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[JimH]

I saw this at AVSForum today and thought it might be useful.

Windows 7 'Backup and Restore Feature'.
Its built-in, its free and it works; nothing comes close (IMHO).

I just used it this last weekend to transfer a friend's PC from a 500GB drive to a 1TB.

Start Menu => All Programs => Maintenance => Backup and Restore

On the left, click 'Create a System Image'. It will open another window where it will display a list of connected drives to back up the image file. Use an external drive to back up the image file.

It takes a few mins. to do this; at the end it will prompt you to make a Start-up Boot disc. Insert a CD/DVD and it will burn some files onto this disc.

Then turn off the PC, replace the drive with your SSD and boot it with the newly made Start-up Disc; keep the external drive connected.
Windows Repair will boot from the disc and search for image files. It will scan all available drives and find the image file. Once it finds it, the image will be flashed onto the new SSD.

Since this is an snapshot of your current configuration, everything will remain the same including all programs, settings etc.; even any malware that might be in there. Its an exact copy.

If all goes well you should be done in less than 30 mins (from start to end).

Here's the link to the whole thread:
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=20025544#post20025544

[jgreen]

There is a lesser-known but amazingly capable partition image/clone/edit/resize/move/copy/etc tool called "EaseUS".  Very highly rated, it's free, and it doesn't carry the reputation of betrayal that the WinXP Restore function does, even into Win7.  The Win7 Partition Restore, copy, etc tools look capable, but EaseUS has completely leapfrogged them, IMO.

[newsposter]

There are multiple linux-based specialty distros that do this as well.

[glynor]

Good tip, Jim.

I'm a heavy "image and clone" user, so I bought into Acronis True Image a long while ago on the recommendation of people here on Interact (I really like it), but that's $$ and the Windows 7 built-in utility is indeed effective and easy to use.

[glynor]

There are multiple linux-based specialty distros that do this as well.

I don't know about others, but CloneZilla has been VERY temperamental for me on certain hardware (it particularly seems to dislike AMD chipsets).  An image is only useful if you can actually restore it.  In my experience, CloneZilla could not be relied upon.

[nwboater]

and it doesn't carry the reputation of betrayal that the WinXP Restore function does, even into Win7. 

I'm trying to understand what you mean here.

Thanks,
Rod

[jgreen]

My personal experience with Win XP restore was that it could actually restore properly about a third of the time.

The windows restore partition is a well-known hiding place for virii. 

For these reasons I don't rely on restore and will evetually delete my win7 restore partition, as I did with winxp.

[nwboater]

Thanks for the clarification. Scary stuff when you are counting on a backup and it doesn't properly restore! And malware too.

Rod

[DarkPenguin]

I use seagate disc wizard which is basically Acronis.  It works even if you aren't backing up to or from a seagate disk.  You just have to have one in the system.

[Maxxwire]

Although restoring a ~24 GB Win 7 system image has never failed on my computer I still prefer using Macrium Reflect which has not failed to do a flawless image restoration of its 7-10 GB backups on either of my computers for the almost 3 years that I've been using both the x86 and x64 versions of the software.

 

[rjm]

Most important thing is to pretend your drive died and do a test restore. You might find out things like USB restore drives do not work, or wireless mice don't work. Better to find out before you have no ability to correct. I've had best results with Acronis but even it has had version specific problems, hence importance of advance testing.

[kensn]

Good tip, Jim.

I'm a heavy "image and clone" user, so I bought into Acronis True Image a long while ago on the recommendation of people here on Interact (I really like it), but that's $$ and the Windows 7 built-in utility is indeed effective and easy to use.

 I really like the network features also...

Ken

[glynor]

I really like the network features also...

True Image 2012 now supports properly cloning to SSDs too, which is a good added feature.  Many generic cloning tools won't properly align the partition to an SSD's storage system, which is why SSD manufacturers always recommend that you install Windows on the drive from scratch, and don't clone an existing installation over.

What a PITA though if you're upgrading an existing system to an SSD.

TI2012 does it right.

[Bill Kearney]

I've used Acronis for moving to an SSD and it does seem to work nicely.

The downside, however, is you're stuck with the OS putting a lot of stuff on the SSD that ought not be there.  There are ways using an unattended install XML file to work around this, but it's a steep learning curve.  Various hacks to use links to move directories flatly do not work reliably.

Meanwhile I've used the built-in backup feature to make a system image and it does do a bare metal restoration properly.  The one thing to MUST consider, however, is you can't use a bare metal restore to a disk that's of a smaller size, regardless of how much capacity was used on it.  As in, you can't restore a system image from a 500gb HD (with only 30gb used) to an 80gb SSD.  It won't work.  What you CAN do it get ahold of a linux 'gparted' live CD and shrink the OS partition down first and then do a system image backup.  That'll let you restore it to the SSD.  But if you're doing that then you might as well just use gparted to move and resize the partitions from one drive to the other.