How to restore Windows from image without using DVD's or USB drives?

niemi · 15 Dec 2009 at 20:13

We have quite a few programs that will let us image a partition to a DVD, then by booting from this DVD we can recover to the saved state at any time.

Now, what I would like is a program that lets me recover to this saved state without using DVD's or similar.

Imagine we have one hard drive with two partitions, C and D. I make an image of C and save it in D. I now want to use the image on drive D and restore drive C to the imaged state. Can I somehow do this without optical media, USB-pens and similar?

I don't believe Trueimage or Ghost can do this, correct me if I'm wrong?

ajstan · 15 Dec 2009 at 20:22

Can you not just boot from the D partition? change the boot order in BIOS?

niemi · 15 Dec 2009 at 20:38

ajstan said:
Can you not just boot from the D partition? change the boot order in BIOS?

Partition D would have to be bootable then. By default it's not.

Raumarik · 15 Dec 2009 at 20:41

I can't think of any way of doing that - BIOS won't let you select a partition only a physical drive and boot from C drive (assuming it's currently your bootable partition) so unless you can make both C and D bootable and a menu at startup to select which one you boot from I can't see how. I'm assuming you want to do this if the windows partition becomes corrupt etc?

If you only want to do this in order to wipe changes to C drive you'd be better off looking for a bodyguard card or deepfreeze software which can undo/prevent changes to the protected partition or drive, regardless of what you do (even formatting). We use to use them in schools and libraries. Once protected any changes to the drive vanish when it's powered off.

paradigm · 15 Dec 2009 at 20:48

You could have three partitions, a small boot partition that also contains the apps needed to image one disk to another.

Muchlike the way OEM's have a hidden recovery partition.

HazardO · 16 Dec 2009 at 11:50

If you had a Linux boot partition, you could use ntfsclone piped to gzip (partitions compress nicely) to create an image, and then the reverse to restore.

Using this method you should be able to store windows images on another partition/disk, or even a network drive, and recover them by booting back into Linux and restoring the ntfs image.

http://www.linux-ntfs.org/doku.php?id=ntfsclone

Swordfish · 16 Dec 2009 at 11:56

I'm sure that True Image can create a secure zone and when the pc is booted up you get the option to load the recovery software.

In the end though I'd prefer to keep my images on DVD or external Drive and have a boot disc as if your HD failed then your beat.