I have tried Macrium, the problem there is that is reformats the "dump" disc into a format that windows10 10 does not recognise, so restore not only fails but I ended up with an unusable system. being rather simple a s straight forward program is required. Any suggestions please?
Do they not have their own native one. The one in windows 7 seemed pretty good and allowed the new hard drive to be put back to how it was on the old one. Brian
What are you trying to do?
Back up your documents? Have an image whereby you can restore everything to a bare disc?
What version of Macrium? It appears to have had quite a few decent reports though I have no personal experience. Could it be that you need an updated version?
Acronis had a relatively easy program to use.
I downloaded a trial and tested the interface and the interface is easier to use than Macrium.
There are *lots* of backup programs. This list isn't up to date, but it's still a start. Several programs offer free versions (capable of making Full backups but you pay money for Incremental capability).
Windows 10 itself has a program called "Windows 7 backup". It currently stores partitions as .vhdx files. It's a full backup. If the GUI is not present, you can do a backup with it like this. The allCritical parameter specifies that the system and boot partitions be backed up, the Include option covers any other partitions you might like. Even though C: is covered twice in this command example, only one backup of it is made. And restored later. Boot the installer DVD, to access E: and do a restore.
wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C:,D:,F: -allCritical -quiet
Output would be in E:\WindowsImageBackup .
*******I'm not sure I'm following your assertion about Macrium.
Are you saying the backup to the External disk failed in some way ?
Or, that during restoration, things did not turn out in a "bootable" condition ?
It's possible to be too selective and not back up enough partitions to make Windows boot later. If your boot materials are spread over multiple disks, you might inadvertently lose some when making your Full backup.
The Macrium Rescue CD you used during restore, has a Boot Repair option in one of the menus. It will rebuild the BCD. I prefer it slightly, to the repair capabilities that Windows 10 has during startup (which don't always work). The repair order is:
1) Install and cable up, only the disk needing repair. Don't complicate the situation by having too many disks present, getting the wrong ones scanned and so on. That way, it might only show one item to select in the menu in (2), resulting in less hair loss.2) Boot Macrium Rescue CD, use Boot Repair. Reboot is next.
3) Attempt to boot windows. If Windows 10 won't start, the Windows Repair will run. If Macrium has had a crack at it first, the Windows Repair can then finish the job.*******
Now, if you're saying some partition type has changed, that seems unlikely.
You can use TestDisk to scan a disk. But I hardly ever use this for repairing the partition table (in the MBR or otherwise), because there is too much digital noise for the scan to correctly rebuild the table.
But, TestDisk can "list" and "copy" files from hidden partitions. I can use it to find cases where materials have gone missing.
There is a Windows version, as well as a lot of Linux distros have TestDisk in their package tree. The Linux versions will not be dependent on that web server being working, whereas that's the site you'd use to get the Windows download.
Linux GPARTED is another one that can be used to examine the partitions. Or gnome-disk (which seems to elevate on its own).
sudo apt install gparted # Install, if missing
sudo gparted # All disks in machine listed, select one
sudo gparted /dev/sda # Select just the first disk for attention
And Gnome-disks (displays partitions like it was Disk Management in Windows)
gnome-disks # full names some distros use
disks # truncated name used by others
apt search disks # if the package is missing, you can search # Not all distros use "apt". This is just a # very quick example.
The Windows 10 C:\ can be mounted in Linux, but because of some custom Reparse points in NTFS, Linux will return "I/O Error" when it cannot understand some of what it is reading. Many Windows 10 installs use "new style compression" on C:\Windows files, making them rather inaccessible in Linux. You can use the "compact" command in Windows 10 to disable this compression, such that more files will be accessible for alteration in Linux, later.
compact.exe /compactos:query
compact.exe /compactos:never # Improve Linux access, still not perfection though.
*******If you've given up and flattened the thing, that's OK too. There isn't a lot of tolerance of failure these days.
Macrium can "mount" .mrimg contents, if you need to look at the files in there for any reason. Or check to see what partitions got backed up.
Paul
Many thanks for you extensive reply, sadly though a lot of it was over my head. It was the restore that failed, as it made the disc unusable in the format required by windows, Luckily I have a son in law who is very adept at all thing computers, he recovered 90% of my files. I will peruse the software available in the link you kindly sent. Cheers
You need a late-patched 6.x.x version, or really a 7.x.x version, to back up a Windows 10 C: drive. It'll throw an error before the backup is even a bit started, if you don't have such a version. Macrium is rather conservative that way, rejecting backup materials if the metadata analysis does not complete normally at the start.
Using VSS, it can back up C: "hot" , while the OS is running. But you have to make sure to select all the partitions that accompany Windows 10, to have a good result later when restoring to a blank new disk drive. You can't "just" backup C: and leave the other ones unticked. And it won't warn you either, that you've done something un-wise. It'll let you proceed, because it's a power-user tool and takes no prisoners.
There are situations where I only back up C: , because I know an experiment will run amok and damage the contents on C: . Because the boot materials seldom change, I can then restore C: onto the drive and replace the old damaged C: .
But for a lot of other scenarios, you want to backup everything. At least, until you understand what bits and pieces are "critical".
*******The built-in backup solves this problem for you:
wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -allCritical -quiet
The allCritical tells "Windows 7 Backup" (the program), to back up everything needed to boot C: . The output would be stored on E:\ Restore is available from the installer DVD.
Not that I'm recommending that tool, just demonstrating in that example, the developer thought about users, and the user not knowing which ones to grab at backup time.
Paul
Did your son-in-law mount the .mrimg on his Windows technician machine ?
There's a picture here, with the right click menu item "Explore Image".
As that would tell you what was captured in there.
You can use the Version 6 imgtovhd converter, on Version 7 images (as Version 7 no longer has the imgtovhd converter). And .vhd format is something that 7ZIP can open or Windows 10 can mount natively. It doesn't really add any additional capability as such, just makes your files accessible to more tools.
Macrium also has a "Verify" command where it verifies the integrity of the .mrimg file you created. I've had a couple backups here trashed because the computer had bad RAM sticks in it, and the Verify happened to catch that and give me a hint about it. I was just screwing around at the time, and decided to run a Verify for fun, and the damn thing failed on me. And that got me awake in a hurry. Then I had to test a bunch to see how many were ruined. And only two of the files were fried. (The bad RAM corrupts the write operation, during backup...)
Running the Verify would be my first step. It's what you do when you're new to the product, and want to make sure things are working. You can do Verify from the Macrium you've installed in Windows, or you can do the Verify using the Macrium Rescue CD and boot up the computer with that to get stuff done.
It's pretty hard to lose materials with that product.
I don't think it has file-by-file isolation internally, unlike some backup methods do. With some products, you can lose one file, and get to keep the rest, when there is a single error. Macrium is all-or-nothing, with opportunities of various sorts to avoid a disaster. And the people who wrote that software, know their stuff. I suspect they've had some staff changes since the founders wrote it. I can be reasonably certain that they put things back as they found them.
The backup has the usual limitations. It can't back up pagefile.sys, because that's "busy". Nobody cares about that. It can't back up Windows.edb (Windows Search index file). Nobody cares about that either :-) But otherwise, it does a damn fine job (for free).
Paul
The aim within Windows itself now seems to be to backup files as they are changed using File History rather than wholesale image backup.
Use Drivesnapshot it is lightweight, very easy to use and is reliable. I backup my system disk regularly with it.
If you go to the "Windows/7 backup and restore" then you can set up old style windows/7 file backup. Choose which files and where to save them//
Dave
The Windows/7 one is still there in 10....
"Control Panel" => "Backup and Restore (windows 7)
Dave
Except that "control panel" is slightly hidden. You have to enter "control panel" in the search box and then select the Control Panel "App".
There must be a way of adding it to the Start menu.
It's already there ... Start/WindowsSystem/ControlPanel
of course you can pin another copy as a tile, if you want.
"Control Panel" is in "Windows System". You can pin to the start tiles or "Task Bar"
Dave
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.