HOW TO CREATE AN IMAGE BACKUP

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LET'S TALK ABOUT - HOW TO CREATE AN IMAGE BACKUP


At one time or another we’ve all experienced some type of data lost. Whether it's a single document or an entire hard drive, data lost can be disastrous. You can lose data in any number of ways:  a virus, a hardware failure or in many cases, simple human error. That’s why routine backups are so important. What you may not know, is while your data might be safe, a situation that’s bad enough to force you to reinstall your operating system can still lead to days of downtime and incredible frustration.

Unlike a Dell or an HP, this PC was custom built. As a result, locating drivers for it proved challenging, but that was just the beginning. Finding the drivers, configuring Windows and loading the various program updates took more than six hours. We then reinstalled all the applications, located installation CDs, activated software and setup external devices like printers, iPods and PDAs. This took another six to eight hours. Over the next few days he inevitably discovered a missing application or something wasn’t working the way it had worked previously, leading to further troubleshooting sessions. In the end it took more than three days to get this system back to its pre-crash condition.

Fortunately you can take steps to minimize your data lost and recovery time when the unthinkable finally happens. A very simple method can restore your PC in only a few hours, as opposed to days. It’s called an image backup.

Personally, I had some experience with Acronis, Ghost, Clonezilla and AIOMEI. basically are the same, the difference is just the interface and a few tech aspects as sizes, speed and others. But does the work and properly.

There is a variety of image creation software available for less than $50. Here are some examples:

NAME
LICENSING
Clonezilla
Free software
dcfldd
Free software
dd
Free software
ddrescue
Free software
FSArchiver
Free software
Gparted Live Cd[3]
Free software
Mondo Rescue
Free software
ntfsclone
Free software
ntfsresize
Free software
partclone
Free software
PartImage
Free software
PING
Free software
RaWrite
Free software
RaWrite2
Free software
Redo Backup and Recovery
Free software
Trinity Rescue Kit
Free software
UDPCast
Free software
AOMEI Backupper
Freemium
Kleo Bare Metal Backup
Freeware
Partition-Saving
Freeware
Acronis True Image
Non-free
CopyCatX
Non-free
Disk Copy
Non-free
DriveClone
Non-free
Ghost
Non-free
Image for Windows
Non-free

In addition to its advanced backup and restore functions, Acronis includes a strong disk-wiping utility and its outstanding Try&Decide product; which allows you to use your computer in a secure environment, preventing malicious or incompatible applications from permanently modifying your system.

Once you feel everything works, you can then permanently write those changes to your system. This helps to minimize the chance of something unknown damaging your system and making it unusable.

The software selected for Image a Boot drive and OS installed on your computer
One blank CD/DVD recordable disk and CD/DVD recorder
An external USB hard drive (at least as large as your PC’s hard drive to store your new backup image)

You don’t have to use an external USB hard drive. You can use other devices like CDs, DVDs, Bu-ray disks and NAS devices.

However, due to the capacity and convenience an external USB HD offers, that’s what I’m going to recommend you use and what we will use in our example today. We will also assume for our example that your PC is equipped with a single hard drive with one partition (Drive C:) and one CD/DVD-RW drive (Drive D:); making your external USB HD drive E:. With that in mind our goal for today will be to simply create a onetime full image backup of your PCs hard drive.

Don't use your primary PC for this project. This lets you test the entire process from start to finish and avoid accidentally erasing your primary PC during testing. This might not be practical for some readers, but you'll be more confident in the process when the time comes. If you do perform this on your primary PC, please have a current backup of your data just in case.

The first task is to download and install the image software onto your PC. Once you’ve downloaded the software, begin the installation. If you happen to come across an option where you’re unsure how to proceed, simply leave it on the default selection and continue. In most cases the default choice is always the right choice. Once the software is successfully installed we can begin the image creation process.


THE PROCESS WILL TAKE PLACE IN THREE PARTS:

  1. We have to create a Bootable Rescue CD for the image restore
  2. We will back up the entire hard drive to an image
  3. Finally we will perform a complete image restore.


PART 1: CREATING THE BOOTABLE RESCUE MEDIA


  1. Insert a blank CD into your CD-Recorder
  2. Launch the application and click the Tools button on the menu bar.
  3. Select Create Bootable Rescue Media to launch the Media Builder.
  4. On the Rescue Media Contents Selection screen keep the default settings and click Next.
  5. On the Boot Media Options screen click Next
  6. On the Bootable Media Selection screen select the drive you will use to create the bootable disk. For us, that will be the DVD-RW drive. Press Next to continue and click Proceed to start.
  7. When completed the CD will automatically eject from the PC. Remove it.


PART 2: CREATING THE BACKUP IMAGE


  1. Boot your PC into Windows and launch the application. From the Application select Backup and Restore.
  2. Now on the right side of the screen select My Computer. On this next screen we will select which disk to create an image of. Click on the Disk that contains your C: drive. This will automatically include all of the partitions on that disk. Then click Next to continue.
  3. On this next screen you need to select the Target location where your image will be stored. Under Target selection click the button Create new backup archive. Under Backup location click the Browse button and select the drive letter of your External USB HD. Ours was E. You can keep the default file name or give it something more descriptive. We’ll keep the default which is MYBACKUP. Press OK and then Next to continue.
  4. This brings us to the optional steps. The first one is Scheduling. Select Do not schedule and press Next.
  5. For the Backup method select Full and press Next.
  6. Don’t Exclude any files and press Next again.
  7. This brings us to the Backup options page. Here you can select passwords, compression levels, error handling options, etc. We are going to keep all of the default settings except for one. The one we want is under Additional settings. We want to check the option to Validate the backup archive once it has been created. This ensures that there were no errors during the image creation. Press Next to continue.
  8. Lastly we have the option to create a description of the image that we are creating. I suggest you do this as it can help you remember exactly what your image contains.
  9. Click Next to see a summary of the procedure to take place and when ready, press Proceed to start the image creation process. 
  10. We backed up approximately 25GB of data on our test system in about one hour and 15 minutes; including the validation.


PART 3: RESTORING THE IMAGE




With the image successfully created, we can now proceed with the most important part of this process, which is to restore the image to your system in the event of catastrophic Windows corruption or total HD failure. So now let’s pretend that you just replaced your failed HD with a brand new one. If you’re using a secondary PC as suggested, you can erase the HD now to make the process more authentic, but it’s not necessary.

1.    Attach your external USB HD drive to the PC and insert the Bootable Rescue Media CD into the drive and reboot the system. The PC should automatically begin to boot off of the CD. If not, you might need to make the CD the first bootable device in the system BIOS.

***IMPORTANT*** Some external USB hard drives might not be visible to the Rescue Media CD as it is in Windows. Even if you don’t do the restore now, be sure to test that the drive is accessible to the Rescue Media CD before storing your backup image on it. Otherwise you might not be able to restore your image when the time comes.

2.    Once the system boots you’ll be presented with a Windows-like login screen

3.    Select Backup and Restore from the bottom left menu. Under the Backup and Restore menu at the top left of the screen select Manage and restore. This will show you a list of all of your backups. Select the one you would like to restore. From our example that would be MYBACKUP. If you had multiple backups here you can select any of them and press Details on the menu bar to read the file’s description to see what it contains

4.    Now just press the Restore button on the menu bar

5.    For the restoration method choose Restore whole disks and partitions then press Next

6.    On this screen you need to select which items to restore. Check the box next to Disk 1 and press Next

7.    Now this is the important part. Here you will select the destination disk where the image will be restored. You can usually identify this by either the disk capacity or the interface it uses. On our test system our external USB HD was disk 1 and the PC HD was disk 2. In this case disk 2 is the one we need to restore to. Press Next to continue.

***IMPORTANT*** Examine the disks being displayed and their associated drive letters carefully because it’s possible they might not match the configuration found when running Windows.

8.    Again, under Additional settings you’ll have the option to validate the image before the restoration. With the restoration I consider this step optional, but for the backup, I recommend doing it. Press Next when ready

9.    Now to begin the restoration process, press Proceed and just sit back and relax.

Once completed, remove the CD, restart the system and the PC should boot right up. You should find it fully functional with all of your applications, data and printers all present and accounted for. Our test system was fully restored in less than an hour.




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