I just walked into my home office and there had been a power outage. I got the message (on my 4 month old Vista x64 system) "disc boot failure please insert system disc and press enter" I am scared to death. It finally booted up but I need to get to work fast. I can find a lot of tutorials to create an image but what if I need to use it?
I have Macrium reflect "free edition" I need to create an image. I can figure that part out. My questions are....
1-Can I create this image on another computer on my home network? If so, how would I use this image if I need it.
2-Does creating a ghost image create a bootable .iso and how do I use the ghost image.
3-If my HD fails. I need to get a new one, restore Vista from the recovery disc(s) I already made with HP recovery disc maker to factory state. Then use this "ghost" image to get (what) back? Software? Settings? That's my main worry.
Macrium Reflect will not backup a Network machine...at least not the Free version.
Other Paid apps such as Acronis True Image and Ghost have this feature.
When you create an image the entire system including OS,programs and Data are copied completely. The image can not be created on the same drive/partition that is being imaged...in other words you will need another drive or partition for the image file to be created to.
Once it is created it's often a good idea to burn it to CD/DVD for safekeeping.
To restore the image you use a bootable floppy or CD that you create directly from the image app...Macrium asks you if you want to do this at startup. The boot CD does not include your backup image ...it just launches the app to restore.
You then point it to where you want the image restored to (destination) and where the image resides (source).
The advantage is it takes me about 15 minutes to restore my drive back to where it was when the image was created...much faster than re-installing Windows;, tweaking everything and re-installing all your apps.
It looks like Macrium does let you use network computers. It is creating an image right now on a different computer on my home network. That's great.... So this is an option to re-installing windows? And it will put the exact image (including settings and software) back onto a new hard drive? This is great. I hope it works.
Just to get this strait....if my hard drive is going out, I can buy a new one, I don't even have to install Windows....just put this image on the new drive with the help of the linux or bart cd Macrium helps you create right?
Thanks for the reply. I created an image on a PC in my home network. The image is of Vista x64. That still should work okay right. It's on an XP machine. Also, in case anyone wonders, the image is 19GB. I left the compression at default. This seems to be a great program. (Macrium)
