Question about image backups of drives

[itachi183]

Hey, I was wondering when you create an image backup of your harddrive does it also save all the freespace or the data that was overwritten? I made a harddrive backup along time ago, and right now my computer is loaded with stuff, going alot slower then it use to and some nasty viruses got on it I tried to get rid of them and they keep coming back argh lol *sigh so I wanted to reformat my entire drive, do a good wipe of it, then restore the old image file I created along time ago.

 

[jb_hafo]

Hey, I was wondering when you create an image backup of your harddrive does it also save all the freespace or the data that was overwritten? I made a harddrive backup along time ago, and right now my computer is loaded with stuff, going alot slower then it use to and some nasty viruses got on it I tried to get rid of them and they keep coming back argh lol *sigh so I wanted to reformat my entire drive, do a good wipe of it, then restore the old image file I created along time ago.

what is your operating system?
there is a trick on unix/freebsd where dd'ing the drive a certain way (the
whitespace that is) shrinks image file sets from, say, 6 to 4 cd-sized ones.
on large partitions. Probably irrelevant to your situation unless someone
knows more. Vaguely recall, however, Dos utilities to zero-out similarly
whitespace in fat32 partitions

 

[OmegaAvenger]

It really depends on the software and method. If you do a "sector-by-sector" exact copy then yes it will copy the free space.

 

[itachi183]

My operating system is Windows XP.

Sorry for the late reply guys,

I used Acronis True Image Home for the backup, but I'm now wondering how I would go about doing a backup of just the OS, so I could wipe the drive, then just restore the OS with all the stuff that it needs to work drivers, etc.,
In acronis theres a option that says:
Backup My Computer > Disk and Partitions
then a
Backup My Computer > System State

I'm guessing the Disk & Paritions is the sector-by-sector and backups the freespace on the drive

and System State is the one I'm looking for and doesnt backup the freespace? (it says "Select This if you want to backup the state of your system, you will be able to restore system files, folders, and drivers, but not working files & folders")

 

[OmegaAvenger]

Boot from the CD and its all pretty self explanatory. You have two options. An image (.tib) backup which is a gigantic file containing everything or a clone to another HD.
Sector-by-sector will pretty much guarantee an exact 1:1 (no compression used) backup but will take up exactly the amount of space as the current size of your HDD (it backs up free space too).

I have not tried the "system state" option.