What would you put on a Windows 7 “rescue” disk?

Topic

New Reply

Just had an interesting question. Many of you have been assembling “doomsday” restoration disks for your Win7 systems. What did you put on them? The b
[See the full post at: What would you put on a Windows 7 “rescue” disk?]

4 users thanked author for this post.

AJNorth, geekdom, SueW, Elly

Reply | Quote

Replies

If I was still using Windows 7, I would (as I did at the time) make a backup image of the current system, and keep that up to date.  I’m not sure what is meant by “doomsday” or what the rescue disk/disc (disk=magnetic media, disc=optical media) is intended to rescue one from.

I haven’t reinstalled an OS (the same OS on the same hardware) since Windows 95 or 98.  One and done, as far as installation is concerned!

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11)

4 users thanked author for this post.

lanceboil, Cybertooth, Myst, gkarasik

Reply | Quote

I have a VirtualBox vdi backed up on several HDs.  Clean Windows 7 installed, patched and no key installed (yet).  Once my last Windows 7 system dies I’ll move it to Windows 10 and use a copy of the vdi for any old programs that don’t work under 10.

I still have a XP vdi for a very old Pocomail install that I never took the time to move over to Thunderbird.

1 user thanked author for this post.

wdburt1

Reply | Quote

There is no trick, just Prepare For The Inevitable.  It is not all that complicated.  And it doesn’t matter which version of Windows you happen to be running, it will work the same way for all of them.

It is also the quickest, easiest solution possible.  If an HDD or SSD gets pooched, open the case, replace it with a new one, close the case, restore the complete drive image for that pooched drive, and it’s like nothing ever happened.

With Image for Windows, you don’t even have to initialize the new drive, just restore the complete drive image.  Initialization, formatting, partitioning, data, everything is taken care of in one fell swoop.  The only way it could be easier is for someone else to do it all for you.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

3 users thanked author for this post.

Charlie, woody, gkarasik

Reply | Quote

Absolutely, the only thing I would add is to keep 2 copies of that base install on two different external disks…Belt & Suspenders!

HTH 😎

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

2 users thanked author for this post.

woody, Myst

Reply | Quote

RetiredGeek wrote:

Absolutely, the only thing I would add is to keep 2 copies of that base install on two different external disks…Belt & Suspenders!

Actually, I have three!  Can’t be too careful.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

Say time has passed, maybe a few years, and the “doomsday” Win7 disk(s) need to be restored to a completely different desktop, laptop, or (who knows) other device, and many, if not all, of the drivers on the doomsday disk(s) are obsolete . . .

How could potential driver issues be handled?

Reply | Quote

Many of the better drive imaging programs have an option, in the paid versions, to restore to different hardware. I tried this once and it didn’t work for me but then again I may not have done it correctly. I’d research this online before deciding on the imaging software to use.

HTH :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

opti1 wrote:

Say time has passed, maybe a few years, and the “doomsday” Win7 disk(s) need to be restored to a completely different desktop, laptop, or (who knows) other device, and many, if not all, of the drivers on the doomsday disk(s) are obsolete . . . How could potential driver issues be handled?

First, the disk(s) need to be refreshed as needed (that is when partitions are re-sized, added, or deleted, etc.).  And since I use drive imaging weekly as my only backup system, I can use my “doomsday” disk to restore my setup, then my latest drive images for particular partitions (like my data) to bring everything up to date.

I’m thoroughly DIY, all my Windows licenses have always been Retail, and therefore, transferable.  Through the years via upgrading, after assembling the new hardware, I use my “doomsday” disk to transfer my setup to the new hardware, then boot it up.  In all the times I’ve done this, Windows has been able to find nearly all the necessary drivers to get up and running.

Then I check Device Manager for any yellow exclamation marks, and find the manufacturers’ drivers for the version of Windows that I’m using.  I’ve never come across an insurmountable problem.  And with Retail licensing, Activation has never been an issue.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

Reply | Quote

opti1 wrote:

Say time has passed, maybe a few years, and the “doomsday” Win7 disk(s) need to be restored to a completely different desktop, laptop, or (who knows) other device, and many, if not all, of the drivers on the doomsday disk(s) are obsolete . . .

How could potential driver issues be handled?

This is a classic exercise in over-complication. As everyone before me has said, buy a cheap HD (that’s redundant), make an image, and occasionally refresh it. (Caveat–make sure you test any image you make to be sure it boots.)

I keep in the attic a spare PC that is the exact same model as the one I use daily. It cost $35.00. I also have a spare keyboard, mouse, power supply and monitor ($10, $4, $13, $25). If I’m still using this system years from now–which, despite my hatred of being artificially forced to upgrade to anything when what I have is working for me just fine, I probably will be–I’ll switch out the parts as I need to and keep working. The only problem I foresee is getting re-authenticated the paid software that is license-tied to my hardware. If the software manufacturer is OOB, then I’ll be SOL. Of course, by that time, it’s likely nanobots will have embedded my smart phone in my cerebral cortex so that I won’t be using a physical PC or phone at all. (Which makes me wonder what my internet antenna will look like.)

GaryK

3 users thanked author for this post.

wdburt1, Cybertooth, Myst

Reply | Quote

I system image backed-up 4 of my windows 7/7 Pro laptops soon after 7 went EOL and right before shrinking the Windows partition and installing Linux Mint 19.3 alongside Windows 7 on the freed up disk space/Mint partition on 4 different laptops.

Now I’ve got to get some full hard drive Image backup with both the Windows 7 partitions/Mint 19.3 partition on all the laptops. And does the file format of the backup media(USB Hard Drive) matter as much as well. Maybe there’s some solution that runs under Linux that can work or one that runs under Windows and I can use exFAT for both but Windows prefers NTFS for any direct system image backup/restore media.

So doing a complete Windows 7/Linux Mint partitions backup is what I’m currently needing more information on doing. Maybe there is some direct disk cloning software that can do the job but I’m still researching that.

 

Reply | Quote

anonymous wrote:

Now I’ve got to get some full hard drive Image backup with both the Windows 7 partitions/Mint 19.3 partition on all the laptops. And does the file format of the backup media(USB Hard Drive) matter as much as well. Maybe there’s some solution that runs under Linux that can work or one that runs under Windows and I can use exFAT for both but Windows prefers NTFS for any direct system image backup/restore media.

I’m only familiar with Image for Windows, but TeraByte also makes Image for Linux.   “As its name implies, Image for Linux runs under a Linux environment, but it can backup or restore any partition, including those of DOS or Windows. Image for Linux can also image to or restore from mount points and includes USB3 support. The program can also directly access FAT, FAT32, EXT 2/3/4, and NTFS partitions, as well as most writable CD/DVD/BD drives. By default, backups made to CD/DVD/BD are bootable, which provides you with a convenient recovery CD/DVD/BD.”

So whether you run Image for Windows, you can backup a complete drive, Linux and all, and if you run Image for Linux, you can backup a complete drive, Windows and all.  Works both ways.

No doubt other imaging software is also available, but I’m not familiar with any of them.

Always create a fresh drive image before making system changes/Windows updates; you may need to start over!

We were all once "Average Users". We all have our own reasons for doing the things that we do with our systems, we don't need anyone's approval, and we don't all have to do the same things.

Computer Specs

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

anonymous wrote:

Now I’ve got to get some full hard drive Image backup with both the Windows 7 partitions/Mint 19.3 partition on all the laptops. And does the file format of the backup media(USB Hard Drive) matter as much as well. Maybe there’s some solution that runs under Linux that can work or one that runs under Windows and I can use exFAT for both but Windows prefers NTFS for any direct system image backup/restore media. So doing a complete Windows 7/Linux Mint partitions backup is what I’m currently needing more information on doing. Maybe there is some direct disk cloning software that can do the job but I’m still researching that.

Nearly any disk imaging program should work.  In Windows, Macrium Reflect, Acronis True Image, and Aomei Backupper (and probably lots more; these are just the ones I used) will all work to image Linux volumes right alongside the native Windows volumes, and you don’t have to use exFAT.  Go ahead and use Ext4 in Linux and NTFS in Windows; it won’t be a problem to create images of either one from Windows.  You can use these backup programs to create backups while running Windows, so you can continue to use the computer while this is happening.

JFYI, Linux distros (Mint included) can usually read and write NTFS also, so even if it was not feasible to use a Windows program to image Ext4 volumes, you would not have to use ExFAT to make the volume image-able by the Windows program.

You can do the same (using one OS’s backup program to image volumes from both) from Linux using Veeam (agent) for Linux, which has a free edition like Backupper and Reflect (except that it’s full featured, while both Aomei and Macrium remove features from their free editions to give you an incentive to upgrade to the paid edition).  There’s also a Veeam for Windows, but I haven’t used it.  It has replaced Windows-based backup programs as my go-to, and it has proven to be fast, effective, and robust.  It does not have a graphical interface in Linux, but its character-based UI is wizard driven and similar conceptually to graphical programs, with the biggest difference being that it uses keypresses to navigate rather than the mouse.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11)

Reply | Quote

[geekdom]

Here is a Windows 10 backup option that looks like the Windows 7 backup option. (This option was used under Windows 7 and is currently used under Windows 10 with all the same steps.)

Backup early. Backup often. Make sure you have a stand-alone separate boot disk.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by geekdom.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by geekdom.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by geekdom.
• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by geekdom.

1 user thanked author for this post.

rontpxz81

Reply | Quote

The big question there is will that 7  system image backup code remain in Windows 10 for future usage as that code base has already been depreciated. So It’s still kept around but not getting any new features/new support and maybe by 10/2004, or later, It could very well disappear.

But most definitely after 7’s EOL more folks that are not getting 7 ESU can still keep 7 around indefinitely for offline only usage and 7 dual booted with Linux/Linux Mint and I no longer have to worry about 7 online on any old laptops that are dual boot 7/Linux enabled.

One of Windows 10’s major issues is that which is currently still in windows 10 from older Windows OS versions may not remain around forever under 10 and I’m looking at that 10/7-Style system image backup code as being on borrowed time under 10. But I still make use of that 7-Style system image backup facility on my newest Windows 10 Home laptop.

So I’m going to be looking at some third party disk imaging/disk system image backup software and maybe I’ll find what I need to back up the 7/Mint partitions in one go.

Reply | Quote

I build in redundancy. There are three external hard drives that contain multiple system images. A new system image is created about once a day (ideally once a day) or when there have been massive changes in operating system, personal data files, or software.

At least once  day, a restore point is created; usually twice a day: once in the morning, once in the evening.

On permanent hiatus {with backup and coffee}
offline▸ Win10Pro 2004.19041.572 x64 i3-3220 RAM8GB HDD Firefox83.0b3 WindowsDefender
offline▸ Acer TravelMate P215-52 RAM8GB Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1265 x64 i5-10210U SSD Firefox106.0 MicrosoftDefender
online▸ Win11Pro 22H2.22621.1992 x64 i5-9400 RAM16GB HDD Firefox116.0b3 MicrosoftDefender

Reply | Quote

A few words of warning based on personal experience using the Windows inbuilt “system image” backup mechanism. I used this a few years ago (2011-13 or thereabouts) making a backup every 2 or 3 months or so, saving to DVDs. I forget if DVD+R or DVD-R. I now understand +R are more reliable.

I had accumulated about 10 or 11 backups when I first needed to restore. I found that the recovery disk would point blank refuse to restore the 2 most recent backups. It did restore the 3rd most recent, so all was not lost. If I had only kept the 2 recent backups, all would have been lost.

Using a spare disk drive I worked backwards through the rest of the backups and found that out of the 10 or 11, only 5 or 6 restored. A backup/recovery mechanism with a roughly 50% failure rate is not a viable backup/recovery mechanism!

I changed by approach to use a Disk Partition tool (initially EaseUS, more recently the marginally better AOMEI), in the bootable version completely outside of the Windows to be backed up, to clone the system partition to the slowest, innermost area of the PC’s disk (still a HDD in those days) to create something similar to the “factory recovery” partitions which PCs are/were often shipped with, and to clone the complete disk to a spare disk (what another commenter describes as “bare-metal cloning”).

More recently, thanks to recommendations at this site, I make Macrium Reflect images of the system partition, again using the bootable version completely outside of the Windows being backed.

Having 2 mechanisms is safer than one. Neither of these have failed me so far, unlike the Windows inbuilt mechanim.

HTH. Garbo.

 

2 users thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth, rontpxz81

Reply | Quote

On thing I have not noticed mentioned here yet and, if I am correct, would be worth keeping in mind: when one installs some expensive application, it may be a good idea to create an HD or SSD disk image in an external HD dedicated to this type of operation, to be able to reinstall everything, including the expensive application, without further hassles when trying to get its installation key to work without first having to contact whomever, wherever to be cleared, or whatever. Just installing the image on the new/fixed mass-storage drive should make it possible to keep going right away as if nothing ever happened (except for the inevitable annoyance and worry of having to deal with a mass-storage crisis.).

Ex-Windows user (Win. 98, XP, 7); since mid-2017 using also macOS. Presently on Monterey 12.15 & sometimes running also Linux (Mint).

MacBook Pro circa mid-2015, 15" display, with 16GB 1600 GHz DDR3 RAM, 1 TB SSD, a Haswell architecture Intel CPU with 4 Cores and 8 Threads model i7-4870HQ @ 2.50GHz.
Intel Iris Pro GPU with Built-in Bus, VRAM 1.5 GB, Display 2880 x 1800 Retina, 24-Bit color.
macOS Monterey; browsers: Waterfox "Current", Vivaldi and (now and then) Chrome; security apps. Intego AV

Reply | Quote

OscarCP wrote:

when one installs some expensive application, it may be a good idea to create an HD or SSD disk image in an external HD dedicated to this type of operation, to be able to reinstall everything, including the expensive application, without further hassles when trying to get its installation key to work without first having to contact whomever, wherever to be cleared, or whatever.

I agree with this idea, but it works also with low cost or free programs.  It’s a hassle to have to reinstall and reconfigure things in general, and the more “stuff” you do, the more of a pain it is to recreate it all from scratch.  Whether in Windows or Linux, I’ve ended up doing tons of modifications and tweaks, and trying to remember and redo them all would be quite difficult.  Better to just image the whole shooting match and be able to restore it.

I can’t really see why Windows 7 rescue media would be an improvement over a system image (unless you use Microsoft’s backup, in which case the Windows 7 rescue medium would also be the restoration medium). It’s good to have a Windows 7 install disc/USB instead of no rescue tools at all, which is a state many users are in, but having a recent system image is better still, by far.

In some cases, you may be able to fix things using a Windows 7 installation disc/USB drive to be able to perform a system restore to get a nonfunctional system working, but that’s been really “iffy” in my experience, while restoring a system or drive image is quite robust.

In terms of restoring boot functionality when that gets messed up, the Macrium Reflect rescue disc/USB has proven to be a lot more effective than Microsoft’s boot issue fixer that’s part of the Windows Recovery Environment, which is itself a part of Windows rescue or install media.  If Reflect is the program you use for your system imaging too, all the better; you only need one disc/USB and the disk with the system image itself.

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11)

3 users thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth, OscarCP, rontpxz81

Reply | Quote

Ascaris wrote:

If I was still using Windows 7, I would (as I did at the time) make a backup image of the current system, and keep that up to date.  I’m not sure what is meant by “doomsday” or what the rescue disk/disc (disk=magnetic media, disc=optical media) is intended to rescue one from.

I haven’t reinstalled an OS (the same OS on the same hardware) since Windows 95 or 98.  One and done, as far as installation is concerned!

My Win7 machine runs Windows Media Center for my TV with a digital cable card adapter.  Win10 doesn’t support this and you had to purchase an add on for Win8.1 which is no longer available from MSFT.  Since this PC is only used for TV watching and some streaming via Netflix and Amazon Prime, I need to keep it running as long as it will.  I have a double SSD set up where the OS is cloned.  the only other drive is a HDD which serves as the data drive for recordings.

Reply | Quote

Since we’re talking about Win 7 backups, I use Macrium Reflect (licensed edition) for all my computers. The Win 7 computers also have Linux Mint partions (dual boot).

From within Win 7, Macrium will back up the entire disk including the Linux partitions. I put the backups either on an external or secondary internal drive. I’ve restored many times from those backups using a bootable USB or CD rescue drive containing Macrium Reflect – both which are easily created from within the program. Both OS partitions are fully bootable and functional after a restore.

The only caveat is: while the Win 7 partitions can be explored by mounting the backup into the Macrium Reflect software – which allows individual files or folders to be restored – this can’t be done for the Linux partitions. The Linux partitions have to be restored all or nothing.

And, if you have a Windows computer with an installation of Macrium Reflect – to keep your bootable USB/CD updated – you can backup and restore Linux only computers.

Win10 Pro x64 22H2, Win10 Home 22H2, Linux Mint + a cat with 'tortitude'.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Charlie, Ascaris, wdburt1

Reply | Quote

Bare metal clone of the current disk

1 user thanked author for this post.

Charlie

Reply | Quote

Yep, that’s me too.  I currently have two HDD’s, one is the original 1.5 Gig that came with the computer and the second is a newer 2 Gig that I cloned the original to. Both are Seagates and I used the Seagate cloning software.  I keep both HDD’s updated and identical.  I always have a ready to go backup Win 7 hard drive.

I’m now getting ready to make a third cloned HDD and hopefully be able to make a separate partition for Linux as that will be my “Online OS” as time goes on.  It’s a bit of work keeping multiple hard drives but it pays off in my opinion.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

Reply | Quote

The size I gave for those hard drives should be 1.5 and 2 Terabytes.  Sorry about that, I don’t know where my mind was, back in the 90’s maybe.

Have you seen the price of Tums? It's enough to give you heartburn.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Cybertooth

Reply | Quote

My strategy would just be to have an install disk and then the WSUS Offline files I’ve already saved, so that I have all the updates that are required. I’d also have the anti-snooping scripts ready to go, running at startup on every run.  I also have drivers for all my computers saved back.

Sure, disk maging is nice, and I have my partition backed up. But those are huge, being at least hundreds of GB, if not into the TB range. What I want is to have it on a bunch of thumb drives, not a portable hard drive which may have mechanical damage. So, sure, I have a disk image, but it’s on the drives inside my computer.

And, yes, there is the issue of hardware. Windows 7 is not designed for this, where even safe mode may not work. And, no, I’m not trusting some third party utility to get the drivers fixed in the image, when I can just do a proper install and be sure there are no problems.

The only image I might use is a system builder image, which will handle any hardware you throw at it. But I’ve not bothered since the installer works just fine.

Reply | Quote

I would put this:

• Full Restore of Windows 7
• FreeDOS since Windows 7 does not do DOS well for several windows Xp System
• Kernelex for Windows 7 with Windows Xp built into for those the FreeDOS does not support
• ClamScan
• Remove all MS telemetry and keylogger updates from Windows 7 image
• Memtest86 and/or Memtest86+
• Linux system with windows NTFS driver to read files that Windows can not read.
• Copywipe
• PCISniffer
• Extra backups of drivers, manufacture images, solve cloner for ATM memory reader
• Many other programs that are only open to people with CT access.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Charlie

Reply | Quote

Most of the people here are focusing on preserving their already tweaked and perfected Windows 7 system…

I have family and friends who are prone to only let me get their hands on their computers when there is a problem… and I am anticipating having to work on these machines, and having a disc image just isn’t possible. For that future time, my insurance is having the following:

Windows 7 service pack 1 32 bit ISO

Windows 7 service pack 1 64 bit ISO

However, there are a lot of Window 7 updates. I update based on @CanadianTech’s recommendations, for avoiding telemetry. My question is, the last time I did this, it was through Windows Update, hiding any of those updates recommended by @CanadianTech. Will Windows Update continue to function if I try to do a clean install for an older machine, and rely on WU… or do I need to do a survival disk that includes these updates, in case they aren’t available in the future? I’ve already downloaded and saved all the Security Only updates… but could/should all these be included in a customized install ISO, just in case?

The other things I’ve been trying to collect are programs that are useful, but don’t require downloading them when the .exe is run… some older programs will no longer download to install, that way… so it needs to have the necessary code included, not just a .exe. As a non-techy, I may not be describing that correctly.

Do we need to save versions that are compatible for Windows 7… or do you think there will be enough demand that they will continue to be available? I still see versions compatible with XP. How much of a hoarder do I need to be?

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

Reply | Quote

Elly wrote:

My question is, the last time I did this, it was through Windows Update, hiding any of those updates recommended by @CanadianTech. Will Windows Update continue to function if I try to do a clean install for an older machine, and rely on WU… or do I need to do a survival disk that includes these updates, in case they aren’t available in the future?

They should still be available through Windows Update.  I let an old Windows XP installation update quite some time after the EOL for XP and it found updates to install.  Will this always be true, though?  No way to know.  Can you be certain that MS won’t decide to make the updates unavailable at some point in the future?  I’d say no, you cannot.

I’ve already downloaded and saved all the Security Only updates… but could/should all these be included in a customized install ISO, just in case?

They could indeed be slipstreamed into an .ISO if you wanted to.  It’s not very hard, but you don’t actually need to do it right now if you don’t want to, since for the moment MS is still delivering the updates.  If they ever change their mind, you can make a slipstreamed .ISO at that point, if you wish.  I made a slipstreamed .iso of all of the Windows 7 updates that were then current just for the heck of it a couple of years ago.  I don’t remember if I ever used it, but I find those kinds of things to be fun anyway, so I did it.  I didn’t know off the top of my head how to do it… I found a guide online somewhere that gave the instructions.

The other things I’ve been trying to collect are programs that are useful, but don’t require downloading them when the .exe is run… some older programs will no longer download to install, that way… so it needs to have the necessary code included, not just a .exe. As a non-techy, I may not be describing that correctly.

You’re describing offline installers.  I think you did a good job of describing them!

Do we need to save versions that are compatible for Windows 7… or do you think there will be enough demand that they will continue to be available? I still see versions compatible with XP. How much of a hoarder do I need to be?

Well, no one can predict the future, so if it worries you, I’d suggest that you save the older versions.  Lots of software publishers make older versions available… Firefox, for example, has an archive that goes back to the very beginning.  I would guess that most of the stuff you need would be re-obtainable at least for the next few years, but there are no guarantees. There are sites out there that specialize in collecting and hosting older versions of software, but like anything else on the internet that you do not download directly from the publisher, you have to be careful with that kind of thing.  If the original publisher of the software stops making it available, they will probably make the security hashes unavailable too, so there may not be any good way to verify them.  Having intact signatures from the publisher helps, but I don’t know if that would be enough to really trust it or not, and there may be some things that were only available in unsigned form in the first place.

Personally, any time I see anything on the internet I may want to refer to or use in the future, whether it be a web site, a picture, a program, or anything else, I stash it locally.  The web is inherently ephemeral, so you can’t count on that Youtube video or that web article or that neat picture to still be there down the road a few days, weeks, months, or years.  If it’s in front of you right now, strike while the iron is hot, and grab it.

That purpose is one reason why I have a large HDD (not huge by today’s standards at 3 TB, but that’s still large in my book!) in my desktop PC.  My two primary laptops have less storage than the desktop, so they can’t hold everything.  I prioritize the stuff I find most important and sync that between the three, and the rest gets archived on the HDD, and backed up separately from the normal backup sets.  So far, I am nowhere close to filling 3 TB, but if I get close, I can get more drives… HDD storage is really cheap these days.  I bought a 5TB HDD a couple of years ago for $89 on sale, my most recent conventional HDD purchase.  That’s really quite amazing!  I know other people have even better “back in my day” stories than mine, but my first hard drive cost $300 and could hold 40 megabytes.  It featured a blazing 650 kilobyte per second transfer rate and a 28ms average seek time, and came in half-height, 5.25″ size.  What they called half height when it came to a 5.25″ drive is a bit less than double the height of a 3.5″ drive now, and 3.5 inch desktop drives are (of course) massive compared to laptop drives.

Even a 1GB full height drive back then would have blown my mind.  A 5TB drive of any phyical size would have defied belief.  A 5TB drive in a 3.5″ package would have made me think the person claiming it exists was nuts.  That drive for $89 (in 2018 dollars!) would make me think I’d lost my mind, hearing such a thing!  If you then told me that it had a sustained transfer rate of 150 megabytes per second, I’d be sure I’d lost my mind.

 

Dell XPS 13/9310, i5-1135G7/16GB, KDE Neon
XPG Xenia 15, i7-9750H/32GB & GTX1660ti, KDE Neon
Acer Swift Go 14, i5-1335U/16GB, KDE Neon (and Win 11)

3 users thanked author for this post.

SueW, Cybertooth, Elly

Reply | Quote

[dg1261]

Elly wrote:

I have family and friends who are prone to only let me get their hands on their computers when there is a problem… and I am anticipating having to work on these machines, and having a disc image just isn’t possible. For that future time, my insurance is having the following:

Windows 7 service pack 1 32 bit ISO

Windows 7 service pack 1 64 bit ISO

However, there are a lot of Window 7 updates. I update based on @CanadianTech’s recommendations, for avoiding telemetry. My question is, the last time I did this, it was through Windows Update, hiding any of those updates recommended by @CanadianTech. Will Windows Update continue to function if I try to do a clean install for an older machine, and rely on WU… or do I need to do a survival disk that includes these updates, in case they aren’t available in the future?

I strongly recommend downloading all updates for offline updating. You can use the same offline cache to update all Win7 machines you may encounter, so there’s just no reason to keep downloading the same updates over and over again to update multiple machines. A byproduct of this strategy is it also protects you if MS ever decides to pull the plug on the online updates.

Some people advocate slipstreaming the updates into the installation ISO. I’m not in that camp. I prefer keeping the updates separated because then I can update existing installations. Slipstreaming them into the installation ISO is of no use for updating existing Windows installations.

A rollup of all updates ala CanadianTech’s strategy, freezing updates as of May 15, 2017, is available from post #3 in this thread in another forum.

I’m not sure why CT froze his updates at May 2017, but I’m sure he had his reasons. I preferred to freeze my updates at Dec 2017 because Jan 2018 is when the Spectre/Meltdown updates started messing up computers. A rollup of updates frozen as of Dec 2017 is also available in post #8 of that same thread.

Download either of those and you won’t have to deal with Windows Update again.

 

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by dg1261.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

Reply | Quote

Ascaris wrote:

Can you be certain that MS won’t decide to make the updates unavailable at some point in the future? I’d say no, you cannot.

Wise counsel IMHO. Microsoft stopped offering the updates for Windows 98 some years ago, and I remember reading somewhere that Vista patches would be available until about 2022.

There’s no telling how aggressive MS might become in the future with respect to pushing people off Windows 7 by speeding up the disappearance of its store of updates, but I wouldn’t expect that to happen so long as ESU patches are still being released.

Still, it may not be a bad idea to build up a private repository of patches and hotfixes while they can still be had from the source.

 

Keep Running Windows 7 Safely for Years to Come  
Make Windows 10 look and work like Windows 7

1 user thanked author for this post.

Elly

Reply | Quote