Does Win8 have good backup imagine software?

[Muckster]

I've been using True Image 2010 for many years and I am totally unfamiliar with Windows backup imaging. I currently use W7 and will soon upgrade to W8. Does W8 have a good built-in imaging software that I can use? I want to be able to make a FULL back up of the active partition where I run the OS. I don't mind doing this manually but I want to make sure W8 has such software and that's reliable and relatively easy to use.

Does Windows 8 have this?

 

[giantbucket]

yup. it is the same as for Win7 but it's just located differently. also, Win8.1 lets you use a USB thumb drive as a recovery drive (instead of CD/DVD), which is very nice. there's one or two extra steps when doing the recovery itself compared to Win7, but the end result is the same.

 

[Muckster]

I never used Win 7 for imaging. But on 8.1 you're saying I can make a TOTAL PARTITION backup, store in on a USB Flash Drive, then access it at a later time? Say my physical HDD is fine, but my partition with my OS is corrupted. Is there a way to restore the partition using the USB FLASH drive, but NOT doing it from windows? In other words can I boot from the USB drive and restore the image?

 

[giantbucket]

you need to store the image itself onto another hard drive, but the actual tool to do the recovering is done using a small USB flash drive (in Win8.1 at least). in Win7, I used to make a recovery CD and use that to boot and then restore an image from an external hard drive. now, I use a USB to boot, but still need the image on some other drive.

thus, you would boot into the USB drive and NOT boot into Windows (cuz it's safe to assume you're doing this BECAUSE you can't boot into windows, or it's a replacement HDD, or whatever)

the system image would restore the entire C: drive - BUT I'm not sure how it would work if for example you have C: and D: on the same physical hard drive and only need to restore C: but keep D: intact. you SHOULD be able to simply tell the recovery tool to "exclude D: when formatting" and it'll just blow away old-C: and replace it with new-C: probably best to do a trial run with a fresh install just so you know what the steps are later on.

I've always kept one drive ONLY for my OS so that these restores are easy, and kept my media / docs on other physical drives.

just read the steps during restore carefully. or to be absolutely safe unplug ALL OTHER HARD DRIVES (except of course the one that has the saved image on it, and the one that the image is going to be put onto)

in Win7, you go to Control Panel - System Security - on left side it says "create system image"
in Win8.1, you go to Control Panel - File History - some link on the bottom left (I think it's called recovery) - and then create system image

try it on Win7 first, the create system image and then create restore disc (you need both). you save the image on a HDD and burn the restore disc onto a blank DVD (or maybe CD, dunno, I've just grabbed DVD blanks)

 

[Muckster]

Wow sounds messy. Typically, I create a few partitions one of which holds the OS another which I use to hold images. Using True Image, anytime I want to go back to a fresher image, I just run TR and tell it to restore to an older image. It reboots and does everything I want with no further steps. OR, if the OS becomes very corrupt so I can't even boot, then I just use a CD/DVD at boot and that runs TR which then restores the OS. How many hard drives I have or how many partitions makes no difference at all.

I'll play around with the Win 8 imaging software but from what you describe it's more trouble than it's worth compared to my True Image which I've been using since win98.

 

[giantbucket]

if you're happy with TI then keep using it (as long as it can handle Win8 and how it writes the MBR, which from what little I know is different than Win7 and other Win before it). I've only used native / built-in methods and I've never had any issues with them, so to me they're no more messy than TI is to you (familiarity). it may seem to be more steps - or maybe it is one or three more steps - but it works 100% and once you've seen it or worked through it it's really not that complex.

bottom line - yes, Win8.1 (and I guess Win8 as well) has a built-in system for doing all of this. as does Win7. WinXP or any previous Wins don't have it built-in, and I've no clue on Vista (but nobody cares about Vista anyways)

 

[Muckster]

I'd prefer to dump TI and just use W8, but not if I have to face a lot of unknowns and extra hassle. I'm sure I'll play around with it just the same. Thanks for the information and your time.

 

[giantbucket]

you're welcome. I never used any imaging methods until Win7. the only thing that did trip me up was that you can't start renaming folders where the image is. leave it the heck alone, otherwise the tool doesn't find it. you can move the "WindowsImageBackup" folder to other drives (keep it at root, not inside yet another folder), but don't rename it or any of the folders inside it. other than that, it's pretty simple.

 

[spokey42]

WinXP or any previous Wins don't have it built-in, and I've no clue on Vista (but nobody cares about Vista anyways)

Actually XP does have a similar backup/restore. I think you are correct about wins prior to XP and although I guess as of April 8, it is kind of irrelevant to XP as well. In XP you use something called an ASR backup.

You invoke it via the opening panel of the regular backup. It is the bottom choice on that initial panel

It is a complete backup. I've used it to restore to a new HD. It is similar to win7 (haven't used win8 yet) Instead of a boot CD, you create a boot diskette. It may not be a complete image as in I'm not sure temp directories and such are there, but it is complete enough so you don't re-install programs or anything. Just restore to a new HD and away you go.

My personal strategy has been:

Create a dated directory on an external HD
Backup the 'C' drive. This also creates the floppy boot.
Copy the files from the floppy to a sub-directory of the above for restoring later when I lose the floppy
Backup each volume separately

This is a directory example of one of my remaining XP machines:

03/11/2014 10:00 AM <DIR> .
03/11/2014 10:00 AM <DIR> ..
03/06/2014 04:15 PM <DIR> diskette
03/06/2014 03:29 PM 22,275,817,472 Gaea Full C Drive 20140306_1341.bkf
03/06/2014 04:24 PM 6,237,500,416 Gaea Full I Drive 20140306_1341.bkf
03/06/2014 10:56 PM 13,110,494,208 Gaea Full K Drive 20140306_1341.bkf

Directory of D:\ASR\2014-03-06\diskette

03/06/2014 04:15 PM <DIR> .
03/06/2014 04:15 PM <DIR> ..
03/06/2014 04:12 PM 5,798 asr.sif
03/06/2014 04:12 PM 36,958 asrpnp.sif
03/06/2014 04:12 PM 223,198 setup.log
3 File(s) 265,954 bytes

 

[gladtue]

Update True Image 2010 to its latest version. BTW, my tool is aomei backupper and sopports 8/8.1

 

[cmp2993]

NO! Absolutely not, do not use the Windows 8 built in "system image backup" tool. If you try to use your backup image to recover to a different drive (if your current drive failed), you will be screwed and pissed that you didn't listen to me. The utility is flaky and unreliable, not fit for backup or recovery of anything important.

Check out my thread from a few days ago and you'll see what I went through and the headaches this utility caused! It may be something with Windows 8.1 I'm not really sure but all I do know is that this utility is far from perfect and if you use it you are taking a gamble with loosing everything. Make a clone of your drive as a backup, that's what I ended up doing to recover everything of mine to a new SSD since the dumb imaging utility failed me.