Excluding a default drive from a system image backup?

Hi all,

My OS became corrupt yesterday (totally unbootable) so I've had to start from scratch. Due to this experience, I'm very keen to have a full system image backup to save me having to spend a day rebuilding my operating environment if something similar happens again. I have a problem when trying to do this though, it's marked a 1TB secondary drive (that I use to store games) as a system drive, meaning that I don't have room to save the backup: http://puu.sh/pRG6S/7766fc6086.png
I have done some research, and I think it's because I have the Oculus Rift software installed to that drive (as I can't fit the games on my SSD (OS drive)), meaning that a service is launched from that drive: Windows 7 Backup identifies wrong drive as a system drive Solved - Windows 7 Help Forums
How can I overcome this, forcing Windows to only create a system image from my C: drive? I'd prefer to do it directly through Windows, but happy to use 3rd party software that can create a restore-able full system image.

Cheers,

Thanks, I'll look into that software :) Is there no way to forcibly prevent Windows from including the F: drive in the backup then?

Sorry, that should have read 'my OS became corrupt', the drive's fine. I rebuilt the mbr when rebuilding the drive this morning.

With Macrium Reflect free you can exclude/include any partitions you want from a backup image.
Macrium uses compression and a backup image file can be much smaller than the partition(s) being imaged.
For me a Macrium backup image file is about 60% of the used space on the partition being imaged.
Macrium Reflect Free

DavidE said:

With Macrium Reflect free you can exclude/include any partitions you want from a backup image.
Macrium uses compression and a backup image file can be much smaller than the partition(s) being imaged.
For me a Macrium backup image file is about 60% of the used space on the partition being imaged.
Macrium Reflect Free

With the WindowsPE stuff Macrium looks perfect, I shall give it a spin, thank you. I'm tempted by the workstation edition for the incremental backups, so may have to keep my eyes peeled for a discount code :)

Hi,

There's a difference between cloning and imaging a drive/partition. Cloning, as the name suggest copies everything including empty space whereas imaging only copies what is actually on that drive/partition.

Macrium Reflect can do both and it can also repair unbootable system drives/partitions.
Just make sure to create their rescue disk/stick just in case the system becomes unbootable.
IMHO opinion it's about the best free backup software currently available and it's very fast too.

Cheers,

fdegrove said:

Hi,

There's a difference between cloning and imaging a drive/partition. Cloning, as the name suggest copies everything including empty space whereas imaging only copies what is actually on that drive/partition.

Macrium Reflect can do both and it can also repair unbootable system drives/partitions.
Just make sure to create their rescue disk/stick just in case the system becomes unbootable.
IMHO opinion it's about the best free backup software currently available and it's very fast too.

Cheers,

All done cheers, got it set up to backup a system image monthly with daily differential backups. Do you know if it's possible to ignore the daily backups and just use the monthly image when restoring?

crimsonnight said:

All done cheers, got it set up to backup a system image monthly with daily differential backups. Do you know if it's possible to ignore the daily backups and just use the monthly image when restoring?

Yes, you can restore the Full Backup, or any of the Differentials.

You should review and adjust your Defaults, especially the Backup Retention Rules.
The default Retention Rules would not keep a month's worth of Diff's.

In the Menu / Other Tasks click on Edit Defaults.

DavidE said:

Yes, you can restore the Full Backup, or any of the Differentials.

You should review and adjust your Defaults, especially the Backup Retention Rules.
The default Retention Rules would not keep a month's worth of Diff's.

In the Menu / Other Tasks click on Edit Defaults.

Thanks, sorry, just to clarify, if I do a full backup monthly, and then keep 14 days worth of differential backups, would restoring from say differential backup #19 on day 20 still work, despite the first 6's days worth of differential backups having been deleted? I suppose what I'm asking is that does the differential backup backup the changes from the full backup every time it's run, or the previous differential backup?