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Drivers Reinstalled - When system image recovered - Why?

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Hi All, Grover:

I for the first time took my time and patience and read and followed the best practices and would like to summarize my experience and also ask certain questions as i faced them:

Background:
I have one laptop XPS 14Z Dell. I did a fresh from scratch complete install by putting a new 750GB hard disk seagate SATA and then installed Windows 7 ultimate 64 bit OS. Then I installed first thing AVG free antivirus and then all drivers and then updated windows SP1 via windows update. It took enormous amount of time and then i installed office 2010 and all other application software's. The whole process was very very time consuming but I had a clean perfect system to start with.

My partition layout:

100 MB system reserved
200 GB C with windows 7 64 bit OS
Remaining 540 GB data partition (currently no data)

Next Step:
I wanted to created an image of above system as the amount involved and effort was too much for me. So I inserted a live CD (Acronis Bootable CD Media) 2013 and booted from same and then created on an external hard disk - a TIB Image of my existing laptop using Backup - "disks and partitions" wherein I chose entire disk. I did not select sector by sector backup.

Query1: Is my choice of not selecting sector by sector back up in any disadvantageous?
The reason I did not chose is it was showing too much data size for backup?

Query2: I then selected all three partitions and MBR ticks (basically whole disk) checkbox.
Is it ok if in future if i exclude data partition (now empty but in future will have data) so that image backup size would be smaller?

I then proceeded in removing the above hard disk from laptop and put a new hard disk. Then I booted again from Live CD and restored Image from external hard disk to new hard disk inside laptop as targetr.

Query3: Is there a better way to check whether my backup image in TIB will work or not other than restoring and testing. Because restoring means swapping a new hard disk and then restoring image. A very lengthy process?

QUERY Also once i restored image on a new hard disk from backup image of tib thru CD above I wonder why the drivers all started getting installed after booting from new hard disk. I am asking because the image is supposed to contain all drivers already. then why on restore on same laptop all drivers started getting installed again on new hard disk? At best only hard disk driver should have installed. But All drivers including chipset etc etc were installed automatically though.

PLS share your valuable thoughts. Thanks for your time.

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I'll comment, just in case Grover misses this thread when he looks in.

1. Sector by sector is really for special cases, the method you chose is the standard one to use. The standard method only images sectors of the drive that are used. Sector by sector does just that, copies even those sectors with nothing in them and means you need a storage drive at least as large as your source drive.

2. Future images will only contain altered sector content, so unless you have selected to only make full images, subsequent incremental or differential images will be much smaller than your original image. However, if you wish to remove a partition from the imaging process or image it separately, it is much better to make a new task that only contains the disk or partitions you want.

3. What you have done is th eonly way to get 100% confidence an image is sound, however you can also run a validation check of the image which results in a 99% (approx) confidence in the image or for a disk/partition image you can mount that image while in Windows, this would give you a 96 -99 % confidence that the image is sound.

3b. You changed the drive, Windows will note that and install drivers for the new drive. You didn't mention which drivers were being installed.

I'll comment, just in case Grover misses this thread when he looks in.

Thank you and surely much appreciated. All inputs from everyone are welcome and am grateful for everyone's time and guidance.

1. Sector by sector is really for special cases, the method you chose is the standard one to use. The standard method only images sectors of the drive that are used. Sector by sector does just that, copies even those sectors with nothing in them and means you need a storage drive at least as large as your source drive.

Makes sense hence i would stick to not checking sector by sector.

2. Future images will only contain altered sector content, so unless you have selected to only make full images, subsequent incremental or differential images will be much smaller than your original image.

I prefer making full images as i make very less frequently and don't want to depend on chained backups as risk is higher.

However, if you wish to remove a partition from the imaging process or image it separately, it is much better to make a new task that only contains the disk or partitions you want.

Yes but in that case i should select everything in disk except data partition. (implying include MBR checkbox nd 100 MB system reserved and also OS partition)? Will it pose any challenge while restoration if i leave data partition out?

3. What you have done is th eonly way to get 100% confidence an image is sound, however you can also run a validation check of the image which results in a 99% (approx) confidence in the image or for a disk/partition image you can mount that image while in Windows, this would give you a 96 -99 % confidence that the image is sound.

Ya validation is next best option.

I also read somewhere else converting acronis image to VHD then VMDK but when i tried to create virtual machine and run in vmware workstation it failed to start.

I tried to follow and was successful till last but could not get VM loaded successfully. It gace start up repai error.

http://www.file-extensions.org/article/run-acronis-tib-as-virtual-machi…

So only option left is to restore and open the laptop few times to test and then delete the hard disk which was restored to reclaim space.

3b. You changed the drive, Windows will note that and install drivers for the new drive. You didn't mention which drivers were being installed.

Almost all like ethernet, wirless, bluetooth, chipset, etc...thats what surprised me

1. As Colin says, do not use sector-by-sector.

2. Full disk images are the best. If you have space, keep doing them. You could always exclude the data from the Data partition, using file or folder exclusions. That way the partition information would be backed up, but you'd save space by not including certain data. Make sure to backup your data some other way, such as a files-based backup using ATI or another tool.

3. Using the ATI2013 bootable Rescue Media, you could restore just a couple of files to test the image to your existing drive. That will give high confidence that you could restore the entire image if needed.

4. When you restore a full disk image to a replacement drive, select the "Restore Disk Signature" option.

BTW, re. your "appreciate if experts can share their thoughts", you already had a good reply from an expert. Colin is an expert.