Creating a System Image

[hoofhearted4]

so i want to create a System Image of my SSD (which is broken into C: and D:) because i want to reformat it and trying something, and in the event it doesnt work or i dont like it etc, i want to be able to put it back to the way it was.

 

so i did a little research and read about two good tools to do this with. either Parted Magic or Clonezilla, and from what i read PM has Clonezilla apart of it.

 

 

so i go ahead and download PM as an .iso, burn it to a CD and try to run it. but no luck. it freezes as the very beginning of setup (at the "Setting up system devices..." screen for anyone whos ever used it) ive tried running it Live from the CD, tried copying it to RAM, tried doing both of these from a USB, and tried the 32 and 64 options. nothing has ever gotten me passed that screen where it freezes. so i go and try Clonezilla. same thing. ive tried USB and CD, Live and copy to RAM, nothing. it usually brings me to a gray screen. where i can type things as if it were a command line or something, but nothing happens.

 

i tried booting to something i know works (Slax Server) and it copied to RAM just fine, no problems. i cannot for the life of me figure out what is wrong. i went to the PM formus and saw someone who has the same issue i did, but he got one reply and that was it, never solved. i posted in that thread for poops and giggles, but i dont expect help from there.

 

so i come here, with two options. either maybe someone who has used PM or anything can help me get passed my issue, or can suggest another good free option to create a system image on an external drive.

 

 

i have a Western Digital HDD (both my storage drive, and the aforementioned external drive are WD) and ive heard you can use their Acronis software or whatever if you have a WD HDD. so i may try that if all else fails. but i wanted to find a piece of software that i could use anywhere, on any system. not something that is reliant on you having a WD HDD.

 

 

thanks for your help all. hope we can solve my issues. :/

[Dan3345]

I don't understand what you are trying to do.

 

You are trying to backup your SSD with two partitions on it so that you can try something completely new on the SSD but have a backup in case you want to revert back yes?

 

Then all you have to do is make a system image on a backup drive and then reinstall windows on the SSD. The installation process will force you to format the entire drive.

 

If this is what you are trying to do, you don't need third party software to do it. You can easily create a system image from within windows, and they work more often then the third party ones do which as you are describing, are unreliable.

[Vecna6667]

Windows 7 should be able to create an image on it's own through the control panel. Just go to:

 

Control Panel -> System and Security -> Backup and Restore

 

After that you should have a selection of options on the left side of the window. Those options should be:

 

Turn off schedule

Create a system image

Create a system repair disc(All three options are ran as administrator.)

 

Click Create a system image and follow the instructions. As a note, I believe Windows 7 will let you create one system image per installation to store on a removable drive(like a USB hard drive.) After that, you can create/use a system repair disk or you should be able to use the Windows 7 Installation disk to restore the image.

 

As for what happened with Parted Magic, I can only guess that the download may have corrupted during download(I've had that happen to me with Fedora 17 and it messed up my installing it in a virtual test environment. Which is why I always try to test tools like these in a virtual environment first,) or the system maybe looking for a device that it shouldn't(like a floppy drive. Check the BIOS and disable some drives. Look to see if your BIOS has a floppy drive option and if it does, make sure it is set to none.) Also, keep checking the forums. I haven't used parted magic so I can't be fully sure on the problem itself. My Google search on the problem lead me to a forum posted a year ago that hinted about the floppy drive.

 

EDIT: Before you go "But my motherboard doesn't have a floppy port." some BIOS' still include the option because they were to lazy to change it or it may still be needed for a USB floppy drive.

Edited March 6, 2013 by Vecna6667

[hoofhearted4]

Ya I knew u could use windows but I wanted something you could use without having to have windows or be logged in etc. I found macrium reflect and it works both as an .exe and from a disk and yea backed up everything just fine :)

[hoofhearted4]

just wanted to say, i figured out the reason it didnt wanna boot any of those Linux based items. Parted Magic and Clonezilla are both Linux based. i later tried installed Linux Mint with no avail. and just recently i tried booting GParted, annother Linux based program and was getting an error "Failed Command: Identify Packet Device" i had seen this in the other programs as well (at Least Linux Mint IIRC). GParted however, I knew should work. Ive used it before. so i did a google search on the error, and within the top 3 results was my answer.

 

turns out, it doesnt like the SATA controller the Optical Drive was reading from. the guy who resolved the issue said he had an ASRock Z77 Extreme4 mobo (same as me) and that if you switch the SATA cable for your optical drive into the SATA ports controlled by the mobo and not the individual chip (in my case put it in the black SATA ports and not the grey ones) then it solves your issue. lo and behold, i switch it and it worked!! i was recently rewiring cables in my cases, and i must have moved the Optical Drive cable around.

 

so if anyone ever has this issue, theres your solution! :D