What's the difference between a system repair disc and a system image disc?

mickledore

mickledore

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I know nowt about computers but thought I'd create a system repair disc for my Win 7 PC. When I go to Backup and Restore I am given the option of creating a system repair disc or a much bigger system image disc. The image disc seems to be spread over a few drives. What is it? Is it a good idea to create one, probably on a stand alone drive rather than on 2 or 3 discs?
 
I believe the Image is a complete "image" of the computer as it stands, and can be used to return the PC to this point in time. The "repair" is just used to fix broken OS things, if it gets corrupted.
 
Repair disk
Will help if there are boot problems. Diagnostic and repair tools.

Image disk
is a copy if your hard drive so that you can restore it back to the date the image was made
 
The full image disc(s) would be an image of your computer drive that could be used to restore back to exactly what you have now, including installed programs and data.
A system repair disc on the other hand is the operating system, not the software and data you have installed/created. I would make both sets on CD/DVDs.
 
A repair disc is a way to restore your computer to the time when you created the system image disc.
 
OK Thanks guys. I'll create both then if something goes wrong I can reset to how I have it set up today.
 
mickledore said:
OK Thanks guys. I'll create both then if something goes wrong I can reset to how I have it set up today.
Click to expand...

Unless you have hardly anything on your PC, I would not advise trying to do the System Image one on DVDs.
 
Thanks. I worked out that it would need three discs so I used a spare external harddrive and it all fitted on nicely.

Can I ask another question? What is the difference between this System Image and the Macrium thing that keeps getting mentioned? Are they in effect the same?
 
I'd make sure to have an external backup just in case...
 
mickledore said:
Can I ask another question? What is the difference between this System Image and the Macrium thing that keeps getting mentioned? Are they in effect the same?
Click to expand...

Macrium is an image backup system, to restore your PC to exactly as it was when the image backup was made.
I have a scheduled Macrium image backup twice a week onto an external hard drive so I am never more than a few days away from where I was (some people may require more time critical and could therefore schedule more frequently) ... Macrium will delete older image backups as and when my selected number to keep is reached or my external drive is getting full.
It goes like this:-
  • Install Macrium Reflect, (Free unless you need the extras you get for payment ... most people won't).
  • Use Macrium to make a Rescue USB stick in case of emergency failure.
  • Use Macrium to make a dual-boot menu to allow you to go into Macrium in case of failure and allow a restore to a new drive from your latest image, (optional but very helpful when you need it!).
  • Setup a schedule of what you want to backup, e.g. full hard drive, when and to where and make sure the destination disk is active when Macrium needs to backup to it.
  • Setup the Advanced Settings to decide how many backups and type (differential or full).
  • Leave it to get on with your backup.
For example I have Macrium and a few days ago my SSD failed after 10 months use ... stupidly I had not paid proper attention to the first two steps above, (well I did the Rescue stick but then stupidly mislaid it and so it took me unnecessarily longer!), but on getting the new SSD up and ready I could leave Macrium to restore my machine to how it was at the last image backup ... emails, software etc all ready to go as if nothing had happened.
Had I not made the stupid mistake it would merely have been necessary to install the new SSD, boot up, start Macrium and then select the restore.

and it's free :)
 
As you are using Win7 (with the many updates) I would definitely make sure that I had a system image of my operating system disk.
It is extremely time consuming to rebuild W7 from the install disk (assuming you can get the Windows update to work).
As @gramps states above there is software to take care of that for you but please make sure that you can restore the image properly as you find out the
hard way that the restore doesn't work.
I use Clonezilla to image whole disks to an external HDD and it works very well for me although I do not make scheduled backups of my operating system, just the
"system restore point" option within Win7.
 
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