question on windows vista system CD

hey all. got a question, when i brought my computer home and set it up i have a CD included which i do know its the system recovery disk, but it on the cover of the disk it says "inserting this disk into a drive will erase all info on the system" so i don't. what could i do with it? i am curious?

What you do is make an image of your hard drive now, which includes a boot up disc. Like, you can make with Paragon. Then you put the DVD that you have in the closet and forget about it. It will not be needed. That DVD will erase anything that was changed since factory specs, the day that you received the computer.


Free Backup Software: Paragon Backup & Recovery 10 Free Edition - Overview

Ty for the rep. If you use the Paragon software, update it once a month or so. If you experience any sort of problem and you have to reinstall with the Paragon software, you will always be up to date. Did you notice the very best part, its free.

richc46 said:

Ty for the rep. If you use the Paragon software, update it once a month or so. If you experience any sort of problem and you have to reinstall with the Paragon software, you will always be up to date. Did you notice the very best part, its free.

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Be careful with the "free edition". I once had one of those - but the "free" expired after 6 months. That can be inconvenient if you made your whole setup with it.
I recommend Free Macrium - which is also a lot easier to use than Paragon. And they guarantee that the free version will always be free (see their FAQ). Here is a little tutorial I made for it - very, very easy: Image your system with free Macrium - Windows 7 Forums

Paragon B&R 10 Free will work forever - there is no time limitation.

Those who got the previous free version - db 9 express will find they can keep using it as long as they like - not sure why you want to - now that the 10 is available.

The Macrium is also a good freebie.

A trial version is something different - typically trial versions are either time , or function limited.

Thank you for the information

If anybody wants PM10 Personal - they are giving it away free - only for the next couple of hours

Giveaway of the Day - free licensed software daily. Today: Partition Manager 10.0 Personal (English) - Special offer for our GAOTD users — Partitioning for Windows 7 and 64-bit version support!We want to thank you for ...

It will keep working forever . You have to get it before the giveaway ends .

You're welcome Rich.

SIW2 said:

Paragon B&R 10 Free will work forever - there is no time limitation.

Those who got the previous free version - db 9 express will find they can keep using it as long as they like - not sure why you want to - now that the 10 is available.

The Macrium is also a good freebie.

A trial version is something different - typically trial versions are either time , or function limited.

Click to expand...

The one I had I won in a contest. No idea why it expired, but it did. It was not a big deal for me because I was using Norton Ghost at the time. And I had the impression that Paragon was designed with Servers in mind. The very fast differentials they write are nice for a Server that backs up every hour. But I am not a fan of differentials because if you lose one in the chain, you lose the whole rest of the chain.

Hi whs.

You are talking about Incrementals . Windows System Image does Incrementals.

To restore to an incremented state - you need ALL the Incrementals up to that point and the original base.

The reason Paragon does Differentials is because they are safer.

You only need one Differential plus the base.( or just the base if you don't mind going back to that point).

SIW2 said:

Hi whs.

You are talking about Incrementals . Windows System Image does Incrementals.

To restore to an incremented state - you need ALL the Incrementals up to that point and the original base.

The reason Paragon does Differentials is because they are safer.

You only need one Differential plus the base.( or just the base if you don't mind going back to that point).

Click to expand...

Hmm, interesting. I never distinguished between incrementals and differentials. I always thought they were the same. Thank you very much for clarifying that.
I always do full images. I have 640GB disks dedicated to that - so there is enough space. With Ghost on my big Vista systems, that takes an hour. With Macrium on my Win7 system and the wife's small Vista systems that is a lot faster (less than 20 minutes for the system and the data partitions). The fastest I have done with Macrium was 3.5 minutes for the Win7 system partition only - from the SSD to the internal HDD (7 minutes if I tag on the data partition which is also on the SSD).

Yes. Macrium is very fast and efficient. I use it when I need a fast image.


I think for many - they just want to set up a full image - then schedule differentials - Paragon runs at a very low resource level - they can just ignore and work over the top it as it does the job.

It's not fast, it's not flashy - but then why should it be. Low resource usage and reliability is where they are coming from .

I might add the arc images are very robust - pretty hard to damage them.