Good Imaging Software for Win7?

[dugn]

I need to carry my RAID-based single HDD Win7 boot OS image over to a new RAID boot drive made up of 2x SSDs in RAID. What's an easy way to do it and with what imaging software do I need to purchase?

Specifically, I have a 119.14 GB volume on a 1TB Seagate HDD (812GB unused). I specifically sized this volume to match the volume size of two 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 which I had before they failed me. When they did, I simply re-installed Win7 since I hadn't made many customizations.

Now I want to image the current boot drive and restore it to the 2x 128GB SSDs in RAID 0 as they were before - retaining all of my customizations and effort over the last few weeks configurating Win7 just the way I want it.

You'd think someone with Windows 7 System (Image) Restore and WHS could do this without imaging software, but I lost faith in both options (read below the line for details)

Recommendations on imaging software that'll do this for me?

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During my previous failure of the 2x SSD drives in RAID 0, I came to discover shortcomings in both Windows 7 System Restore and WHS on Windows 7 that caused me to lose faith in both as an imaging solution.

For Win7 Image Restore, I couldn't exclude my massive D: drive from the image restore, even though nothing about it needed to change. And once I let Win7 Restore restore it, multiple files were corrupt. Fortunately, I removed my original D: drives before the restore and just hot-swapped them back in. Problem solved - but no thanks to Image Restore.

As for WHS on Windows 7, although it allowed me to selectively restore volumes (exactly what I needed), it didn't allow me to restore a volume to a smaller target volume. Not a problem now that I've got matched volumes to restore to. But when I did this last time, I didn't get a bootable C: drive once WHS restored - even after a system repair.

At this point, I need the ability to restore only my system volume, and to do it to larger or smaller target volumes - all while having confidence in data integrity.

 

[heatlesssun]

You shouldn't image a Windows install on a SSD that was made from a different storage setup.

 

[dugn]

You shouldn't image a Windows install on a SSD that was made from a different storage setup.

That doesn't say a whole lot about why not.

 

[DeaconFrost]

That doesn't say a whole lot about why not.

Because you don't image a non-RAID setup to an array and expect it to work to any reasonable percentage. You also shouldn't be trying to do a system restore of Windows 7 using WHS because PP3 isn't out yet in final form.

Seagate has a free version of Acronis TrueImage, but I don't know if it supports arrays or not.

 

[k1pp3r]

Because you don't image a non-RAID setup to an array and expect it to work to any reasonable percentage.

Well you Can but you have limits, you need to inject the raid drivers during the image process with something like univeral restore.

That said, you should do a clean install if you are moving to SSD's so win7 can optimize itself during install.

 

[xenios]

On the more technical/business side, this is possible if you generalize(sysprep) the install before taking the image. After generalization of the machine windows setup will be run the next time the machine is started, as if you had just installed from disk and will work on any machine as there are no devices associated with the install anymore. Keep in mind that that things like license data is also wipped.

Sysprep is a great tool, but also a complex one. One mistake in your config file and you are screwed. While this is the "correct" way to do this, it has a steep learning curve. So if you are not in the industry or do not have a want to know how OEMs and businesses create images for mass deployment. You might be better off just reinstalling from scratch.

 

[dugn]

Because you don't image a non-RAID setup to an array and expect it to work to any reasonable percentage. You also shouldn't be trying to do a system restore of Windows 7 using WHS because PP3 isn't out yet in final form.

Seagate has a free version of Acronis TrueImage, but I don't know if it supports arrays or not.

Actually, I deliberately built the HD drive with in RAID (single drive RAID) with the needed Intel iastore.sys driver to ensure the restore would load with the correct RAID driver when the time came.

Given that, it sounds like my single HD drive RAID configuration does have a chance to migrate over to an exact-sized RAID configuration with 2x SSDs instead. I can't imagine that the System Restore, Acronis or even WHS (once PP3 is released) cares what the underlying hardware is if the driver (in this case, the Intel iastore driver) is the same.

If PP3 is going to bring the Win7 support that failed me ealier, I'm glad to wait for that as well. Any take on what will be in PP3 besides teh nebulous (it'll work better with Win7)? Does it absolutely not support Win7 restores today - which is why my earlier attempt failed?

Sounds like I can try a few things. Worst case if a restore fails, I just pop back in by HDD boot drive and try the next idea.

 

[DeaconFrost]

PP3 Beta is available now, and has been highly recommended for anyone running Windows 7 on the client end. I'm in the process of rebuilding and upgrading my hardware for my WHS box, so I haven't tried it. I'm hesitant to try something in beta on such an important box, but I'm hoping PP3 is released in final within the next few weeks.