Does anyone make a system image as a backup to avoid reinstalling?

ahar

ahar

ahar

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One of the things I did back in the days of windows 95 when I had access to imaging software from work was to make a system image every noe and again to try an avoid the pain of reinstalling.

Does anyone still do this? I'm going to be doing a new system build next week but don't have any imaging software, so will need to buy or use open source. Once I've got the system sorted and all my software (MS Office, iTunes etc) installed and its stable I was going to take an image for a backup .

It used to save me lots of time back in the windows 95 days - is it still worth doing with Windows 7 and an SSD (hopefully install times are not measured in half days like before!)?
 
Windows 7 installed i think in around 10/15mins. It was about a 1/4 of the time compared to my old HD (upgraded to SSD)

TBH - You can NOT beat a fresh install :D Everything is zippy and smooth :D
 
Only my server OS drive tbh, Windows Vista and beyond don't take too long to reinstall. At work all machines are imaged on deployment, data is kept on a RAID1 NAS
 
It depends.

If you're re-installing to sort out software problems then an image is no use as you'll just put all the same problems back.

If you're re-installing because your system drive died then an image could be very handy.

Wndows 7 has its own built in software to create a drive image.

You can also create a Windows 7 recovery CD which you can boot from and restore the image.

The only caveat is that I believe the image has to be restored to a drive at least as large as the one the image was made from.
 
Win7 has all you need for backup and making an image. Install time to an ssd should take no longer than 15 mins overall.
 
Yup, I've always cloned my system drive as my backup regime.

That way, should the HD drive, I can be back up and running within an hour or so of getting a replacement drive (it's not just the Win7 install time but the time to find and install all the apps you use and get everything configured in the way you're used to... that can take days, IMHO).

In the past I've used Ghost, DriveClone and Acronis - they've all been good and then completely sucked at time. Currently using the free version of Acronis which Western Digital have available for download (hint - it works if you have a WD drive in the PC, even if you're cloning from and to other brands of HD).
 
I use trueimage to make images, windows may be quick to install but install and setup off all the other apps you'd use takes the most time.

i went off windows image backup when my ssd died and it refused to restore the image to another HD.
 
stulid said:
I do a fresh install, like BringTheRain said, it doesn't take long with a fast SSD.
Click to expand...

+1

i reinstall every 6 months or so, keep my essential apps to a minimum and have all essential files on dropbox so that if i have drive failure/virus/etc i can reinstall quickly and painlessly

(i also backup my essential files to disk every month :) )

my essential apps:
- avast
- comodo firewall
- office 2010
- autocad 2011
- firefox
- vlc
- dropbox
- skype
- imgburn
 
After ive done a fresh install and installed everything I make a Macruim image. If my installation gets messed up I just restore it to fresh'ness!

Any changes in hardware I do a new install.
 
I make an image using Acronis but only when I know i'm going to have to perform a fresh install. Then I only install programs/transfer files that I want to use, delete that image and then create a new one next time I need to fresh install. I do this on a partition on the same drive though which I wouldn't call safe, may need to invest in an external HDD. for backup.
 
I never bother making an image, I only ususally re-install windows to clear all the junk out and speed everything up again. This is much more manageable now that I have a dedicated SSD for my OS and essentials programs and 2x 500GB drives for my media and games which i can leave well alone.
 
Well it appears I'm in the minority. I never do a fresh install, mainly for the fact I need to go through and setup everything the way I like all over again.

I do my fresh install, then customise the OS the way I want it. Install all my games, programs, AV, photoshop, lightroom and various other software I use regularly and will always want to keep.

Set my wallpaper, install themes, browser settings, email client setups etc. I have a few. From the install to the final setup is around 2 hours+

The install times aren't the problem it's all the customisation and installation of apps etc that take up the time.

Once this is all done, I then make a complete mirror image of the partition and keep it on an external HDD. If anything goes wrong in the future then I just restore the image back to it's original state and all is well. An image recovery is something in the region of 15-20 minutes.

It's a no brainer really. If of course you don't really have much installed, just the odd AV and firefox then I'd probably just do a fresh install as well.

Not to mention you don't need to do the same Windows Updates all over again which take quite a bit of time even on my 16Mbps connection and raid0 ssd's
 
fresh install for me allways nice and speedy, move everything i want to keep to an other hdd and redownload my games 50mb connection is ace :D
 
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