Vista Backup and Imaging Confusion

[corndog]

Hello all,

I'm just wondering - how do you backup and/or image your Windows Vista PC's? 0 Have you ever had to recover from a lost system drive? How did that go for you?

Did you know that Microsoft has 4 different backup solutions for Vista that create 3 different types of backup files and all have different limitations? Which one do you use?

Here they are in a quick list:

1. Windows Backup - creates ZIP files
2. Complete PC Backup - creates .VHD file but not on a NAS
3. wbadmin.exe - creates .VHD file, but lets it store on a NAS
4. ImageX.exe - creates .WIM file

I wrote a much longer explanation and rant about this and you can find it here if you're interested.

Thanks

 

[scotty]

I've tried ImageX, but it seemed a little clumsy and at times difficult to get working properly. It definitely seems intended as a tool to create custom install DVD's for corporate deployments versus day to day imaging tasks. I've played with the 'complete PC backup' a few times on Ultimate and Business, but never really had a need to actually use it yet. I usually just stick with Acronis (see below).

Right now I'm just using Acronis' True Image Home 9 (via. boot CD, I'm uneasy about 'hot' imaging). It's pretty simple and robust and works well enough.

I've also messed around with Server 08's PXE Deployment/Imaging tools a bit and they're pretty slick. The only downside is that it will only image a sysprepped system, so it's not for every-day use.

 

[corndog]

Yes,

I recently migrated my wife's Vista PC onto a new RAID0 array because one of her Raptors was starting to sound like a jet. I used wbadmin because it can be done while the system is running, and I was afraid it would not come back if I turned it off. The restore took a command line that was 3 screen lines long, but it worked.

I imaged one of my early Vista machines with Acronis (not sure if it was V9 though) and even though it claimed to be a happy successful image, I was never able to restore it onto another drive. I bailed on Acronis based on that experience. Have you ever done a restore test on your Acronis images?

 

[scotty]

Yep, restored several Vista based images without issue, both on hardware and to VMs. But this has been with the latest version (9). I could appreciate earlier versions having problems, as it seemed that a lot of imaging programs seemed to have troubles with Vista originally. The whole reason why I went to Acronis is because good-ol' Ghost v8 wouldn't work with Vista.

I'll likely stick with Acronis at home, and use Server 08's deployment tools if I had to do a business rollout. The only reason I can forsee myself using ImageX is creating custom install DVDs.

 

[beq]

FWIW, I've been using StorageCraft's ShadowProtect Desktop hot imaging app on quite a few of my family's home machines.

Cons for me include:

- relatively high pricing per license (though they've released a 3-pack bundle since then that somewhat helps)

- no one-step restore and resizing to a bigger HDD/partition (yet)

- no custom file exclusions (other than hibernate/pagefile) -- though I do understand that ShadowProtect is a core imaging app and not meant to have file-level backup features like the Symantec/Acronis competition

On the plus side, people and reviewers seem to find its imaging and restoration rock solid, with the fastest speed to boot. In fact its earlier-generation volume snapshot engine was even licensed by those very same competitors. The incremental sector change tracking is also excellent (I have some machines transparently taking snapshotted images every few hours, which takes only seconds and eats up little disk space). As a matter of fact you can elect to just do continuous incrementals, with periodic collapsing of previous incremental images into base/differential images to keep the number of files under control (for archiving).

The incremental mechanism even provides you with "writable" images. For example, you can image a compromised machine, virus-clean the image file, then restore. Also I believe the .spf image file format was among the first to be supported by VMware (though they also support Acronis format now).

Basically I rely on its automated hot imaging to back up family members' machines with a set-it-and-forget-it approach. Though on my own machine I'm likely to just rely on its cold boot system imaging periodically (I already dabble with online and peer-to-peer backup and sync apps to replicate my data)...

 

[corndog]

Thanks beq.

I had not heard of this one, and I will give it a try. With the way Vista now does hot resizing, that's not really a concern anyway.

 

[bliko]

Acronis True Image for me... it's universal restore function has proved quite usefull.

 

[beq]

If I recall correctly, don't all the players these days support bare-metal restore to different hardware?

In any case, I remember PC Magazine's roundup from a year ago having liked ShadowProtect...

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2259379,00.asp