WinRE backup advice for Win7 Newbie [Solved]

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Comments: 13

Hi,
I have just moved from WinXP to Win7 and am wanting to backup up my "system" to an external drive.
Having booted off the CD, I see for the system disk that there are 2 partitions - WinRE and SYSTEM (ie C:)
Do I need to backup both these or what?
For simple recovery situations, I guess just the SYSTEM one; but if the disk dies and needs to be replaced then do I need both partitions to be restored to a new disk
Any advice gratefully accepted!
BTW ATI itself is working OK.
Rog

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 16:59
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It's generally recommended to create a least one Entire Disk Image backup. This includes all partitions on the drive and allows you to easily return to this state at a later time. You can follow this restore with another restore of a more current SYSTEM partition image, if you wish.

For general backups, it usually fine to just include the Windows (SYSTEM) partition. However, if the WinRE partition is very small (a few hundred MBs, for example), you may just wish to include it anyway.

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 17:14
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Thanks MudCrab,
As ever you always explain things in easy to understand terms. -)

The WinRE partition is holding about 10.5 Gb - don't ask me why, the system came pre-installed with Win7!
I guess this area does not change under normal circumstances, so having a single backup stored in a safe place should be OK; then I only need to do the windows partition backup as and when! It saves a bit of time if nothing else!

Thanks again.

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 18:27
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It most likely contains the restore/recovery data to reset the computer back to factory setup. The data on it probably never changes (unless updated by the user).

Fri, 12/24/2010 - 18:38