Windows 10: Create System Image in Windows 10

Isn't one of the reasons to have a backup is in case something happens to the Windows installation on the computer that causes it to become not bootable? So if my Windows crashes or my hard drive fails and I replace the hard drive....ummm....if recovery is handled via Windows how is that going to work? I have this image sitting here on this external hard drive, now what?

I wonder how many people find themselves in the situation of a computer with a black screen with one line of text "Operating system not found" and an image on an external hard drive or a network storage location and scratching their heads ask, "Well, now what do I do?"

 

You have the ability to create a bootable rescue CD/DVD. Every time you make a backup it offers this option, or alternatively you can make a rescue disc at any time. That allows you to restore the image even if Windows will not boot. Other repair options are also offered.

What I don't know is how a restore would be handled if the target drive were a new unformatted one such as a replacement. I also haven't tried the 'mount' option that seems to be available. I'm assuming that allows you to browseand copy files over from the image... but its not something that I have tried.

 

With Macrium, you have 4 choices to boot into the rescue environment:

• From CD/DVD
• From USB
• Setup dual boot with Windows
• Setup Resue boot on another internal/External HD
  Solved FYI: Setup Macrium Rescue to boot from an Internal/External USB HD/SSD - Windows 10 Forums

Don't know about Windows build-in but With Macrium, it does not matter. With a brand new, unformatted SSD/HD. You can restore the image and Macrium will take care of it.

Windows build-in creates separate .VHDX files for each partition such as: System reserved, C Drive, Recovery partition, EFI etc..
Yes, you can mount a .VHDX file from Disk Management by attaching it, assign a letter which you can explore and selectively restore File(s)/Folder(s) using drag and drop, copy/paste...
However, with Marium, it only creates a single image file and it is more convenient to explore the image, just double click on the image and select which partition(s) you want to mount and It/they will show up in "This PC"

In addition, as you know, there's no option to verify the image with Windows Build-in since it creates multiple file(s) so if one of these file(s) is missing or corrupted then there goes your backup.

I quit using Acronis since version 2009. Reasons:

• Although the image verified successfully, but still gotten error when tried to restore
• Modifed MFT table and put 2 extra services on startup and it's a PITA trying to uninstall, the 2 services still run and if you try to remove them, Windows will crash.
  Acronis Leftover Drivers? | Knowledge Base

I don't know if it's still true but based on other people's feedback, it does not sound good.

Yes, there is a service running with Macrium installed (Macrium Reflect Image Mounting Service) but if you don't use the differential/incremental feature then you can disable it. I always do a full backup and it only takes little over 2 minutes to backup since I am using SSD so I just disable it.

 

Full backups is the way to go. The differentials/incrementals are much more difficult to manage - especially if you get a corruption on one of them.

 

Quite right. Furthermore I use Acronis and the differential and incremental backups created by it are not much smaller in size than the full backups that are created by it.

 

Thanks. Its not quite as simple as I thought (I had it in in my head that there was a right click and mount option, lol must have been thinking of Acronis).

I learnt the hard way with Acronis and it rewriting boot info on a restore. New PC, new install of Acronis, all good except that doing a restore lost the manufacturer recovery partitions and 'MS on-line office thingy'. It was no great loss in the end though, it just spurred me into doing a clean install.

For nearly 10yrs I've used incrementals with Acronis. Weekly/daily chains and then storing month end full backups for archiving. Never had an issue and I often used to restore images after trying stuff out.

So while I've never doubted Acronis's ability to restore a .tib file that its created, where my problems have been are in operational quirks and bugs that seem to get worse with each edition. True Image Home (2006/7) was the most faultless but of couse it won't run under 8.1 or 10 and it also won't recognise SSD's for using it just as bootable media.

 

Mooly, for mounting the VHDs, try disk management - see picture

 

Thanks, I'll have a play with that when I get chance.

 

I've been using Acronis True Image Home for years on all systems up to and including Windows 10 (with an MBR system disk). Acronis is very flexible. I like it.

I've just installed Windows 10 on a 120GB SDD in a new PC. I used the default GPT partitioning, and of course Acronis doesn't recognize the system disk.

I've been reading this thread and would really like to stay with my old version of True Image. I'm considering changing the SSD to MBR partitioning just so I can continue using True Image.

I don't need > 120GB for my system SSD. What am I really losing by using MBR?

 

@arnoldh
Well I had the same questions about MBR vs GPT last year. I was also running Acronis at that time for at least 7 or 8 years.
I ended up using GPT because my computer was UEFI (in bios) and ran much better under GPT style. GPT is the newer style while MBR is much older style. As far as Acronis goes, I stopped using it for making image backups, after finding out about Macrium Reflect Free edition. Macrium Reflect is much better method, uses a lot less disk space, no added bloat ware that came with my Acronis. Doesn't load all kinds of stuff into memory, like my Acronis did. My last version of Acronis took like over 250 MB of hard drive space too. Loaded 3 or 4 things into memory, everytime I booted up. I just got tired of it, after trying Macrium Reflect which uses very little hard drive space, makes a Rescue Disk which you can put on a USB or DVD for emergency reasons if you can't access your boot drive for instance. Of course the choice is yours. But Take a look at Macrium Reflect, try it for a while, you will see the differences I think pretty quickly, and its a free app.
Take Care, Michael...

 

Thanks. I'm trying Macrium Reflect Free at the moment. I see it doesn't do incrementals, but apart from that looks good. Maybe that's the way to go.

 

Yes that IS supported in the paid for version, but not in the free version. That is really not that big a deal for me, as I much prefer my image backups anyhow. *Smile

 

Full images are much better to manage than incrementals or differentials. I have lived with free Macrium for years and never had a problem.

 

I agree with your position on full images (former Acronis 8 and current 2016 user), however the convenience of the old Win7 backup within Win 10 is a +. The downside is restoring it in Win 10 - which is kind of the point of the exercise.

The Backup-Restore (Win7) has a rather major problem on my machine. You can make a backup to the current drive pretty much as described in this thread, but 10 can't find the image after it makes it. Keeps trying to send you to the network or external drive. If you copy the folder to a USB - not visible that way either.

Seems odd that MS would put the option in Control panel - just like Win7 - but leave out the recovery options that were in 7 - "recover system settings or your computer" and the drill down selection - "Advanced recovery methods". All those win 8 screenshots in this thread are useless and the current full version of 10 also differs a great deal from what was posted earlier.

Anybody know how to restore an image saved to the same drive (different partition) on the same machine?

Maybe I am missing something obvious.

TIA

 

Noticed a lot of moaning about the MS backup failing when run.

FWIW - a lot of folks trash/delete one or all of the partitions that MS creates automatically when you do a fresh install. Bad move. Read about Shadow copies...

Also, it appears that the "bug" that was in 7 migrated to 10 - and if you reconfigure the following, it may resolve your issue.

Start>Services>Volume Shadow Copy Service
set to Automatic and start the service
[This insures that the reserved partition has
sufficient space to make a shadow copy of backups]

HTH