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W7's system image feature...
I see that one can use it to make and restore images IN a running
Windows 7, but what about outside of Windows like booting from discs, flash drives, etc. like disk image programs (e.g., Symantec's Ghost)? Also, do image viewers for these system images? Thank you in advance. -- Quote of the Week: "The fact that we can't easily foresee clues that would betray an intelligence a million millennia farther down the road suggests that we're like ants trying to discover humans. Ask yourself: Would ants ever recognize houses, cars, or fire hydrants as the work of advanced biology?" --Seth Shostak Note: A fixed width font (Courier, Monospace, etc.) is required to see this signature correctly. /\___/\ Ant(Dude) @ http://antfarm.home.dhs.org (Personal Web Site) / /\ /\ \ Ant's Quality Foraged Links: http://aqfl.net | |o o| | \ _ / Please nuke ANT if replying by e-mail privately. If credit- ( ) ing, then please kindly use Ant nickname and AQFL URL/link. |
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#2
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W7's system image feature...
Ant wrote:
I see that one can use it to make and restore images IN a running Windows 7, but what about outside of Windows like booting from discs, flash drives, etc. like disk image programs (e.g., Symantec's Ghost)? Also, do image viewers for these system images? Thank you in advance. There is a confusing array of options here for Restore. http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...-recovery.html This picture shows the System Image Recovery option available from the recovery (boot) CD. The installer DVD offers the same functions when you boot it. http://www.sevenforums.com/attachmen...ry_options.jpg But I can't in all honesty, recommend the built-in backup. It's an option, but not the best option you could possibly find. In Win7, each partition is stored as a VHD. You can do random access on a VHD, using a modern version of 7ZIP. You can "attach" a VHD in Disk Management (OS version dependent). So VHDs have some options. VHD files also are accessible in VirtualBox and other hosting softwares. You could even boot a LiveCD in VirtualBox, with the VHD in question added as a "hard drive" to the virtual machine, and gain access to a single Windows partition on a Win7 VHD. The Windows 10 version of System Image, makes .vhdx files. These files can hold more than 2TB of data, and that might be why the format was selected. But there are reduced options for playing with it later. 7ZIP won't open a .vhdx, Hyper-V of course would, but not all computers can use Hyper-V. Out of my computer collection, only the new one has EPT/SLAT for Hyper-V in the CPU. I specifically shopped for that feature when buying it. A conventional backup/restore program is marginally more user friendly. The Windows 7 backup, where it backs up to DVDs, the ecosystem isn't smart enough to "format" the DVD before the write, requiring a user to baby-sit, when the backup process throws an error, you go back to the desktop and "format" the disc, then offer it to the backup program. To do the most basic C: backup using DVDs with it, took two hours, during which time I had to be on the lookout for a DVD error. Win7 backup doesn't have a "purpose-built" partition viewer for the backups, but the format chosen is reasonably workable with more than one other tool. Programs like Macrium Reflect or Acronis TIH, they mount .mrimg or .tib using a mounter service they install in Windows. Macrium Reflect can even convert its .mrimg file to .vhd, which would then open up more tools for re-purposing afterwards. But if you were a computer-phobe, hated computers, and "just wanted the machine to work again", you would need a sedative before you could complete one of these procedures :-) Just enough of a sedative so you lacked the energy to "throw a brick through the screen" :-) ******* A perfect place to test this, is from within a VM. Install a copy of Windows 7 into a new VM. When you set up the VM, create two virtual hard drives. The second hard drive can be used to store D:\WindowsImageBackup, as if D: was your external drive. Then, boot the VM with your Recovery CD or with the Windows 7 Installer DVD (an ISO of these would work perfectly well and be fast). From the booted optical media, you should then see the option in the picture above, and you can restore from D:\WIndowsImageBackup over top of C: and System Reserved. That's the best way to learn how to do it, without endangering anything. For VM Hosting softwa https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads For virtual machine appliance files, which you can operate within VirtualBox (so you don't need a Win7 installer DVD for Dell owners). Microsoft has VMs ready to go (30 days, unlicensed). You open these in VirtualBox, and one virtual disk would be set up for you. You can add a second blank virtual disk to hold the backup. Modern OS appliance files are on the order of 4 to 5GB and download as an OVA file. You don't have to use VirtualBox, because multiple hosting solutions are supported. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-u...vms/#downloads And a program like this can be used on the VHD, if you lack entertainment. You could install this within the VM for example, navigate to D:\WindowsImageBackup and find the VHD file, and examine it. http://www.7-zip.org/ Virtual Machines do have some important limitations, but if you lack the interest in plugging and unplugging a lot of stuff on the machine, virtualizing the process for testing might be an option. Paul |
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