RE Partition

[artbuc]

I am setting-up my SIL's new PC. It has a Win Tools RE partition. MS says this is a good place to store a back-up image eliminating the need for external media. Is this a good idea? I am thinking not because the main reason I keep a fresh back-up image on an external HD is in case the internal HD crashes. If the internal HD does crash, maybe I will not be able to access the image in the RE Tools partition? Thanks.

[Calum]

I would keep a backup image on an external drive, preferably 2 external drives, to avoid the situation you've described - as you say, if there's an issue with the drive in the machine it's unlikely you'll be able to use the recovery media stored on that drive.
Personally I have an external drive by my PC and my gf has an external drive in the other room, every 4-6 weeks I image my PC to my drive, she images her laptop to her drive, then we swap, so both drives have a reasonably up to date image of both machines.

[DaveLembke]

On my desktop systems I keep a spare drive in a few of them that I disconnect the sata power from until wanting to clone. If I bork my install I just connect the sata power to the backup drive and boot off that drive and then push the clone from that drive back to the non-backup drive. Then shut it down and unplug the sata power and boot it up and back up and running fresh again.

The reason why I went this route is because I accidentally wiped my images before on externals and then in time of need I no longer have them. I found a sweet deal on 80GB SATA drives for $9.99 each through goharddrive.com and bought 3 of these brand new drives and dedicated them inside the case for this clone purpose. The Windows 7 systems only used about 40GB of the 80GB for clean install with my choice of software as standard build. I use Macrium Reflect to clone for free.

Reason for having the backup drive installed without power is 2 reasons... why have it spinning putting wear on it as well as drawing power as well as why have the backup drive live which if system is hit with malware or virus it could easily spread like fire among other drives if designed to infect and target more than just the C: drive.

[artbuc]

On my desktop systems I keep a spare drive in a few of them that I disconnect the sata power from until wanting to clone. If I bork my install I just connect the sata power to the backup drive and boot off that drive and then push the clone from that drive back to the non-backup drive. Then shut it down and unplug the sata power and boot it up and back up and running fresh again.

The reason why I went this route is because I accidentally wiped my images before on externals and then in time of need I no longer have them. I found a sweet deal on 80GB SATA drives for $9.99 each through goharddrive.com and bought 3 of these brand new drives and dedicated them inside the case for this clone purpose. The Windows 7 systems only used about 40GB of the 80GB for clean install with my choice of software as standard build. I use Macrium Reflect to clone for free.

Reason for having the backup drive installed without power is 2 reasons... why have it spinning putting wear on it as well as drawing power as well as why have the backup drive live which if system is hit with malware or virus it could easily spread like fire among other drives if designed to infect and target more than just the C: drive.

Dave, why do you clone instead of image? I have had nothing but great results with Macrium Reflect Free.