DescentBB

I'd like to make a bootable drive image, preferably to a memory stick, of a clean Win 7 64 bit installation. Any ideas for an application to do this? I don't have the boxed version of Win 7, only an OEM Win 7 disk.

We use Acronis where I work. It seems to work well for the clean Win7/Vista installs we often use for testing.

Lmgtfy... Official method.

Perhaps I misunderstood.

Tc, you're looking for a bootable / easily-restored image of Win7 fully installed, correct?

Ah, I probably misunderstood. You want to run W7 of a USB stick ? Try this.

Edit: still didn't get it right. Me thinks Foils suggestion is what you are looking for ?

Foil wrote:Perhaps I misunderstood.

Tc, you're looking for a bootable / easily-restored image of Win7 fully installed, correct?

Yes. I don't want to have to reinstall the OS from the OEM disk because I would have to go through all the work of reinstalling drivers and setting up accounts. I just want a way to quickly reinstall the OS and hit the ground running.

On my old Dell XP computer, we used PowerQuest Drive Image and that saved my bacon once, but that product is no longer available. I had to reinstall the OS right after I bought the computer because Dell's idiot telephone tech support screwed everything up with their lovely hacking instructions trying to find what turned out to be an improperly set up RAID controller. We trashed the OS when we followed his instructions, moron.

Lucky me, I had imaged the drive BEFORE talking to tech support! Back then, the SASSER worm was running around the web and Dell in their infinite wisdom, didn't give us a hard copy of the patch when they sent the computer, so when trying to install the bare OS from the OEM disk, we'd immediately get the SASSER worm before we could get the patch from Microsoft. The second reinstall from the image worked great. That's what I need.

Okay, gotcha.

I asked the guy who handles the test-machine images in our office, and he said the version we're using for the Win7 images is Acronis True Image Home 2011.

OK, I was checking out Acronis 2011 and was wondering how flexible is the program on what a user can set up? All I want to do is create an image of the OS and be able to reinstall it in the event the OS gets corrupted. I don't want to do constant backups of files or folders. The computer is a gaming rig and there will be no documents or libraries to back up on a regular basis, so I'd like to be able to shut that off. After reading a lot of reviews, it sounds like the automatic file backup is a little problematic, sometimes working, sometimes not. About 50% of people even had the program corrupt their OS. Any feedback from your guys?

Got to love slipstreaming of Windows.

We don't use automatic backups with it, so I can't give any feedback on that.

However, for simply restoring an image, it's very easy, and hasn't ever failed for us.

I use Acronis True Image 9.0 (haven't used a newer version). Incremental and differential backups simply did not work on the WinXP Home and Professional systems I tested it on. However, the partition/disk imaging capability works quite well. I use it for backups of 32-bit WinXP Home and Professional systems, 32-bit Vista Home Premium and 32-bit Win7 Home Premium systems.

I use the Acronis CD-ROM Boot Disk you can create with the program to manage the backups and restores, and it is not even necessary to install the program other than to create the CD-ROM Boot Disk, so once you have that in hand, you can delete Acronis. I always use an offline (boot disk) method to create backups, and have never had a failure with Acronis. I have never tried to use another bootable medium, so I can't comment on how well that might work.

I still use Adaptec Take Two and Norton Ghost 2001/2002 for Win98 SE backups, but those are not for the faint of heart or the technically incompetent. An additional machine on the network is also required to store the backup as it is created if you use the technique I employ (boot floppies with DOS network drivers for both machines).