Dell backup - evil or good?

I have a Dell computer purchased at Fry's who installed Win7pro

I now see:

"Anyone who purchased a Dell computer after the first of May and has
Dell's "Basic" version will not be able to recover their computer with
an Image if they have a major failure."

Should I be scared? Should I buy Dell's premium backup? ($40?)

Should I delete (somehow) the Dell stuff?

| "Anyone who purchased a Dell computer after the first of May and has
| Dell's "Basic" version will not be able to recover their computer with
| an Image if they have a major failure."
|

Where did you see that? I'm curious whether it means
that they're no longer installing a bootable restore
partition or whether you're talking about some extra
tool

| Should I be scared? Should I buy Dell's premium backup? ($40?)
|

If you get a disk imaging program you can make your
own image for future use. Then you don't have to worry
about what Dell will give you. Even a computer that
has a bootable factory restore partition is only good as
long as the hard disk doesn't die. With disk image
backup you don't have to worry about that.

masonc wrote:
I have a Dell computer purchased at Fry's who installed Win7pro

I now see:

"Anyone who purchased a Dell computer after the first of May and has
Dell's "Basic" version will not be able to recover their computer with
an Image if they have a major failure."

Should I be scared? Should I buy Dell's premium backup? ($40?)

Should I delete (somehow) the Dell stuff?

Here is some context from a 2014 Jul CNET Dell forum article with your
citation in it:

//
DELL's Backup & Recovery Disables Windows 7 Backup Functions
by OjaiIT / July 2, 2014 10:17 AM PDT

Dell stopped shipping the popular Backup and Recovery Manager v1.3 with
Windows 7 Computers in May 2014.

Dell replaced it with Dell Backup and Recovery Basic v.1.6 and later
1.7. This version was written for Windows 8.x and it disables two
important functions of Microsoft Windows 7 Backup and Recovery.
The "Create a System Repair Disk" no longer functions and more
importantly the "System Restore from an Image" is also disabled.

Uninstalling the Dell software will restore the "Create a System Repair
Disk" but the "System Restore" remains unusable.

The "Basic" version of Dell's software has very few functions and is a
marketing ploy aimed at getting the end user to purchase their "Premium
version" which restores the functions previously available in their
"Backup and Recovery Manager" v.1.3

Anyone who purchased a Dell computer after the first of May and has
Dell's "Basic" version will not be able to recover their computer with
an Image if they have a major failure.

I wonder if Microsoft knows what Dell did to their Windows 7 Operating
System?
//
http://www.cnet.com/forums/discussio...ctions-622415/

More importantly, there is good information in the comments section from
Willy and OjaiIT


--
Mike Easter

masonc wrote:
I have a Dell computer purchased at Fry's who installed Win7pro

I now see:

"Anyone who purchased a Dell computer after the first of May and has
Dell's "Basic" version will not be able to recover their computer with
an Image if they have a major failure."

Should I be scared? Should I buy Dell's premium backup? ($40?)

Should I delete (somehow) the Dell stuff?


My Acer laptop had a third party backup utility
installed. And the installation of that utility,
broke the "Create a system image" and
"Create a system repair disc" functions.
If I clicked the buttons shown here, nothing would
happen.

http://www.sevenforums.com/attachmen...g-picture1.png

That kinda got fixed, when I downloaded a Win7 retail DVD
of the same "level" (Home Premium) and reinstalled the
OS using the COA sticker on the machine. The COA has
a unique license key, intended for this sort of
reinstall. That removes all the bundled games and
other junk. Including the NTI Backup software
that broke the Win7 built-in features. I did the
install in a certain way, so if someone uses the
"factory restore", the machine can still be
restored to factory state for resale.

Not that this is important. I no longer use the Windows 7
built-in backup function, except under very specific circumstances
(i.e. I want a VHD virtual disk file from the backup folder).
Win8 and Win10 are using .vhdx files for storing the backups,
which is kind of a dead end file format. Whereas .vhd on the
other hand, I have tool flows to work with it, so I still
occasionally succumb to using System Image to make them.

*******

You can get *free* backup software, such as Macrium Reflect Free.
This should not be hijacked by anything Dell has done,
nor should it interfere with System Image (if it was
working).

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

The stub installer is on CNET, the file is
reflectDL.exe and it is clean (doesn't have
Adware the last time I checked).

When you run reflectDL.exe, you will be downloading
a maximum of two files. The main installer is around
40MB (varies a bit). The WinPE file used to make a
Macrium boot CD (recommended) might be 150MB. I use
WinPE5 when I made mine, but you can inspect the options
on that some other time if you want. You don't really
want to start the install, unless you're satisfied you
have the two files you want. Untick the "install
immediately" type button present in reflectDL.exe.

Once the two files are in the same folder, you
run the 40MB installer, it "sees" the WinPE file,
unpacks and repacks it internally, and installs the
whole kit.

Once finished, you can run Macrium, when it asks
if you want to make a CD, say "Yes". I like to make
a "rescue.iso" file and feed that to Imgburn as
my burning program, but you can also try the
burn function in Macrium if you want.

You can test boot the freshly made CD, and
prove it works. The CD has enough of a tiny
OS in it, to allow Macrium to be run without
access to any files on C: . And that's how
you can do "bare metal restore" later...

as long as you store the backup file
on a disk other than your Dell internal
drive - an external disk or a NAS are
recommended storage solutions - anything
external will do. This protects you in case
the new Dell drive dies on you.

The Win7 System Image is fine too, if you
like that sort of thing. It's OK, but
the Macrium is just a tiny bit better
(less annoying).

*******

Note that the Win7 backup function, can run from
the command line, such as a "run as administrator"
command prompt window. "allCritical" consists
of the Win7 C: and the System Reserved partitions.
You can "-include" additional partitions by using
their drive letter. The "backupTarget" is the
drive letter about to receive the output
of a Windows 7 system image. This example
command is slightly redundant, in that the
C: in the include was already covered by
the allCritical, so need not have been
included.

wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C:,D:,F: -allCritical -quiet

If you don't use allCritical, and want to specify the
partitions manually, the command would look like this
(i.e. less convenient). In this case, the "-include"
chunk is the equivalent of System Reserved (with no
drive letter) plus C: . It's a bit of a nuisance getting that
identifier when you need it. If a partition has
no drive letter, you use one of those specifiers
to pick it up.

Wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:F: -include:\\?\Volume{C38A95FE-9261-11E1-92E9-806E6F6E6963}\,C: -quiet

Win7 System Image always backs up at least C:,
so your backups can never be smaller than the
C: drive as such. A nuisance if your output target
is DVDs. I think it took four DVDs and around 2 hours
to backup C: that way. I do not recommend backup
to DVD, unless you enjoy sitting there for two
hours feeding in blank DVDs when asked to.

AFAIK, even with the Dell monkey business, the wbadmin
should still work.

The very last thing I would do, is pay someone $40
("buy our Pro version") by them installing nuisance
software. I wouldn't be the one to reward them for this...
There are too many good, free solutions out there.
There is more than Macrium available.

Even this list isn't all that good, as it is missing
evidence of another freebie.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_backup_software

HTH,
Paul

On Mon, 28 Dec 2015 17:22:54 -0800, masonc wrote:

Should I be scared? Should I buy Dell's premium backup? ($40?)

Should I delete (somehow) the Dell stuff?

You could try Macrium Reflect (Free) to create an image.

--
s|b