Now that I have Win7 set up the way I want it, is it possible to create an image on a bootable DVD so that if (and when) my computer crashes I can just reinstall everything from that image? I seem to recall something like that was done on my last job, but I don't know how.

Hi,
Is that not what create a system repair disc and backup do in "maintenance"

Yes, look into WAIK, and Sysprep. Also Norton Ghost.

a system repair disk only hold tools/commands to use in a windows repair, recover a crashed OS. .its not a full backup of system,

EDIT=it is also used to restore the computer from a image sorry about that .

If you have done a full back-up through 7s "Back-up and Restore" under "Maintenance", is that an image of your hard drive and by using the boot disk it will give you access to that image and thereby allow the image to be copied back to the drive to the state it was when the image was taken? Or is it just a backup program like "Shadow copy"?

If you have done a full back-up through 7s "Back-up and Restore" under "Maintenance", is that an image of your hard drive and by using the boot disk it will give you access to that image and thereby allow the image to be copied back to the drive to the state it was when the image was taken? Or is it just a backup program like "Shadow copy"?

im creating a image now to a internal drive i have in my computer and will play with installing from image to another partition on that drive later today

im creating a image now to a internal drive i have in my computer and will play with installing from image to another partition on that drive later today

didn't know ,as some of you more seasone pros could have tolde me so if you read my last post . anyway it found the recovery i created on partition 2 but then could not find a drive to copy it to,so in short it only seen the drive as one partition and not two partitions

The MS deployment tools like look into WAIK can make customised images (With windows vista and above windows installs are comprised of a copressed image, and some scripts which run in the installers WinPE environment). Ive used this to make network deployment images including software and settings we want.

But as a realistic backup tool, use Norton Ghost to image your disk, or if you font want to shell out, then maybe an opensource tool like Clonezilla?

commented: Thanks for the helpful information. +25

Thanks jbennet for the info. I downloaded Clonezilla iso and burned to disk. Created an image of my hard drive in a little over an hour.

Yeah, i use the live version, it seems fairly speedy. took 2-3 hours for me. Only gripe was that it could be a bit more user friendly.

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