How to check if another drive should be imaged.

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rustleg
Posts: 136
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:01 pm

How to check if another drive should be imaged.

Post by rustleg »

I have been contacted by a friend who bought IFW on my recommendation. He imaged his system but not only drive C but also data drives. He says it took all night (but I doubt he sat there and watched it!) and he has 40+ 4GB files as a result. I told him that he only needed to do an image of drive C (about 100GB total capacity) which should take less than half an hour, provided the software is installed without any dependencies on any other drive. This is likely but I am at a loss as to how to check it. I don't want to advise him to only image drive C if there is some dependency so that he would need another drive to be imaged at the same time, as that would be the making of a disaster if he wiped C and couldn't reinstate it. Is there a way of finding out?
TeraByte Support(PP)
Posts: 1644
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:51 am

Re: How to check if another drive should be imaged.

Post by TeraByte Support(PP) »

If you look in Disk Management, for MBR disks you would want to include the partitions marked "System, Active" and "Boot". These can be two partitions (System Reserved and Windows, for example) or just one (Windows boots from its own partition). For GPT disks you would want the "EFI System Partition" and the Windows partition. I also recommend including the Recovery/WinRE partition (there may be more than one if Windows was upgraded/updated, but they're usually quite small).

Note that the booting files (those on the "System" partitions) can be recreated if missing so it's not a total disaster if that happens. Much easier to just include them, though.

For the time taken, it's hard to say without knowing more about the system configuration used. You could check the log file to see how long it actually took.
rustleg
Posts: 136
Joined: Thu Sep 01, 2011 5:01 pm

Re: How to check if another drive should be imaged.

Post by rustleg »

Thanks for the response. It's an MBR system with 3 partitions, one is the main C drive (Win 7), one is a small one which just contains a pagefile and the rest is a data partition. We'll just image the C partition. I set it up for him originally in 2012 - if I did it again I wouldn't bother with the pagefile partition. I think everything was installed on C as normal, nothing on V (virtual pagefile) or M (MyDocs), but I haven't seen it since then. He hadn't done an image since 2012 (ignoring the instructions I gave him at the time)! Lucky he didn't get a problem with it or we'd be looking at 4 years of Windows updates. I think the only reason he thought of doing an image was that he is installing a replacement for Quicken (which is no longer sold or supported in the UK) and wanted to make sure he could get back to it as it was if the new software was not what he expected. Even in 2012 Quicken had been obsolete for some years and wasn't easy to install. Also now wants to upgrade to Win 10 if this new software is ok (fingers and toes crossed).
mjnelson99
Posts: 785
Joined: Fri Aug 12, 2011 1:24 am

Re: How to check if another drive should be imaged.

Post by mjnelson99 »

Check out Account Express as an alternative to Quicken.

It has some good points and some bad points. It tends to duplicate
entries in my checkbook that I have already entered unless the payee
name is close enough to what is downloaded.

You can try it unlimited for 30 days w/o cost.

I had to use QIF for the importation of my Quicken info-one for each
account I needed. You can just start over if the first attempt really
messes up. Just open a new file and start over. I had to do that.

It has several currency options so probably useful in the UK.
Mary


On 2/8/2016 2:18 PM, rustleg wrote:
> Thanks for the response. It's an MBR system with 3 partitions,

one is the main C drive (Win 7), one is a small one which just

contains a pagefile and the rest is a data partition. We'll just

image the C partition. I set it up for him originally in 2012 - if I did
it again I wouldn't bother with the pagefile partition. I think
everything was installed on C as normal, nothing on V (virtual pagefile)
or M (MyDocs), but I haven't seen it since then. He hadn't done an image
since 2012 (ignoring the instructions I gave him at the time)! Lucky he
didn't get a problem with it or we'd be looking at 4 years of Windows
updates. I think the only reason he thought of doing an image was that
he is installing a replacement for Quicken (which is no longer sold or
supported in the UK) and wanted to make sure he could get back to it as
it was if the new software was not what he expected. Even in 2012
Quicken had been obsolete for some years and wasn't easy to install.
Also now wants to upgrade to Win 10 if this new software is ok (fingers
and toes crossed).
>
>
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