Anyone used Vista's built in imaging?

[Linflas]

I want to move one of my Vista installations to a new drive and was looking around to see if ZEN or Ghost would work when I discovered that Vista actually has a built in way to image your system. I am trying it now (currently creating the image which will take a while I am guessing) but am curious if anyone else has actually tried this yet and restored to a new disk? If so did it work as advertised?

 

[HermitGuy]

Hello Linflas,
I have used the Vista complete PC backup to create a backup image file but I have not had reason to try it out yet, so I would be interested in hearing your results.
Sorry I can't solve your curiosity but at least this post can serve as a bump for your question.

 

[George P Burdell]

I was looking up a few imaging solutions on Google, and discovered that some people reported trouble restoring their backup image. After some research, I figured it wasn't worth the risk and decided to go along with Acronis.

 

[Linflas]

When I tried to restore it to the new disk it failed and said that there was not enough space on the destination disk. Both disks are identical in size so the only thing I can figure is the fact that the disk was already partitioned that might have thrown it off. I didn't have time to screw around with it any longer so I just downloaded the Acronis 15 day trial and used that.

 

[loup garou]

Yep, I've used it several times, worked great. It did fail one time when I was first testing and playing around with Vista's features when I tried to move an install to a smaller drive. I don't know if there's any workaround for that.

 

[Muadib]

Will the Vista backup allow you to backup 2 drives onto 1? I have a 74GB & a 750GB, and would like to back them up onto a external 750GB drive. Neither of the first 2 drives are full.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Muadib
Will the Vista backup allow you to backup 2 drives onto 1? I have a 74GB & a 750GB, and would like to back them up onto a external 750GB drive. Neither of the first 2 drives are full.

I'm pretty sure you'll be fine. In fact, I'm pretty sure you wont have a choice, you'll *have* to back up both drives. I could be wrong since I havent actually used the tool, but back when I had a two drive setup and was toying around with the tool, I dont remember ever being asked which drive to backup, it's all or nothing.

 

[lopri]

It does give you choice to only backup the boot/OS partition if it's a physically separate disk.

 

[mooseracing]

I didn't see the imaging feeature, it would make it cheaper for businesses if it works. I'm tired of Ghost and Acronis giving mixed results, and Acronis Support is worthless. I need to get my RIS/WDM server back up so I can test it out.