Imaging Drive in Win8?

[Chiefcrowe]

Is there a built in way to make a complete image of your hard drive in windows 8 that you could restore using a boot CD?

 

[Bubbaleone]

Read Custom recovery image in Windows 8 for a thorough rundown on all available Windows 8 built-in options for imaging (be sure to follow the links in the article as well). Personally I'd just use the freeware EaseUS Disk Copy personal edition and create a traditional bootable clone.


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[Chiefcrowe]

Great, thank you for posting that. I'll check it out and test it at some point

 

[Underclocked]

Did you check this method out? I used the Windows 7 File Recovery method to make nice images on my Win 8 machine. Created the needed System Repair Disk. Booted to the repair disk and could not see the drives.

I would suggest neither the method linked or the Windows 7 File Recovery methods are very useful. I want an image that is reliable and reproduces the disk software with all settings intact. Reflect works well.

 

[Chiefcrowe]

Briefly looked it over but haven't gotten to test it yet.

So Macrium Reflect works well on Win8? Haven't tested that either myself.

 

[Berryracer]

Macrium Reflect Free Edition works perfectly on Windows 8. I have had better results with it than the paid Acronis True Image 2013 which is really buggy in the 2013 edition

 

[Underclocked]

Chiefcrowe, sent you a PM. I strongly advise using the WinPE version of making the Reflect recovery media though. The Linux version didn't work for me.

 

[JackMDS]

Macrium Reflect Free Edition works perfectly on Windows 8. I have had better results with it than the paid Acronis True Image 2013 which is really buggy in the 2013 edition

Interesting, I use them both Never had a problem with True Image 2013. Its advantage is that it is much faster.

Since time is money I rather pay the $39 for TI.

 

[WilliamM2]

I use the built in image utility in Win 7 and 8. Never had an issue with either, and have used them dozens of times. But unlike the link above sates, you must store the image on a separate drive. Restoring the image from the recovery CD overwrites the drive.

If it doesn't see the drives, you need to load a driver. Not an issue with Intel controllers.

 

[Berryracer]

Interesting, I use them both Never had a problem with True Image 2013. Its advantage is that it is much faster.

Since time is money I rather pay the $39 for TI.

I've been using Acronis True Image for years don't get me wrong I used to swear by this product...

The incident happened a couple of months back.

I had Acronis True Image 2011 (perfectly fine)

Now when I tried to install Windows 8, I had to upgrade to 2013 as 2011 wasn't compatible.

every now and then, when I right click on an icon, explorer.exe would freeze then crash on me until I reboot.

I thought it was Start 8 causing this since it modifies the UI a little bit...

Tried many things but got sick of it so I returned to Windows 7 with Acronis True Image 2011.

Coincidently, my friend in Denmark was having that same right click problem as I did on Windows 8, everytime he right clicks a file Explorer.exe would crash on him until he reboots. We tried a lot of trouble shooting then I noticed that he had upgraded from Acronis True Image 2011 to 2013. The moment I adviced him to uninstall it and go back to 2011 the problem went away.

That's 2 diff. systems on numerous formats...

And if you read other forums especially My Digital Life Forums, you will see how many people bitch about the 2013 version of Acronis