Next Generation Dell Precision Mobile Workstations press release

THanks. That pointed me in the right direction. From there it showed my USB thumb drive under UEFI BOOT as a selectable drive. But when I tried it , it returned saying "Incompatible with SecureBoot."

So then I changed to Secure Boot OFF (retaining UEFI Boot Mode)

Trying again I was presented with Booting to either:
Legacy Boot USB Storage Device
or
UEFI USB Flash Device

Both are the same physical thumb drive. I chose the UEFI option which loaded the Clonezilla Live menu, but super tiny native UHD resolution font. Regardless which resolution I select from the clonzilla linux menu it was too tiny for me to see or use.

So I rebooted again using the Legacy USB boot which display in a nice 800x600. After clonezilla launched and I got to a debian command prompt, it couldn't see my PCIe NVMe drives when I ran lsblk. I think it is because I was in Legacy or I needed to use a newer version of Clonezilla (probably both). *edit: I'll have to experiment with something besides clonezilla since it is not finding my drives. I tried UEFI boot to the USB and tried latest version of clonezilla and still a no go on seeing my drives. I'll try paragon backup restore maybe.

But anyway, now I understand out how to boot to USB, thanks!

 

I have had good success with acronis true image and have been using it for years. I have done many restores via USB boot.

A few weeks ago they came out with an update that support the Samsung NVMe drive with the usb rescue media. I have not tried a restore with that but it now does see the drive when booting from usb drive. Before the update the NVMe was not seen since drivers were not on the usb rescue media.

I have read others use macrium reflect. I have never used it though.


Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

I'll download a trial of Acronis True Image and Macrium too. The tricky part is testing a recovery since I don't have a spare PCIE NVMe to prove the restores are successful. I hate to experiment with my now daily laptop system drive. Maybe I'll buy a third PCIe NVMe drive to experiment. I can always use the extra storage. Sure is an expensive test though.

My other option is to go with the most well known or reliable backup/restore tool and just stick with it. Then cross my fingers when the day eventually arrives when I'll need to restore. I don't like that idea, but I either do it that way else I just bite the bullet and try to test restore to my existing system drive. Or maybe I can test a restore to a clunky 3.5" HDD in an external enclosure and after the system restores to it, try to boot from it via usb? Is that a good proof of concept/test that the backups work?

 

I have the exact same issue on the precision mobile 7510 with the 1.4.14 (1.04.14) BIOS update.

Your solution saved me so thank you so much. Specifically, thanks for the keystrokes needed as I couldn't have figured that out.

I will have to run with switchable graphics disabled until Dell can fix the BIOS as I'm afraid of more issues being caused by downgrading the BIOS.

Cheers

 

Hi, I'm considerning the 7510 with following panel:

15,6 inch UltraSharp Full HD (1.920 x 1.080) beeldscherm met brede kijkhoek, led-achtergrondverlichting, touch, antireflectiecoating en Premium Panel Guarantee

Does anyone know how bright (nit) this screen is ( I like to work outside a lot)?

 

Missed the whole discussion but I'll explain what I do for full system backup. I just use the system image feature built in to Windows. On Windows 10, it is in a control panel called "Backup and Restore (Windows 7)". Set it up to run on a schedule and include the system image only, not files. The system image can be written to a secondary drive in your system or to a network location. (I write it to a network location and then have an automated script that makes a copy, so that I always have at least two past weekly backups available.)

The system image can be restored from Windows install media, under the repair tools. It can even restore over the network (wired Ethernet only). I've done it a few times without any trouble.

 

I mean the following panel :
15.6" UltraSharp™ FHD IPS Touch (1920x1080) Wide View LED-backlit, camera and microphone

Is this is not the same as the XPS 15 as that one has no touch?
Some has this? Are there problems with it like ghosting etc?
Brightness etc?

Thanks in advance!

 

That may be near perfect solution to backups for me. Thanks! I'm going back to using Windows Backup as you are. I do like the Windows Backup/Recovery. I just didn't like a few of it's limitations. It would overwrite the previous image backup when a new backup image was made to the target drive. Even if I rotate my target backup drives (4TB) that is a huge waste of HDD space if my image file is only 55GB.

With your idea, I can make an image backup and then after that finishes, copy it to a different folder off of the root of the target drive as an archive. My idea is to do that (not via network as I already do that for my data and VMs... data drive backing up to my network file share (samba) also necessitates backing up that network drive on regular basis... so the less I backup critical images or files to the network drive the less I need to backup that network... I use smb on linux for a file share and if that smb went down without backing it up first, bye bye backups on that smb [actually, cloud storage is my immediate source of recovery, smb is 2nd for the reason described]) I may need to experiment with a MS network backup drive instead of SMB on linux to fully appreciate network backups. But until then I will use an external drive, no automation, and simply copy the imaged backup folder elsewhere to maintain a backup archive.

I wonder though if copying a MS backedup Image elsewhere on a drive somehow compromises it? Can an "archived" backup still be restored from?

 

I've moved the backup and later restored from it before. It works fine. I always copy the entire "WindowsImageBackup" folder and leave the contents alone. I have directories where the final backups live like "1\WindowsImageBackup\..." and "2\WindowsImageBackup\...".

To restore from a local drive, I think the "WindowsImageBackup" folder can be at the root. To restore over the network, it can be anywhere.

One gotcha I can think of is, you cannot restore to a drive smaller than the one you backed up, even if you technically have room. Restoring to a larger drive is OK. (Technically you can work around this by using other tools to restore the VHDX files manually.)

 

I've pretty much decided to use MS Backup Recovery. I'll run some recovery tests this weekend. Thanks Aaron for your notes. MS better not drop this backup tool. When they name it "Windows 7" makes me a little nervous. I'll report back next week after a restore test. Still, it is better than my previous favorite Clonezilla which doesn't work at all on my PCIe drives (still using for linux machine backups on conventional drives).