Cloning: 7 install: Include 100Mb system partition?

[acousticdj]

I know, I know. I should have just not put it there during the install. It's there's now though lol. I've used clonezilla to back up XP installs many times. Simple: Copy OS partition to partition on backup drive and done. XP never added that stupid 100Mb partition though like 7 does by default. What do I do with that? Can I just clone the big part to my backup drive? Will I be able to restore the OS with just that portion? Or do I need to include the small part and do some goofy "multi-partition" to "one partition" or "full disk" to "partition" thing in clonezilla? Help?

 

[Hawkeye22]

I'd clone the entire drive, not just the OS partition. I haven't used clonezilla in a while, but most backup software will allow you to clone the entire drive vs. just a single partition.

 

[Paperdoc]

Agree with Hawkeye22. One of the things Win 7 does is create a backup Partition for its use to restore automatically, corrupted system files if it has trouble booting. If it finds that Partition missing when it tries to boot, it cannot boot.

One small detail to watch for. In many cloning packages when you have more than one Partition on the Source HDD, the default option is to create the Partitions on the new Destination HDD using what is called Proportional sizing of the new Partitions. So, assuming your new HDD is larger that the old one, its Partitions will ALL be larger than those on the old Source. For example, if you old one is 500 GB and the new one is 2TB, that 100 MB backup Partition would become a 400 MB one on the new HDD. You don't need that - the data in it is still only under 100 MB. So, using the cloning software menus, you can intervene and set the sizes of the new Partitions on the Destination drive to whatever you want. In this case, make that one backup Partition still 100 MB on the new drive, and all the rest of it as the other Partition.

 

[acousticdj]

Good advice guys thanks. Did some research too and decided to just use the 7 backup as it creates an image with both partitions instead of messing with cloning (didn't realize they were two different things actually - NOOBAGE lol). Found this article really helpful:

http://www.pagestart.com/win7bckuprstrnhd072610.html

Guess cloning is good for some things and images are good for others. Thanks again!

 

[Hawkeye22]

Cloning usually implies imaging a drive. You can clone a drive or a single partition. File backups are not clones. File backups allow you to restore single files where as clones/images usually need to be restored in full.

 

[acousticdj]

Gotcha. So the person in that article made an actual restore image right? I just followed their instructions and created an image of the OS with 7 Backup &Restore and then created a recovery disk. The result was a folder with some xml files I think, a couple vhd files and some misc stuff. I should be able restore my OS to the way it is today if I need to in the future with the image I made and the recovery disk right? Thx

 

[Hawkeye22]

The vhd file is a virtual hard drive, basically an image. The xml files probably contain information for the windows backup software. I've never used windows 7 backup so can't say for sure other than the vhd is a virtual hard drive/image.

 

[acousticdj]

I've restored my system a couple times off of the image I made with win 7 backup since I first posted this question. Worked great.

 

[acousticdj]

Also, fyi, noticed that when I restored my OS from an image, it combined the main partition and the tiny partition into one.

 

[acousticdj]

Best answer selected by acousticdj.