What is the best way to image my Win7 install?

J

JCDenton

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Jan 6, 2008
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I've never done this before, and when I try to search for how to do it I just get a bunch of hits for how to create a DVD for the initial installation.

What I want to do is get all my essential programs installed, then make an image of the whole drive so I can revert back to it if I want. Just a link to whatever's best for this would be good.
 
There are many many answers to this question. My answer being a windows enterprise guy is WinPE and Imagex. Another solution that is popular would be Acronis True Image. As for a consensus I dont think you will get one, everyone has their favorite tools.
 
What version of Windows 7 do you have? Depending on the version, you may already have the tools built-in.
 
Backup and Restore > Create System Image

Even the Home Premium version supports it now, and it works with the OS running.
 
Pro I think. It was from that $29.99 deal in the deals forum.

Also, any tips on how to reduce space would be helpful. I'm throwing a 20 gig oblivion install on my 80gig intel ssd so that takes a lot of space when combined with the OS. but hopefully, the hard drive stuttering will finally be gone.
 
A game that large would get installed on my data drive, especially if my system volume was so small.
 
I use the western digital cd that coming with the HD. I just clone everything onto another hd and store it. I do this once every 3 months.
 
Home Premium, Professional, and Ultimate, all come the with built in Backup and Restore as Stellar has mentioned. It is runs via the wbadmin commands. You can restore an image from it by booting into Windows and using the Backup and Restore tool, or if you cant boot into Windows you can run the Repair option from the Install DVD and restore an image via wbadmin in command prompt. Its really easy.
 
xenios said:
There are many many answers to this question. My answer being a windows enterprise guy is WinPE and Imagex. Another solution that is popular would be Acronis True Image. As for a consensus I dont think you will get one, everyone has their favorite tools.
Click to expand...

I would use Imagex as well. Boot to a winPE install (heck, you can use the Win7 disk and hit Shift+F10 to get to a command promt) and map to a network location with ImageX and enough storage to hold your image. Capture the image with ImageX and you're done.

WIM images have a lot of benefits -- you could even drop it right back on your Win7 Installation CD so that you could run through a normal install and -- it's got all your apps. Very cool stuff.

But in all honesty, for the average home user, the built in backup or something like Acronis is the way to go.
 
DeaconFrost said:
A game that large would get installed on my data drive, especially if my system volume was so small.
Click to expand...

Yeah well Oblivion was specifically one of the reasons I got a SSD. Once you get a ton of mods it starts being bottlenecked by your RAM and hard drive more than the CPU/GPU. The mods increase the amount of data being streamed off the hdd so much that it can choke up. I think the SSD will help a lot.
 
Demon10000 said:
I would use Imagex as well. Boot to a winPE install (heck, you can use the Win7 disk and hit Shift+F10 to get to a command promt) and map to a network location with ImageX and enough storage to hold your image. Capture the image with ImageX and you're done.

WIM images have a lot of benefits -- you could even drop it right back on your Win7 Installation CD so that you could run through a normal install and -- it's got all your apps. Very cool stuff.

But in all honesty, for the average home user, the built in backup or something like Acronis is the way to go.
Click to expand...

+1

I also use imagex, but windows 7 backup is better for a first time user.
 
JCDenton said:
I've never done this before, and when I try to search for how to do it I just get a bunch of hits for how to create a DVD for the initial installation.

What I want to do is get all my essential programs installed, then make an image of the whole drive so I can revert back to it if I want. Just a link to whatever's best for this would be good.
Click to expand...
Just type in Backup into the search box. Then click on the Backup and Restore Center and you can choose to do a complete PC backup. It will dump an image onto whatever drive you point it at. To restore that image, simply boot to your Windows 7 CD and choose the restore section and point back to the image.
 
On that note, is there a tutorial for using ImageX somewhere? I've been meaning to learn more about it when Vista was released, but never got around to it. I'll be rolling out Windows 7 in a few months, and I'd love to be able to package in our apps.
 
Clonezilla is a great tool that is based on Linux and uses open-source tools. I've had great successes with Clonezilla. For free, it can not be beat.
 
+1 for built-in imaging. Even restored my drive over a wireless network. No problems.
 
Tawnos said:
You can modify the image without extracting it, by mounting it as a drive or folder.
It's file based compression, and very quick.

... in fact: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722145(WS.10).aspx ;)
Click to expand...

Using the image files that imagex creates you can also use the DISM tool to do more advanced offline image editing such as the installation and removal of drivers, patches, features, and so on.

So if you have an image for a specific machine, and you want to place the image on completely different hardware you can use the dism tool to place all the drivers for the new machine into the image and you will be good to go. You can also use this on any offline installation as well. This is extremely handy.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744566(WS.10).aspx
 
What I do is perhaps not of use to the original poster, I dunno. But it might be to someone else..

Because I have a lot of hard drive space, I dual boot XP and 7. The OSs are installed completely independent of one another, I use the BIOS boot menu to select operating systems. The only hassle is removing the other drive when installing an OS. This is the best way to do what I do.

However, once that's done, it's easy to install Acronis on both OSs and backup/reimage one OS from within the other.

Restoring my current W7 installation takes about 15 mins from within XP. Backup and restore are done much quicker this way than from within a pre-OS environment or the OS itself that is running.

Works very well for me.
 
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