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Sector by Sector backup to maintain defrag state?

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If I defrag my HD and want to maintain it's defrag state for re-imaging (so that I wouldn't have to "defrag again" after a restore, if you see what I mean) - is it best to do a sector by sector backup or just a regular backup or does it matter?

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Steve,

Don't make a sector by sector image as it will be the same size as your actual disk and be very slow.

For the most part, a restore will maintain the defragged state that has been imaged, there will be some defragmentation though where the secotrs can't be put back in the exact position they were in originally if the drive is a different size for instance or secotrs have been marked as bad by the drive between making and restoring an image.

Don't forget, if you set TI up to run on a schedule, every time you defrag the drive many sectors will change position, this will cause True Image to make an incremental or differential image about the same size as an original full one.

Thanks for the info Colin.

On another subject...

I have a test PC that I use all the time and restore it regularly for trying various configs and software etc and after I've finished doing tests etc I then restore it to the previous perfect clean state!

Every couple of weeks I install the MS and software updates to keep the PC current before creating another clean image to use from then on to return to.

My question is... If I restore an image is there a way that I can just do an incremental backup? At the moment if you do a full backup and then restore that backup, any incremental backups will be the same "full" size as the original because the incremental backup sees the original as totally different even though not much has changed in the actual files etc..

I guess an incremental after a restore just isn't possible though :-(

Steve,

After a restore it is best to delete and remake tasks, if you aren't careful you could find your nice 'gold' image overwritten the next time TI runs as it has no way of knowing how upto date it is on a restored system (unless it was within the same day of the image being made that it is restored).

Try and Decide might be of assistance as it makes a virtual folder that contains a copy of your test configs and installs, it then gets deleted when you tell it to discard changes.

The other option is to install VirtualBox or similar and run an OS within that for testing, another option if you use Windows 7 Ultimate or Entrerprise any W8/8.1 is they will boot from a VHD, you could create different types of RAW VHD (ones that are at the install stage - no drivers, so machine independent at that point, or installed and 'clean'), True Image could be installe din the VHD versions and images made with the VM running. Restoring can be tricky though.