Home-level PC imaging software

[Dick Montage]

I have just re-setup my PC, and am bored of it.  I am aware of Norton Ghost and the such.  What I want to achieve is to take a copy of my PC, and store it on external HDD.  Then when I need to re-install, somehow copy this image back over.  Maybe weekly update the image, I dunno.

 

Any suggestions?

 

Thanks

[RichardK]

Are you running Windows?  Windows 7/8 ?  You can use the built-in Image based backup to create a Restore image that can be used to re-image your PC.

[Dick Montage]

Windows 8.1 (and not sure if it matters, but on an SSD).

 

This restore image... If I want to (100% wipe my PC, reformat, reinstall, install drivers, apps) encapsulate that process and return me to the point in time the backup was made?

 

I am currently looking at Acronis.

 

Thanks

[+Eternal Tempest MVC]

Depends on the degree of your technical experience, there's several open source / Linux based tools. 

Such is Clonezilla - http://clonezilla.org/

 

Another option, make a image of the machine.

Then use clone tool to copy it to the "primary" drive.

Periodically plug in the master drive for updates, etc. 

[Arachno 1D]

Pick one that allows compression of the image, Ghost used to be one of the best I dont know whats best these days as I haven't imaged systems in a while.

[+Cryton Subscriber²]

Macrium Reflect Free @ http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

[Dane]

I have this

 

http://www.recimg.com/

[Aergan]

I use Clonezilla to backup/restore my home server (Windows Server 2012 R2). I have used it for client version of Windows but I tend to rebuild those from scratch as I don't care enough to take a complete image of a client OS.

[Ravensky]

Macrium Reflect Free Edition is all you need for home, it's awesome!

 

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

I've used it many many times, I back up all my hard drives with it to image files which you can mouint and pull files from.  Also I have done several restores with it and it has never failed me.

 

LOVE IT!

[Romero]

Macrium Reflect Free @ http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Macrium Reflect Free Edition is all you need for home, it's awesome!

 

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

I've used it many many times, I back up all my hard drives with it to image files which you can mouint and pull files from.  Also I have done several restores with it and it has never failed me.

 

LOVE IT!

Been using Acronis so far. Is this better? Does it allow you to restore a full system image back to an empty drive?

[devilotX]

I actually work at Acronis and can whole heartedly stand behind Acronis True Image, it's very nice! 

[Ravensky]

Been using Acronis so far. Is this better? Does it allow you to restore a full system image back to an empty drive?

 

Yes it does, you can copy a drive to another drive or copy a drive to an image file.  I used to use Acronis until they started charging so much, Macrium is FREE and it's FANTASTIC, it even supports GPT drives...

 

You can also double click an image file once it's done and it will mount it like a CDRom drive so you can add or remove files from your images.  =)

[PaulATMOS]

Symantec System Recovery 2013 R2 works really well.

There is a full featured 60 day trial available.

I have done numerous system image backups and reinstalls, including to different hardware and had no problems.

http://www.symantec.com/en/au/system-recovery-server-edition/

[Romero]

Yes it does, you can copy a drive to another drive or copy a drive to an image file.  I used to use Acronis until they started charging so much, Macrium is FREE and it's FANTASTIC, it even supports GPT drives...

Thanks. So just to confirm, it allows you to create a LiveCD to restore the full system image? Because I don't want to have to reinstall the OS manually and then just restore files from the image. Acronis is good but people often ask me for a good cheaper/free alternative.

[Ravensky]

yes you create a restore media using CD, DVD, USB, whatever, then boot with that and open your image backup and restore it your boot drive, etc.

 

Easy stuff.

 

The user interface is very easy to use and it works flawlessly.  You even have the choice of using Linux or WindowsPE for your recovery media.

 

Both work very well.

[protocol7]

The only problem with Macrium Free and Clonezilla is they don't offer incremental/differential backups. So you have to create a new image each backup. I was trying to find a free backup tool that I could use to schedule backups to a NAS but eventually just went with the built-in Windows image backup because most of the tools couldn't do incremental.

 

EaseUS ToDo Backup could but when I started getting file corruption copying files between partitions I eventually tracked it down as the culprit and had to nix it.

[xrobwx71]

Macrium Reflect Free Edition is all you need for home, it's awesome!

 

http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

 

I've used it many many times, I back up all my hard drives with it to image files which you can mouint and pull files from.  Also I have done several restores with it and it has never failed me.

 

LOVE IT!

Macrium Reflect I use at home and the Enterprise version at work.At work I use it to image incrementally the RAID 0 drives in our Win Server 2008 machine. I used it to image my (home) HDD and transfer that image to my new SSD. Worked like a charm.

[Gerowen]

I've used Clonezilla for years with great results.  It's free, open source, and based on Debian/Ubuntu Linux.  The "alternative" version of it is based on Ubuntu and therefore contains some proprietary drivers (read that as better hardware support) and also supports uEFI.

 

http://clonezilla.org/

[ITFiend]

If your not technically inclined and on a normal PC, stick with the open source CloneZilla at least at first.  Don't waste money purchasing any imaging products until you know they actually give you a feature CloneZilla doesn't provide that you'll want/need/use.

 

If your on a Mac, just use Carbon Copy Cloner unless you know of something better.  Technically its fully functional demoware these days, but you really don't need to buy it if you don't want to.

 

 

If your technical and dealing with Windows, the rest of this is possibly targeting you.

 

My preference is the Windows Automated Deployment Toolkit for ImageX & WinPE when doing disk cloning, but I try to avoid directly using HDD's for Windows these days with my personal machines. Instead I Native Boot from VHDX virtual disks so that Windows is always incapsulated in a format that can just be copied, can always be mounted as a drive letter, and can easilly be tossed into a Hyper-V virtual machine when not physically booted (or any other virtualization platform that supports the VHD/VHDX standards).

 

While both the Windows ADK imaging and VHDX Native Boot are more complicated than CloneZilla, the Microsoft tools for Windows are as free and can lead to mass deployment through Windows Deployment Services & System Center, as well as Hyper-V/RemoteFX VDI. The WIM file format used by ImageX and DISM can be mounted, patched, and otherwise serviced while the OS is in an offline state if your inclined.