Backing up a machine for Re-Install/Upgrades using VHDs

It happens every so often. You find yourself with an evening, your machine is running a little slow or you bought yourself a fancy new hard drive and you want to re-install Windows, but the whole ‘moving my files’ takes forever, and there is always a little concern you’re going to forget/miss a file.

Now if you’re backing up properly (that’s a series of posts on it’s own), the losing files thing isn’t really that big of a concern. But let’s be honest, digging up the backup, finding the exact files you’re missing in the backup, extracting them, moving them, etc. is a pain. I know for me at least it would be. This being said, I still sleep a little better knowing I have backups.

Now for the scenario we first started with. New HDD (better be a SSD), or just want a clean install. There are two tools I highly recommend. One is before the install, and one is after.

Before the installation

The first is Disk2vhd, this is a tool written by Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell at Microsoft (SysInternals). I love pretty much every SysInternal tool that these guys have done….they’re honestly some of the most useful tools out there. Oh, and they’re free, which is awesome.

Anyway, Disk2Vhd allows you to take a physical disk (like the one you have spinning in your machine right now) and covert it to a VHD. Why would you want to do this? Well think about it. You’re likely going to copy your documents, your desktop, your code folder, your photos, and music to a safe place so that when you’ve got your machine up and running again you can copy them back. But what you forgot was your Favorites. What the name of that tool you used occasionally was. Your Visual Studio settings, etc. If you make a copy of your machine in it’s current state, you just take that VHD, mount it, grab any files you missed, and then un-mount the VHD (and if you want to be super safe, you can mount it as Read-Only). It’s that simple. This was great for me the other day when I realized I missed a file from C:\temp\ that I had put there….whoops, but my VHD still had it and I was good to go.

Two quick pieces of advice though. 1) Still make copies of files you want to move over, it never hurts to be safe with that 2) Validate that the VHD can be mounted (on a separate drive that won’t be formatted during installation) before wiping your machine. I’ve not had a problem with corrupt VHDs, but it’s always nice to make sure.

After the installation

Need to get Chrome, Firefox, Skype, etc. installed? Ninite is the answer. It’s a great little tool that automatically downloads the programs you choose, installs them (without the crapware and toolbars), and again its free.

Some personal recommendations that they automatically support include:

• Chrome
• Skype
• Silverlight
• .NET
• Paint.NET (think of it as a free, scaled down version of Photoshop)
• Foxit Reader (You don’t need Adobe Reader, its slow, bloated and a huge security risk)
• ‘Essentials’ (Great anti-virus from Microsoft, seriously…don’t use AVG)
• 7-Zip (WAAAY better than WinZip & WinRar, and free unlike them as well…yes, WinRar isn’t free)

With a reasonable internet connection, Ninite might take 10 minutes to download and install the applications listed above. It’s a HUGE timesaver.

TL;dr

Before wiping your machine, create a VHD using Disk2vhd of it to make sure you have ALL your old files as you can mount it later if you missed something.

And after you’ve wiped your machine, use Ninite to re-install a lot of your common applications.

Installing Trial Software without Virtualization and without ruining your machine.

So I have the need to install Adobe Photoshop, primarily just the trial. I have 1 little task I need to (that will likely take less than 30 minutes), but I don’t want to install Photoshop on my primary machine. Adobe  has a huge piracy issue (so they say), and that being said, they definitely install plenty of Windows Services and other goodies to make sure you aren’t stealing or cracking their software. It’s totally understandable, and if I was going to do any more work with Photoshop I’d probably look into purchasing it (or look at their month-to-month subscription program which is interesting to say the least).

Anyhow, since I don’t want to install Photoshop on my primary rig, and I don’t want to Virtualize using Hyper-V or Virtual PC (for a variety of reasons including want to use Photoshop on as close to ‘real’ hardware as possible), I figured I’d try a feature _A LOT_ (read most) of people don’t know about: Booting from VHD. That’s right. Make a VHD, and boot from it when needed.

Here are the basics. VHD stands for ‘Virtual Hard Disk’, it’s basically a file on a physical hard disk that Windows treats as it’s own, self enclosed hard drive. So in other words, create a VHD and you now have a new disk drive show up in ‘My Computer’.

The awesome thing about this, is that these drives can be made bootable and actually booted FROM. So rather than the old ‘create a partition’ and install Windows to it, which was always a little bit of a pain, just create a VHD.

As far as the specifics, let’s just say this is a 5 out of 10 on difficulty. It really isn’t tough if you’re familiar with installing Windows and comfortable with the command line, but it def. involves a few tools most people have never even heard of.

A great getting started point (that includes creating/mounting a VHD and installing Windows on that VHD) is http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg318049.aspx#BKMK_Attach

How to set up Office 365 without changing DNS Servers (Name servers)

(Too long; Didn’t Read? See the TL;dr at the bottom)

A few weeks ago I was involved in moving a domain I own off Google Apps and onto Office 365. While getting signed up and for the most part provisioned was a painless process, there was one tricky step that at first I wasn’t sure how to tackle.

When setting up a custom domain, Office 365 says in ‘Step 5 – Complete the process’

The next screen asks about being ‘ready to flip the switch’ referring to going ‘live’ with your custom domain. And then you get to an interesting screen. The screen below asks where you bought your domain.

When you choose one of the providers (only a handful are listed, but that’s a different story), it basically walks you through how to change your DNS Servers (names servers) from their current settings to the Office 365 Name servers.

In my case I didn’t want to move (for a variety of reasons including not being sure on reliability, plus missing some features like SRV and SPF records and control over TTL), and there didn’t seem to be an easy way to do this.

Unsure of why they wanted me to do this (and unable to see a clear option around this), I settled on the idea that Microsoft was just trying to make it easier on me (and likely themselves) should addresses change in the future. After digging around some more I also found that in the domains section under ‘Management’ there is a DNS manager that had all the ‘pre-configured’ Office 365 DNS settings. It looks something like this:

So looking at that, I figured if I just put those values in MY zone records, then things would work. And guess, what, a few minutes later everything appeared to be working.

Now a few quick downsides, AFTER figuring this out I saw some information at http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-smallbusinesses/hh416759.aspx that says there are a few limitations when Office 365 doesn’t host your DNS. They are as follows:

1. Sharepoint Online – Something about it not being your public facing website, which lets be honest, you don’t want anyway and is something stupid anyway.
2. Domain troubleshooting tool – The tool basically won’t work, but if you’re reading this, you’re likely more advanced than that tool to begin with.
3. DNS Manager – Covered, just use your current DNS manager
4. Future Office 365 updates – This is the only one that ‘worries’ me a little bit. It’s a risk, but a small one. Should they change an endpoint or add things, if you aren’t tracking Office365 changes, you could miss out. That being said, you’ll likely notice it and since you’re controlling your DNS, it won’t take long to remedy. This is the only one I see with *any* downside.

While I can appreciate what Microsoft is trying to do here (which is make it easy for the super small shops), I have a hard time imagining they’re getting large numbers of signups from people with ZERO web presence to begin with. A clearer path should definitely be presented to users so they don’t have to deal with this mess going forward.

TL;dr;

Rather than moving your DNS servers to Office365, just take the records that are present in the Office365 domain manager and enter them into your current DNS manager. The only real downside to this is any new DNS changes/settings can’t/won’t be updated automatically by Microsoft.

Oh, and the background picture of the week

Is Cathedral Rock at Philmont Scout Ranch (click the picture to see it on a map)

So this thing is finally back online.

That’s right. Joseph Spaur’s blog is finally back online. After being sick and laying in bed for almost a day straight, it’s early and I decided to finally tackle this. Below is a little information on setup.

The Setup

• WordPress (Joseph and PHP/MySql? Who would have thought it) hosted on MediaTemple (was originally going to try GoDaddy but they’re assholes)
• DNS via Amazon Route 53 (figured I’d try something new)
• Storage (for pics, the screencasts to come, etc.) on Azure Blob Storage
• Posting via Windows Live Writer (should be ‘LiveWriter’)

The Goal

Since I hate the ‘comments’ on websites so much (especially with anything to do with Tech), I figured I’d occasionally try and post some of my thoughts here.

Secondly, as I stumble across solutions (such as how to set up Office 365 without migrating your DNS servers), I’ll document them here as well, hopefully for the ‘larger internet community’ to use.

And lastly I’ll use it for whatever else I care to use it for (SEO, Photo Sharing, promote any tools or businesses, etc.)

OH..and yes, I’m feeling a little better.