r drive image system image

mandy30 said:

I have never done back ups before so am new to this.I have r image drive and created a system image and saved on to my 2nd hard drive....

Well done for taking the time to make a system image. It is a sensible precaution that all too few bother to take.....

the size of used space on my c drive is 59 GB,the system image i have created is 29GB if a system image is meant to copy all your files and folders why is,nt it the same size as c drive,will it have copied all my files.

You don't say what you used to make the image, but all imaging software works more or less the same way. The image uses compression and would be expected to be smaller than the used space of the partitions held in the image. How much smaller depends on how compressible the original data is. An image of about 50% the size of the data being backed up sounds typical.

Hi, it's great you've realised the importance of a good backup regimes. But do you mean you used Backup and Restore (Windows 7) to create the system image?
If so, please don't use this legacy unsupported and sometimes problematic old feature.

Many times here it's been highlighted that MS itself has recommended people use a modern updated and supported program such as Macrium Reflect (free / licensed).

Aomei and Easeus and more also produce disk imaging programs.
These are more robust, reliable and feature-rich.

Disk imaging (of all the partitions comprising your O/S) is recommended here time and again... that's a great start.

After that, any other partitions can similarly be imaged, or backed up by one of the many backup programs around.

Fast-changing data can be backed up by a program that synchronises it.

Imaging a partition means all the used space is copied in a compressed form and stored in a file.
The securest way to do that is to keep those files e.g. on a USB disk stored separately from your PC.
Image files can be mounted, and their content accessed using file explorer as if the files were on a disk.

saved on to my 2nd hard drive,

Please consider saving the image files e.g. to large enough external storage- a 1T or 2Tb USB HDD for example - not an internal drive.

If you do that, you have no protection against ransomeware, viruses, and can't recover if your PC is unbootable.

dalchina said:

....do you mean you used Backup and Restore (Windows 7) to create the system image?

I certainly hope not for the reasons you have given.

But it seems unlikely in this case. Before switching to using Macrium Reflect I used Backup and Restore (Windows 7) imaging extensively. Typically little or no compression was used, the image being almost exactly the same size as the used space being imaged.

The OP's 59GB source > 29GB image suggests a more modern imaging solution was used.

OP did a great backup job! Could that 2nd HDD be made an external USB HDD? Since already a DVD restore boot exists, OP hopefully also made a USB flash drive restore boot, bag 'em into a ziplock until needed? In my experience, sometimes for some reason either the DVD or USB doesn't boot -- however, the other device often does boot.

SIW2 said:

r drive image is the program name, according to the thread title and the first post.

So it is - not a name I've come across before. Unlike Macrium Reflect Free there appears to be no free version - only a 30-day trial. I have no experience of it, so cannot say how reliable it may be. The feature set looks similar to that of Macrium (scheduling, etc.).

Like almost all other imaging software, 'R-Drive Image' uses compression - which answers the question posed in post #1.

R-tools Technology said:

You can compress the image data to reduce the file size. Higher image compression ratios create smaller file sizes but take longer to process while lower image compression ratios process faster but create larger files.

Computer Recovery and System Restore

SIW2 said:

It uses compaction, not compression....You might be confusing it with paragon's .pvhd format, which is a different animal.

No, paragon is another I've never used. Apart from using Norton Ghost at work, my first foray into imaging my own PC was with the built in MS imaging in Win7, prior to taking the free W10 upgrade in 2015.

Whether MS system imaging used compaction or compression, what really frustrated me was that imaging to DVDs invariably produce a smaller set of images than imaging the same system to an HDD - typically some 25% smaller - but with absolutely no user controls to achieve the same reduction when imaging to an HDD


Macrium was a real breath of fresh air after that

I tried googling compaction versus compression - got more confused than ever. How do they differ from each other?