Has anyone backed up their alienware 18? completely

I recently got a external WD 4TB book brand new for $85.00!!!!

In my current aliewnare 18 I have a 512GB Sasmsung 840 Pro series and a Samsung Msata 512GB in a Raid 0 array, I also have a I believe 700 GB western digital data drive.

What i wanted to do was compeltely back up my system including all my games, music, ect all in one shot. When i saw the price of the external WD 4 TB book I had to jump on it. It was brand new unopened, i just couldn't buy anymore then one

I used Acronis True Image home premium 17 2014 build 6673 to back up everything completely. Windows 7 as many of you know has issues backing up anything over 2.5TB. My question is has anyone done this before? Does it really work? another words if a issue arose, how would i go back to my save on my 4 TB hard drive? do i run startup from a usb drive? ect. no instructions came with the drive. lol.

I also have Paragon Hard disc manager 15 premium but it was too hard to understand.

 

In the worst case you couldn't get back into Windows you'd use a Arcronis boot CD/USB. You should be able to prepare one within the software.

 

In my experience, backing up may or may not work in Acronis but the issue I've always had with Acronis since the introduction of GPT disks is restoration never works properly.

I since then switched to Macrium Reflect it works with GPT or MBR disks perfectly and supports RAID

The free version is great but I bought the Pro version as when you want to restore with the PRO version, you don't even need to boot via the Macrium Reflect Rescue Disk, you can simply have Macrium add itself into the boot options of Windows so when you click restore, it will automatically restart your computer and reboot into the Macrium Reflect environment and restore your image within a minute!

 

i am personaly using windows 7 backup without any issues backing up 2x480gb in raid 1 to the internal 1Tb drive , then as scheduled task i do a copy of the backup on my server at night ...

only thing that caused me problem back in the day , was the 100mb partition from windows .... since then i always use diskpart on install and make a single partition , and i have no more problem with windows backup

 

Another die-hard Macrium Reflect owner here. I have upgraded and have a couple of licensed versions because it is so excellent... Never let's me down. Acronis has let me down more than once with corrupted images that cannot be restored and I now view it as garbage. (Used to be an awesome product, but not for a couple of years, IMHO.)

Some of my images are quite large (i.e. my image of the 4TB RAID0 data volume) and Macrium has no issues with that.

 

I use Marcrium and a few others recently I started using this:

One Key Recovery - Create a Factory Restore Partition with AOMEI OneKey Recovery

I create a clean install, all te latest drivers ex or key driver like video card. The. I create my own factory restore partition. It allows me to do a clean re-install quickly when I want to fresh start (which I do very often to kep win-ders running decent).

 

Ok cool thanks I'll try your software . How much are they charging for the license? Also I'm guessing the windows 7 over 2,5TB issue is fixed?

 

That is a MBR limitation, not Windows 7. GPT does not have that size limitation. You can use GPT with Windows 7, just not pure UEFI.

 

Really? My Windows 7 is a UEFI installation and BIOS is set to UEFI, not legacy/compatibility mode.

 

Could you explain it quickly in mr fox terms. Google makes it seem as if was a windows 7 and prior windows issue that was fixed with windows 8..

To be honest I gave it a go using windows backup and did get the error everyone on Google said I would get when attempting to use a drive over 2.5TB with windows backup.

Sorry I meant to say a windows backup issue using windows 7.

 

It's really easy. Before installing Windows 7, run diskpart clean, diskpart convert gpt commands on the drive you plan to install Windows on and then install Windows 7 as you normally would. Do the same operation on the data drives and you're good to go. Just be aware that doing that destroys any data on those disks, so anything you don't want to lose needs to be backed up before running those diskpart commands on the drives.

Windows 8 did not fix anything. If you install Windows 8 on MBR disks you will still have that 2.5TB limitation. That being said, if you are not using 2.5TB or larger volumes, I still prefer MBR over GPT. I cannot speak to the limitations of Windows Backup Utility, as I never use it for anything.

I have seen a few rare examples of that, but the web is full of countless examples of people attempting to install Windows 7 (mostly Windows 8 owners seeking a path to Windows 7) and not being able to because their BIOS lacks CSM/Legacy Option ROM. I have tried the tricks that are suppose to work, but they don't work for me. UEFI with CSM/Legacy Option ROM works fine, but not pure UEFI. I would say consider yourself lucky, but that is like taking one step forward, two steps backward because pure UEFI breaks enough functionality and reduces flexibility so severely that running CSM/Legacy BIOS is definitely the more attractive option. Booting DOS, most flavors of Linux and flashing firmware is off limits with pure UEFI mode.

 

When I did install Windows 8 on my Alienware 18, I initialize all the disks in GPT mode because it takes 0.5 seconds less to initialize a GPT disk vs an MBR disk at startup with UEFI mode. That's the only reason I do GPT but on Windows 7, all disks are in MBR