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Recovering your Hard Drive from Disaster. What I now Know.
EdPellesC99:
Maybe everyone in the world knows this but me, but I will describe a great safety net (Acronis Home Image)
Recently I had got stuck with the malicious software download called XP Repair.
Ended up re-doing everything from formating the hard drive on up to re-installing everything.
One thing I did learn was the beauty of an Acronis Backup Image. I had the software, I had never "recovered" an image.
(I had no recent image of my hard drive, so I could not even try it)
However as I rebuilt things I did Acronis image backup at various stages. I had gotten 50 rungs up the 100 step ladder, and I had a major problem and was going to have to start over....
I had nothing to loose, so I tried using the Acronis Recovery from the recent good image.
Wow.... in 35 minutes the hard drive files were erased and put back at the time point state of the image.
All system files, all application data.
This is recovery of the active drive (C: for me). Acronis calls this a "My Computer" image on C:.
Incredible.
If I had a recent image of my system drive..... Someone could open my laptop and steal my hard drive or run over it with a Mac truck. I could slap a new drive in, and be back in business in 35 minutes. (Image is on an external drive, and a CD rescue disc was made and set aside (rescue disc boots computer and has copies of the acronis software on it.)
USB connect external drive to laptop, and you are off and running using your rescue disc to redo the hard drive. Your hard drive will have all the software and anything else you had on C: drive, exactly like it was before someone "stole your hard drive". The restoration is TOTAL, no re-registering ANYTHING !
People also use this to migrate easily to a new and maybe larger hard drive.
Eminently better than Restore points.....
This "XP Repair", in the end, punished me for deleting its files by making it so ....that the computer would reboot one minute after it started to boot (endlessly), and I saw (before this) that all my Restore points had been erased (I make one every day automatically). Also it changed my Administator password, so I was not able to boot up on the original XP discs and use the Recovery Console.
Anyway I just want to advocate for Acronis...(I am using Acronis Home 10, I bought a few years ago).
I saw it work, and I am making regular backups, and I really feel protected.
.....Ed
P.S. You can also by Acronis Disc Director (at a discount if you own Image, or you might be able to buy them together for a discount), ....... I love the ability to create a new virtual disc anytime w/ Disc Director.
A "My Computer Image" is a *Disc Image*, Acronis has a context menu addition which allows you to "mount" a disc image.
So you can view it as a temporary new virtual drive. Really nice. Other types of images you can make with Acronis are not mountable.
Stefan Pendl:
--- Quote from: EdPellesC99 on August 13, 2011, 12:05:53 AM ---This "XP Repair", in the end, punished me for deleting its files by making it so ....that the computer would reboot one minute after it started to boot (endlessly), and I saw (before this) that all my Restore points had been erased (I make one every day automatically). Also it changed my Administator password, so I was not able to boot up on the original XP discs and use the Recovery Console.
--- End quote ---
To change the passwords offline, you can use the Offline Windows Password & Registry Editor.
I do daily backups of my data, but no imaging, since if I reinstall my system the programs have already gone through various updates.
I don't think installing an image with outdated software is practical.
Due to the latest experience with Win7, I would only create an image of Windows with the latest service pack installed, since installing the service pack seems to be more tricky than it should and takes quite long.
EdPellesC99:
This XP Repair (they wanted you to download their repair software) was unreal, I would guess that it had changed the attribute on over 200,000 files to read only (One entire virtual drive too).
The image is an absolute snapshot of your drive at that point in time, including every tweek, every update to ALL software you have ever made, every hotfix, NOTHING is left out.
Once you recover .... you are exactly where you were before your problem. There may be other companies that do as well as Acronis, I don't know... but the concept is fantastic protection, and it works perfectly, easily, and FAST, only a harware failure other than your hard drive could defeat you temporarily (until the hardware problem got fixed).
The only caveat is: the image has to go back on the same computer, you cannot recover the image to a hard drive on a different computer. I was told you might be able to ....if it was a twin computer you had bought at the same time you bought the first.
... Ed
(wish someone had proselytized this subject to me, I found Acronis on my own, and did not even understand how valuable it was, I just used it for backups I could mount and view.)
CommonTater:
--- Quote from: EdPellesC99 on August 13, 2011, 02:36:09 AM ---The image is an absolute snapshot of your drive at that point in time, including every tweek, every update to ALL software you have ever made, every hotfix, NOTHING is left out.
--- End quote ---
Including the virus itself... Any worm or trogen that lays dormant for some time before activating itself is also going to end up in that image. And if you are silly enough to make the image after your system is in trouble you've just backed up your virus.
It all sounds real good until you realize the pitfalls... dormant viruses, updates gone wrong, spyware, tracking cookies, and on and on can and do find their way into the backup images. The only truly safe system restore is to start from a clean OS install and reinstall all your software from manufacturer's distributions and then add all the *known good* updates after that.
Stefan Pendl:
--- Quote from: EdPellesC99 on August 13, 2011, 02:36:09 AM ---This XP Repair (they wanted you to download their repair software) was unreal, I would guess that it had changed the attribute on over 200,000 files to read only (One entire virtual drive too).
--- End quote ---
This is why I don't install anything advertised by an add or an e-mail, since you are likely to install a bot, which just locks you out from your own system until you by rubbish for big money.
All these repair, tweak and other doubtful performance increasing products are just a waste of time.
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