How Windows Vista Backup uses zip files to store backups (and how to
extract files from zips)
http://blogs.technet.com/filecab/archive/2007/06/19/how-windows-vista-
backup-uses-zip-files-to-store-backups-and-how-to-extract-files-from-z
ips.aspx

I totally agree with Richard Urban and scores of regulars on this
group as to using Acronis. I strongly recommend Acronis. It's a
smarter backup application than Vista Backup. Vista Backup should be
smarter and more nuanced, but then you get into the area I preceive
and categorize that "MSFT could build applications into the OS that
are fully competitive with 3rd party and often it does, but there's a
limit as to time and cost and legal liability that might result, and
the OS can't offer all the same functionality as many 3rd party apps"
That's just my perception--it might not be accurate. You'll note as
time goes by, MSFT will absorb companies and make the 3rd party apps
as free standing apps. One Care is an example.

If you use software like Acronis, you can back up a disk image to
media, and if you have enough space (quite common now with the size
of HDs and external HDs readily available) you can choose where to
put the backup of the HD image. You can also make a fast restoring
disaster recovery partition called Acronis Secure Zone and the
Acronis CD is bootable. You can specify the location of the backup;
and also can do incremental and differential backups with a frequency
of your choosing.

Acronis Free Trial:
http://www.acronis.com/download/

http://www.acronis.com/homecomputing/download/trueimage/

Acronis is more nimble than Vista backup. Vista does have an Automatic
Backup feature and you can schedule how often you want it to do a
"scheduled backup." There is a "How Often" dialogue box shown in the
links below:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsvista/features/detail
s/backup.mspx

Tips on using Vista Backup are here:

A Guide to Windows Vista Backup Technologies
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/technetmag/issues/2007/09/Backup/defa
ult.aspx "File backups aren't deleted automatically. However, you can
delete file backups manually if you're low on space. A word of
advice: you should always delete an entire backup set as opposed to
deleting individual incremental backups."


Good luck,

CH

Hi,

I've got Vista Ultimate and noticed that it comes with a whole disk
image based backup option. That's really a great way to back up
since you can get up again quite soon after a fatal hardware crash.
However, I would like to ask if anyone here have restored a
computer using an image stored on a USB drive made by Microsoft
Backup on Vista Ultimate? It's much simpler to create the image on
a separate drive than to use ton's of DVD's.

-- //ceed

Thank you for all the information. However, my Vista Ultimate does
include an image based back-up option, so if the image can be restored
it's actually all I need. I will consider getting Acronis, but the
simplicity of the MS solution is attractive since all I want is to
create an image which can be restored if I mess up myself or my
computer dies for some reason. I did go all the way using MS's restore
option up to where the actual restore was going to happen. I was warned
that the whole disk would be wiped and my image put back on the disk
leaving me where I was at the time of the back-up. Another thing I
liked was that the MS image backup took much less time to complete than
I thought it would. It actually completed in less time than my old
Sonic back-up solution which only baked up selected files and folders.