Backup/Restore Windows installation – the free way. Part-1

We all have around us relatives, friends and colleagues who use Windows but are not technical people and are often victims of viruses, trojans and other malware and spyware got from Internet, the network or from inserting infected media into their computers.

For all those around me afraid of these but not able to protect themselves I looked for a free solution for restoring the Windows installation if a problem occurs, without reinstalling all the software and, most important, without me being around to do it.

I am sure there are many out there who help others restore their home computers and who would like some more spare time by enabling the computer owners to do that by themselves and without buying extra software.

WHAT IS NEEDED:
First of all, a bit of education of the owner:
- to save files and use as filesystem for his/her work other partition than the C: drive. I often do this by creating a folder for WORK on D: partition, create a shortcut on the Desktop and instruct the user to always save files and create new folders in that Work folder.
Never save in My Documents or on the Desktop directly.

Second, some configuration if needed:
There are some programs like the E-Mail client which saves the messages under the C: partition. For my father I got him off Outlook and moved him to Thunderbird Portable which is placed on the D: partition with shortcut on the desktop. This way, when he restores drive C: he does not loose his emails. You can also install Thunderbird on C: drive and look for the email folders and move them to D: and edit the configuration so that Thunderbird uses the new location. This way you can restore also the Thunderbird executables if virused, without affecting the emails. Same with Firefox as browser, not to loose Bookmarks. There are also other methods but I am not going over them here.

Third, prepare the software needed.

• - Backup software: You will use a live CD linux distro named Clonezilla – especially designed to backup and restore partitions and disks either in a local folder or on external media – installed on a CD or an USB stick. In our example we used an USB stick, prepared on a Windows system. [Their website...] [Download the CD ISO image from here (we selected the Alternative (Ubuntu-based) clonezilla-live-20100108-karmic.iso)...] [Documentation is here...]
• - An empty USB stick of min 512 Mb
• - USB Linux Installer – we will use Unetbootin – a free open source small utility to install linux images on USB devices – available both for Windows an Linux from here…
• - The computer to back-up, with minimum 2 partitions (C: and D:), with D: having enough space, and a freshly installed and clean Windows system with all the software ready for work installed and configured.

CREATING THE BOOTABLE USB STICK
1. Download the CloneZilla ISO image… I used the Ubuntu Karmic image.
2. Download Unetbootin
3. Connect the USB stick to the computer and find out the letter assigned by the system. Make sure the stick is not write-protected
4. Run Unetbootin from the folder where you saved it
5. Select ISO image
6. Browse for the Clonezilla Image from the disk where you downloaded it
7. Then select your USB Flash Drive letter (in my case F:)
8. Click OK and wait for it to finish
9. At the end, if you want to continue working with Windows select Reboot Later.

By now you should have a bootable USB stick with CloneZilla which we will use in a few minutes.

Below is a step by step screenshot for this process.

BACKING UP DRIVE C: IN A FOLDER ON DRIVE D:

CREATE A FOLDER FOR THE BACKUPS
- On the D: drive, simply create a folder to store the backups – in my case it is named: D:CloneZillaBackups – SAFETY NOTE: the folder name does not have spaces or other special characters.

START THE BACKUP PROCESS:
1. Insert the stick into the USB port
2. Reboot the computer from the USB stick (note: there are various instructions on how to do it. I usually instruct people to look for the shortcut to Boot Menu at startup. I found it to be ESC or F12 in many cases and select USB Storage Device)
3. Select the first option in the initial screen [Clonezilla live (default settings, VGA, 1024x768) ]
4. Select the language (i used: en_US.UTF-8 English)
5. In the next screen I selected: Don’t touch keymap
6. Next I selected: Start_Clonezilla
7. Select the first option: device-image work with disks or partitions
8. Next I selected: local_dev Use local device (E.g.: hard drive, USB drive) – as media where I want to save the partition image
9. Next press ENTER to go to the screen for selecting the device on which you want to save the image to
10. Linux names the disks differently from windows. I looked in the list for the disk with the size of the partition I was using as D:. But the screen offers you an explanation on how these partitions are named. Basicly, the first hard drive of a computer is named SDA (or HDA), First partition (our C: drive) is named SDA1 (HDA1). Second partition (D:) could be SDA2 or SDA5, depending on things you should not care about right now, and so on.
I selected: sda7 in my case and hit Enter.
11. Next screen lets me choose the folder from that drive where I want to save the backups and I choose CloneZillaBackups and hit Enter to continue.
12. In the next screen I hit Enter
13. Operating mode is Beginner for me so I selected it in the next screen…
14. Select what I want to do: This screen gives me options either to save disks or partitions as image or to restore them. I chose the second option: saveparts Save_local_partitions_as_an_image.
15. Give a name to the backup that it is being created – I left the name as suggested. Note – make sure you write no spaces or other special characters in the name.
16. Next screen allows me to select the partition I want to back-up. Selection is done by moving up or down with the cursor keys and marking/unmarking the partition by pressing Space key. We want to mark the first partition (sda1) which is our drive C: and press Enter to continue.
17. Also press Enter in the next screen…
18. Then Y and Enter in the next one.. AND WAIT UNTIL IT FINISHES
19. Enter to continue
20. Type ’1′ and hit Enter to reboot the system
21. Remove the USB drive when prompted

After rebooting you will see a folder with the backup created in the CloneZillaBackups folder on your drive D.

UPDATE: HOW TO RESTORE THE PARTITION FROM BACKUP?

Restoring is as simple as Booting from USB again, selecting restore partition from image instead of backup partition, selecting as destination the sda1 partition (C: drive), waiting to finish and reboot as indicated by the screen. To test you can create a file or a folder on Desktop prior to restoring the partition and see it has disappeared after restoring. But will get to that next time.

Many steps (13) for starting up are the same as in the backup process, until one screen:

1. Insert the stick into the USB port
2. Reboot the computer from the USB stick (note: there are various instructions on how to do it. I usually instruct people to look for the shortcut to Boot Menu at startup. I found it to be ESC or F12 in many cases and select USB Storage Device)
3. Select the first option in the initial screen [Clonezilla live (default settings, VGA, 1024x768) ]
4. Select the language (i used: en_US.UTF-8 English)
5. In the next screen I selected: Don’t touch keymap
6. Next I selected: Start_Clonezilla
7. Select the first option: device-image work with disks or partitions
8. Next I selected: local_dev Use local device (E.g.: hard drive, USB drive) – as media where I want to save the partition image
9. Next press ENTER to go to the screen for selecting the device on which you want to save the image to
10. Linux names the disks differently from windows. I looked in the list for the disk with the size of the partition I was using as D:. But the screen offers you an explanation on how these partitions are named. Basicly, the first hard drive of a computer is named SDA (or HDA), First partition (our C: drive) is named SDA1 (HDA1). Second partition (D:) could be SDA2 or SDA5, depending on things you should not care about right now, and so on.
I selected: sda7 in my case and hit Enter.
11. Next screen lets me choose the folder from that drive where I want to save the backups and I choose CloneZillaBackups and hit Enter to continue.
12. In the next screen I hit Enter
13. Operating mode is Beginner for me so I selected it in the next screen…
14. Select ‘restoreparts’ mode, to restore partition from image
15. Select the image file to restore – here you choose from the backup folder the backup you desire
16. Select the partition you want to restore to – in our case select sda1 which is the 1st partition of the disk and it is the drive C:
17. Hit Enter to continue…
18. First confirmation message: ‘y’ and Enter…
19. Second confirmation message: ‘y’ and Enter…
20. Wait until the job is done, then reboot the computer as indicated on the screen (last steps as in the previous instructions)

That’s it. I wrote steps for restoring for some of my friends, after I made the initial backup. And for others I wrote the steps for backup too, as they wanted to backup after installing other software they worked with.

The whole process seems to have a lot of steps, but I came to the conclusion that many of them are only safety precautions and worth being there as one may be tired when doing a work that requires attention.

Drop a comment if you have pros and especially cons.

~cd