# reimaging your PC



## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

Anyone else doing drive images? Best damn thing ever for anyone using a PC. Windows 7 Premium has it built in. I believe some versions of Vista does too.

Anyone not familiar what drive image is. It takes a snapshot of your PC at a stage you would want to revert back to in the event you find the need. Unlike system restore, an image is a date and state of your drive in good working condition that remains in tact often on an external drive whenever you want it. System Restore rewrites over your previous versions. 

I have a toshiba laptop with its own (out-of-box) restore back to factory defaults DVD but that takes literally almost 3 hours to complete. Then you have to add all your programs back to it and do the Windows updates. My recent out-of-box install required countless reboots and about 100 or so updates before I can pile on my programs. 

Just finished tweaking everything the way I want it and have all my programs loaded back on. I'll set it up to image tonight. Takes about 20 mins or much longer if you have a drive full of stuff.

Lets say your PC is so slow and messed up that you just want to start over. You can re-image back to a fully functional version in about 20 mins. Faster than it takes a full virus scan and much faster than it takes to start a clean install of Windows.

I keep all my docs, pics and videos on a server so this PC can disappear and I wont lose a thing. My bookmarks and anything I do with the browser is all setup to sync via the cloud. My mail does not reside on my PC. Its the ultimate set up. The laptop simply acts as a host machine to access everything. 

If anyones wants to do it and has questions... feel free to ask.


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## vermontpainter (Dec 24, 2007)

Jack

That is so 5 minutes ago. We had our IT guy program an RAS server that constantly pushes out a custom refresh MSI to everything in our network. All pc, iPhones, ipads and laptops. Reimage is good for a quick anti virus wash or slipstream hiccup though. When you take it apart and put it back together, the gaps illuminate.


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## PatsPainting (Mar 4, 2010)

vermontpainter said:


> Jack
> 
> That is so 5 minutes ago. We had our IT guy program an RAS server that constantly pushes out a custom refresh MSI to everything in our network. All pc, iPhones, ipads and laptops. Reimage is good for a quick anti virus wash or slipstream hiccup though. When you take it apart and put it back together, the gaps illuminate.



Yea MSI code is not allot of fun to work with, been fooling with it that last few weeks trying to alter a few installs I'm building. You should see the process it takes just to get the fonts to go in the proper dir. 

Jack

Been using this type of back up since the early days of xp, Started with drive Image, switched to ghost for a little while, now for windows 7, I'm using Acronis. Acronis is by far my all time favorite.

Pat


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

Pat, Great. Same here. Why is it that those XP days seem so long ago? The OS is only 10 years but seems forever ago. I was always d/ling stuff from news back then before XP went public. I was using Norton Ghost 9 back then, lots of reimaging going on those test machines, never tried anything else until it came prepackaged with Windows. 

I think its the best thing for getting back to good fast. I just never got around to imaging this laptop until now. Im thinking about doing some hot images later on after I bake this first one.


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## PatsPainting (Mar 4, 2010)

Yep, I agree. It would take days if not weeks to get everything back to normal on performing a fresh install. Depending on the size of the diskimage your working with would be no more then a few hours. Huge Huge difference. 

Pat


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

PatsPainting said:


> Yep, I agree. It would take days if not weeks to get everything back to normal on performing a fresh install. Depending on the size of the diskimage your working with would be no more then a few hours. Huge Huge difference.
> 
> Pat


Did you get to try the 7 image option? Curious what Acronis allows for that 7 doesnt. You know how MS likes to leave the best options out. Im pretty sure no hot images with 7. Was going to use driveimage xml.

I'm only imaging 36 gig, Win 7 plus my installs.


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## PatsPainting (Mar 4, 2010)

jack pauhl said:


> Did you get to try the 7 image option? Curious what Acronis allows for that 7 doesnt. You know how MS likes to leave the best options out. Im pretty sure no hot images with 7. Was going to use driveimage xml.
> 
> I'm only imaging 36 gig, Win 7 plus my installs.


I have never fooled around with the win 7 backup, so really not sure what the differences are. Check out the acronis features on their site. 

Here are some cool ones:



> *Boot from Windows 7 image*Windows 7 Ultimate users can boot from a backup image (.tib file) containing a backup of their system partition. This will allow the ability to test a backed up system without actual restoration. If the operating system boots from the .tib file, then it will boot when the need arises for a system recovery.





> *Acronis® Startup Recovery Manager*Boot and restore a system after a failure. Start the recovery process simply by selecting the F11 key, even if your operating system has failed.


many more

Pat


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## daArch (Mar 15, 2008)

from all the playing I have done, the "revert" option in windoze does not protect against the nasty viruses out there. Yes it does save the registry and other dll's and enables you to go back to some degree, but if you got a bad infection, you're still screwed.

IMO, a third party ghost image is better. I have grown fond of Acronis, although even that takes dedication to back up incrementally, a hell of a lot of disk space to save the image and time to copy. 

I just bought a 1T external drive with USB 3.O. The drive came with a USB 3 card (PCIe, make sure your computer has that slot). This may make Acronis more viable.

just thoughts


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

daArch, I agree... that revert option does nothing really and typically your best revert options are written over because Windows only allocates so much space to store the copies. Microsoft could very easily add a check box to your restore dates so you can check the one you never want overwritten. If you constantly add and remove things those restore points go away fast. You can bump them all off in a week of fooling around. 

An image works so much better than System Restore points. 

Did you score a good deal on that 1T? I browse slickdeals now and then for stuff like that. I'm maxed out on my server with 2T, currently using a few externals. Im set up to mirror 1T on the server. Tempted to remove the mirroring to gain that extra 1T but what happens when one drive goes.... screwed.


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## vermontpainter (Dec 24, 2007)

Back in 06 we switched everything from sata to fc. We expect a mtbf of between a million and a million and a half hours of drive use. For most people, that should be at least a year. With the 06 upgrade we did a temp control modification and found that by creating a micro climate for the drive, we could extend mtbf by at least 60%, and the effect appears to be compound in the case of multiples if they are serried correctly and cc-ed.

What we've learned is to never stay with oem (drives are just big and cheap). Assume every drive will fail. Backup frequently and to multiple locations.


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## DeanV (Apr 18, 2007)

I am going to have to see if my nifty Google Translator App on my android can translate any of the above into English. I am not sure "Geek" is a language choice on the app though


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## Workaholic (Apr 17, 2007)

You would think it would be an option though Dean.


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## Harry (Aug 4, 2008)

Assume every drive will fail. Backup frequently and to multiple locations.


Yep...all that geek name-dropping in one sentence.

You guys are funny as hell. I gurantee that I have tons more sensitive information than most of you yet I don't REALLY need to monitor humidity or the density of the dust bunnies building up on my monitor, lol.

Just back up your stuff...


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

Ive seen too many drives fail in my day to not mirror my data. Lost stuff I can never get back others recovered.

For the geek challenged

FC = fibre channel SATA hard drives. Its super fast, better motors. longer lasting, enterprise use, 
SATA = common hard drives today in many PC's also eSATA
1T = 1 terabyte is 1000000000000 bytes
1G = 1 gigabyte is 1000000000 bytes
mtbf = mean time between failures
USB 3.0 is next gen USB 2 which should have a real-life experience of being 10x faster than 2.0 but they promise more.

bake is burning 

Hot Images is taking an image of a PC while its running as you use it

drive image xml, software used to make images and save them in .xml format


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## ewingpainting.net (Jun 2, 2008)

Thanks for the post JP! The important thing is that you back up weekly, or even daily depending on the volume of input. I just had to restore my daughters computer "I don't know how I got the virus"  I was wishing I had a mirror copy, didn't get to bed tell bout 1 am. The worst part are the windows/microsoft updates. There were 98 of them.


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## DeanV (Apr 18, 2007)

I signed up for Moxy online backup today. I tried Carbonite a while back, but it did not work so I let it slide without doing anything about back-ups. This post reminded me it was something on my to-do list.


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## Harry (Aug 4, 2008)

jack pauhl said:


> Ive seen too many drives fail in my day to not mirror my data. Lost stuff I can never get back others recovered.
> 
> For the geek challenged
> 
> ...


And what "data" are we needing to concern ourselves with today...besides, the norm?

I do agree that imaging is more feasible but the whole idea that "data" can be lost forever, doesn't sit right with me. I have 13 computers and over tons of stuff backup up to triple copies.


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

ewingpainting.net said:


> Thanks for the post JP! The important thing is that you back up weekly, or even daily depending on the volume of input. I just had to restore my daughters computer "I don't know how I got the virus"  I was wishing I had a mirror copy, didn't get to bed tell bout 1 am. The worst part are the windows/microsoft updates. There were 98 of them.


I think ya'll know me well enough to know I like things done fast, efficient and simple.

One of the most difficult PC habits for me to break was saving stuff to my PC. Not so much that it cant be recovered in the event of a failure because often data can be recovered but its having all these TONS of daily changes and additions on a machine that I want to re-image at any moment I feel the need.

Like you said, 98 updates! The install is often the least of the time it takes rather its time consuming preparing a PC for a recovery. You have to move your files, pics, music, videos, work files etc somewhere so you can recover or reinstall. Thats not easy picking through what to save or keep. 

Dropbox, Google and flickr have become very useful for me. I used to use Outlook for mail but had way too many crashes and lost data never to be recovered. I had it happen when I was doing daily backups of outlook to an external drive. The backup process failed! It wasn't backing up anything!

I've learned or trained myself to save certain data in certain places, ie google, dropbox, flickr etc., but everything goes to the server first which is 1 terabyte of data simply mirrored to another 1 terabyte drive on the same machine. At minimum, if you have 500g hard drive its good practice to have a 500g external USB drive of it.

One other measure for keeping important information safe and available was to create a Folder on my Desktop called mostimportantfilesever!


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## y.painting (Jul 19, 2009)

you'd think this was a forum for IT guys


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## Schmidt & Co. (Nov 6, 2008)

y.painting said:


> you'd think this was a forum for IT guys


My brain hurts just reading all this! I understood the word "computer", after that it's all greek to me......:whistling2:


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## daArch (Mar 15, 2008)

Jack,

it was a WD (Western Digital WEHDMB3P1) bought at B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Western+Digital+WEHDMB3P1&N=0&InitialSearch=yes) for $100. That included shipping and the PCIe card.

I know this WD ain't the most robust, but I figure an external isn't running 24/7 so it don't need the longevity

Now for all you geeky nerds with the absolute need for speed and loss prevention, why not set up a RAID array? My lugnut bro has been preaching this to me for years, and another paperhanger was just asking me about the concept the other day.


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

daArch said:


> Jack,
> 
> it was a WD (Western Digital WEHDMB3P1) bought at B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Western+Digital+WEHDMB3P1&N=0&InitialSearch=yes) for $100. That included shipping and the PCIe card.
> 
> ...


I keep seeing more and more deals on B&H for non camera items. I dont use RAID rather use selective folder duplication. This way its backing up only what needs backing up rather than inherent payload data that doesnt need backed up, like the 40 gig fresh install of windows and programs. Its more efficient, more use of the drive space. If I add another 1T, thats how much space I have available because there is no payload. Its pure hot swappable storage banks.


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## ewingpainting.net (Jun 2, 2008)

Leo Laport "The Tech Guy" recomends 3 back up, on site, off site, and on the internet. I've got on site only. So if there be a fire or something. It be gone.


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

I think its worth mentioning the difference in time with backing up. Like for example, take virus scanners. I never understood the ridiculous algorithms used for virus scanning, it was time consuming and nothing but a time suck. Virus scanners were scanning all files regardless each time you hit SCAN. There is no need to re-scan 100,000 photos that havent changed since the last scan. Finally virus scanners came out that only scan files that were changed since last scan. These scanners are fast and efficient. Takes nothing to run them.

I use the same thinking with backing up. If its not changed since last back up, its not backed up again for the hell of it. Makes a huge difference in time.


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)




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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

RCP said:


>


Chris that looks complicated. Too many moving parts for me.


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## RCP (Apr 18, 2007)

Ya, all I need is the Time Machine, being a Mac user, I don't get all that geek talk!


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

RCP said:


> Ya, all I need is the Time Machine, being a Mac user, I don't get all that geek talk!


No kidding.. I always wanted a time machine of my own but MS is still working on it so we resort to more complicated roundabout ways of achieving simple tasks. :whistling2:


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## Harry (Aug 4, 2008)

"Like you said, 98 updates!"

I don't get it. The updates can be run in the background. I guess it's an issue with slow machines but I run a quick machine and I could care less how many updates are happening as they don't affect me.

Again, I'm trying to figure out what type of sensitive data you are all keeping, lol.


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## daArch (Mar 15, 2008)

Harry,

it' NOT so much "sensitive" data, as it is "massive critical"
data.

Business spreadsheets
estimates
invoices
photos
music
emails
reference data
etc etc etc

I use partitions to separate and organize my computers - and hopefully insulate to some degree. I have four basic partitions - OS, programs, data, and downloads. the most critical is the data partition. It's only 56 gig at the moment- easy enough to back up on my 80 gig external HD. My 50 gigs of music are on another computer. The OS partition is the most expendable, but once all the dll's are gone every program will need to be reloaded - a pain in the a$$, but not critical. 

I had mydoom once. It changed the file names of photos and other important files. It attacked at just the wrong time. I was up all night finding a cure, restoring the files, and piecing back together the NGPP newsletter I had just finished. No fun. I am learning ways to protect against another such infection. 

no, NOT sensitive at all. But highly critical.


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## VanDamme (Feb 13, 2010)

Acronis for imaging. 

SyncBack for drive to drive backup (all automatic)

Mozy for offsite backup (automatic every night)

LogMeIn for remote assistance and computer maintenance for customers


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## daArch (Mar 15, 2008)

RCP said:


> Ya, all I need is the Time Machine, being a Mac user, I don't get all that geek talk!


Just remember, my pretty, macs are not immune to hacks, trojans, viruses, and other malware, they are just so few of them that the compu-bastards of the world do not find any mass-destruction pleasure in writing code that will bring them to their knees.

If you REALLY want to be safer, go linux. That's such a miniscule niche market, it'll be years before they decide to assimilate them. You will be able to resist for a while longer.


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## VanDamme (Feb 13, 2010)

daArch said:


> Jack,
> 
> it was a WD (Western Digital WEHDMB3P1) bought at B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=Western+Digital+WEHDMB3P1&N=0&InitialSearch=yes) for $100. That included shipping and the PCIe card.
> 
> ...


I've been using RAID Arrays for years! I haven't NOT had a RAID 0 main volume for years! Currently two WD Raptors in RAID 0 that are damn fast.

RAID 0


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## daArch (Mar 15, 2008)

VanDamme said:


> I've been using RAID Arrays for years! I haven't NOT had a RAID 0 main volume for years! Currently two WD Raptors in RAID 0 that are damn fast.
> 
> RAID 0


Believe me I am no expert, but isn't the RAID 0 used for speed and not for backing up in case of failure? RAID 1 has a mirroring but no speed enhancement.

And then I get lost at 3 thru 6. All I know for max speed and redundancy you need about 6 HD's and a complex controller


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## ewingpainting.net (Jun 2, 2008)

Harry said:


> "Like you said, 98 updates!"
> 
> I don't get it. The updates can be run in the background. I guess it's an issue with slow machines but I run a quick machine and I could care less how many updates are happening as they don't affect me.
> 
> Again, I'm trying to figure out what type of sensitive data you are all keeping, lol.


Have you ever had a update that was not successful? Your back to square one. It has nothing to do with the machine not being quick enough as it is the restarts. I'm actually quick on a full restore and reinstalls. Takes me about 6 to 8 hours. Providing I'm not looking for lost items or searching for my pass codes


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## Harry (Aug 4, 2008)

ewingpainting.net said:


> Have you ever had a update that was not successful? Your back to square one. It has nothing to do with the machine not being quick enough as it is the restarts. I'm actually quick on a full restore and reinstalls. Takes me about 6 to 8 hours. Providing I'm not looking for lost items or searching for my pass codes


Yeah, I guess I'm letting myself not think about that stuff. I'm going to have to look into some of this image idea stuff.

Problem now is...too many of you gave different ideas! LOL.

Where to start?


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## y.painting (Jul 19, 2009)

Do you guys make sure you have cross-continent off-site backup? 

Like for when an entire continent gets annihilated? I'm still working on Antarctica, but have the others covered in duplicate.


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## jack pauhl (Nov 10, 2008)

Like ewing was sayin about all the updates... it just takes forever to go through a re-install of windows today. 98 updates, then all the rebooting that goes with those, then the re-check for updates right after to grab more updates, more reboots. Its not really an unattended process. Thats where slipstreaming comes in. You can slip those updates into a full install of Windows all on one DVD. Helpful but nowhere near as quick as imaging. 

I typically stay up through the night babysitting the PC doing a manual re-install. Once all that is done then its time to slap on the PC manufacturers updates. Then I spend the entire next day installing my software starting with Office then that provokes another 45 updates then it goes through and updates to SP2 which afterwards requires a few more. I just went through this days ago. PITA.

Plus all the tweaking and merging files. iTunes is an adventure in itself to put your library back on and get the phones synced back up.


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## daArch (Mar 15, 2008)

jack pauhl said:


> L. iTunes is an adventure in itself


Grrrrrrr.

don't even MENTION i-phucking-Tunes to me today. It is the most buggy, uncooperative, least intuitive, most loser-friendly piece of sh!tware on the planet. 

It LOVES making dupes of files or just dupes of listings and no easy way to clean up those dupes.

It truly sucks. If me and the fambly weren't so hooked on apple's little mp3 toys, I'd be using MediaMonkey on all computers.

Steve Jobs ain't no better than Bill Gates. 

"do it my way or pound sand"


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## VanDamme (Feb 13, 2010)

daArch said:


> Believe me I am no expert, but isn't the RAID 0 used for speed and not for backing up in case of failure? RAID 1 has a mirroring but no speed enhancement.
> 
> And then I get lost at 3 thru 6. All I know for max speed and redundancy you need about 6 HD's and a complex controller


Correct. RAID 0 has......lets see......oh yeah.....zero redundancy. Used for speed only.


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