Windows 7 Backup Images and secondary Hard Drives

Technology and Gaming Help and Support
#1

Alright, So I bought the Student discounted Windows 7 Pro ($30) before really reading in too much on it.

Anyway, we all kinda were misinformed on what one gets when buying the Win741 student Windows 7.

Long story short, it takes a while for me to Install windows 7 compared to having a retail disk. Nothing illegal, just it takes installing and upgrading the same install.

So, in my genius, I made a image of my Windows 7 Install back in October after I just got it running with AV, Firefox, and settings all nice and correct.

I set windows to make back-up images every once in a while on my second internal Hard Drive.

Something went wrong when I initially formatted the drive when upgrading to W7 and now Windows 7 Action Center tells me I have disk errors and every time I boot Windows, before actually booting onto the disk, Windows wants to do a disk check on said secondary drive. The drive fails the disk check.

I can continue using the drive and windows goes it’s merry way making sure my back-ups are on the drive.

So, my question is. Being that I want to re-format the drive, can I just cut and paste my Windows image back-ups to my main 1 terabyte drive for the moment while I format the back-up drive, then once formatting is all said and done, move the images back to the newly formatted drive and have Windows not freak out because something might have changed?

#2

You could simply copy the file(s) because windows might not let you cut/paste (move) it due to it being protected by the filesystem or something.

But I don’t know about you being able to format the drive from windows, you could try formatting from linux or something.

Just make sure your secondary drive isn’t actually the main boot drive, the fact that windows runs from the “primary” drive doesn’t guarrantee that the MBR is on the same drive.

#3

You’re better off just backing up whatever files you want to keep (documents, songs, …) on a separate HDD/partition. Then zero format your Windows drive, and reinstall Windows 7.

A clean install is usually the best.

#4

Yes, formatting the C: drive to fix the N: Drive will work :brow:

You see, I’m trying to save my actual back-ups I already have BEFORE they are corrupt.

Sorry if I sound like a dick, but reinstalling Windows wouldn’t fix disc errors on a non-MBR drive. At least that’s a pretty drastic measure to fix something that can be fixed in Computer/Disk Management.

Formatting non-MBR drives is easy within Windows since Vista, (right click my computer > manage > Disk management.)

Yea, the 1tb drive is the MBR, which is the C: Drive, being that I’m formatting the 500gb N: Drive. I should be safe.

Real problem is, making sure my back-ups still work afterwards.

#5

What’s the extension of these backup images? Is it .iso?

#6

No, they are a system of folders and files that Windows Back-up and the Windows Install disk will recognize.

I think I can go into Windows Back-up and tell it to burn a back-up to a disk, but I don’t have any blank discs…and I have $400 in textbooks to buy tomorrow, so buying them is out of the question for the time being.

#7

Open windows back up and look for an option somewhere to import backups from file, if it has a “browse” button, it should be fine.

#8

So these are just a bunch of folders? If you can’t restore the backup image, just copy the folders/files manually to a separate HDD/partition.

Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.