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15557
Making a system image
Hello
My Brother-in-Law has asked me to help him make a system image of his new computer. It is a Dell Inspiron 660, running Windows 7 Home Prem., MSE, WinPatrol Plus, and MBAM Pro, and it has all the important updates installed. We will be using the Windows built in image maker and putting the image onto an external hard drive. We have looked at tutorials on the internet on how to do this, but we would like to have some guidance on a couple of item's before we start.
In Power Option's, he has the monitor set to go off in 10 min's. and the hard drive to turn off in 15 min's.. Do we need to set these to Never or will the hard drive activity that will occur during the image making process over ride these settings?
Since MSE, WinPatrol Plus, and MBAM Pro all run in real time, should we disconnect from the internet, exit from WP. and MBAM, and turn off the real time protection in MSE while making the image, and than re-do everything when done? If we left them running in real time, could they do something like checking for new definition updates, that could corrupt the image?
All help would be very much appreciated.
LKW198
joe53
5.8K Posts
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January 29th, 2014 16:00
Sorry for the delayed reply, as I made some tests.
1) Making a system backup image of my C drive (including the recovery partition) to an external hard drive takes about 30 minutes. This is with my MBAM Pro, WinPatrol Plus, and anti-virus all running in real-time, with no other programs running, and my fast cable internet connection intact. Obviously the size of the backup, the CPU speed and your hardware will all affect this time. I keep my computer on 24/7, and schedule these image backups in the wee hours when I'm not using the PC. Now I have a fairly fast CPU and lots of RAM, so I would recommend you not power down your hard drive after only 15 minutes when a system image backup is planned.
Powering down your monitor should not affect the backup, as long as the hard drive is still working. Almost all my backup images were made with the monitor off.
2) As far as I know, there is no need to disconnect from the internet, or to stop your AV or MBAM Pro from updating during the imaging process. I never have taken these measures, and was able to restore a backup system image on more than one occasion. At worst, I suppose you might lose any current definition updates, which could easily be corrected by running a manual update of MSE or MBAM Pro.
3) I just restored my system from an external HD image I just created using Windows 7 backup. The prompt said it "might take from a few minutes to a few hours". It took about 35 minutes for me, and as far as I can tell, all files and programs were restored intact. This was without stopping my AV or MBAM Pro.
I applaud your attempts to back up your system with an image. I think it the easiest way to recover from significant malware infection. A system image, of course, is frozen to the time you make it. Anything added or created subsequently will be lost with an image restore. I find that a weekly image backup works in practice. Any important files I create between backups, I save to a flash drive.
joe53
5.8K Posts
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January 29th, 2014 14:00
Hi LKW 198
I use Win 7 Home Premium/sp1. I also use all the security you listed. You ask good questions, and I 'll get back to you shortly with some answers.
LKW 198
48 Posts
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January 29th, 2014 19:00
JOE53
Thank-you for going the "extra mile" by making a system image of your system to help answer my question's. That was really very nice of you to do.
Because this is the first time either my Brother-in-Law or myself have done this, we are going to do it manually for we want to watch what ever there is to see on the monitor during the process. So we will change the settings for the hard drive and monitor to NEVER, we will not disconnect from the internet and will leave MSE, MBAM and WinPatrol running in real time. We hope to do this tomorrow and will post back as how it went.
As usual, whenever I come to this Forum and ask for help, the response's I get back from everyone, are always very helpful. Thanks again JOE53 for continuing that.
LKW198
joe53
5.8K Posts
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January 29th, 2014 19:00
You are most welcome.
You raised some questions I had not thought of, so I welcomed the chance to investigate them.
ky331
3 Apprentice
3 Apprentice
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15.3K Posts
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January 30th, 2014 04:00
Kudos to Joe for the effort he made here. Great work!! :emotion-21:
LKW 198
48 Posts
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January 30th, 2014 17:00
JOE53
My Brother-in-Law and myself made that system image this afternoon. It took about 45 minutes from start to finish and at the end we did get a dialog box that said "The back up completed successfully'. I showed him this thread, and after reading your post's he couldn't believe that you went thru all that effort to help us out. He did want me to pass along to you his heart felt thank-you.
LKW198
joe53
5.8K Posts
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January 30th, 2014 17:00
LKW198
It really was my pleasure. Thanks for the follow-up.