Windows 10: Help with creating a system image backup

NavyLCDR, you're right as rain! I learned from long ago experience to create two things:
1) Both USB and DVD boots of the backup / restore / cloning program, portable version
2) Make routine backups, full images, of each of my computers' OS and Data partitions

 

I just got done fixing some stuff with windows, will try to create a back up image now..

Sorry but I don't know what you are talking about.

 

You say you are going to "create a backup image now".

Suppose you do that.

Suppose 10 minutes later your hard drive drops dead.

What's your next step? How do you propose to take advantage of that image you just made?

 

Buy another SSD and use the backup image I suppose? Isn't that the whole point of taking backup?

Edit: Ok, so macrium just got done creating the image. The installation was a bit weird, I first had to download a program that would then download macrium (took a long time) and it would then install on windows. But macrium has created a single backup file that fits nicely to my usb flash drives.

 

"Buy another SSD". Yep.

"Use the backup image"??

The devil is in the details.

We don't know what you mean by "use". Please clarify with detail.

You certainly can't boot from that image file. It's just a file sitting over there on some hard drive. May as well be a picture of an aardvark.

 

As long as you have a recovery image somewhere remote from the HDD to restore (and even if on the same HDD as long as it is alive and well) and the PC won't boot then its still always possible to do a restore.

Just reinstall Windows and then your recovery program and go from there. W10 is so quick to install that its not really a disaster.

 

I want to restore my windows installation, if windows crashes and refuses to recover using windows own build in tools. This actually happened a few days ago. Windows didn't want to use any of the system recovery tools that is included with windows. So I had to reinstall windows and had to start with a fresh install all over again. I want to avoid this situation.

Yep, I just tried to boot from the macrium backup file. Didn't work. Completely useless, will try some of the other programs.

P.S this is my first time taking backup so I may make several mistakes.

 

No one can boot from a Macrium image file. It's not just you.

But they are not "useless".

Do you in fact have an image file with an MRIMG extension saved somewhere on some hard drive?

If that MRIMG file is on a USB stick, can you boot your PC from that stick, as if your SSD did not even exist?

It is possible there is something wrong with your particular Macrium image file.

But that is not the most likely possibility.

It is much more likely that you do not know the proper procedure and that is why I asked you about the details of what you intended to do. It appears you don't know the details.

To be useful, the Macrium image file must be formally "restored" to your prospective new SSD. That's a multi-step process.

Have you investigated that procedure at all? Looked at tutorials? Read the help file?

I can assure you that other imaging programs work in much the same way. You have to restore. Macrium is simpler than most of them.

 

Confluence Mobile - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

 

Yes, I got the Disk Partition image (.mrimg) from macrium on my usb flash drives.

I don't think so, I'm having problems getting the boot menu to occour. I have tried F2,F4,F8,F11 and F12. The one time I did manage to bring the boot menu up, I didn't see any options to boot from macrium.

Do you mean I have to install windows, install macrium, and then restore windows from the Disk Partition image (.mrimg)?

 

You need a second flash drive to make the Macrium boot media. You don't boot from the drive with the image on it.

 

No, you don't reinstall Windows.

It's a process.

With steps.

Explained in many different tutorials, youtube videos, posts on this forum, etc.

Have you looked at any of them?

If your SSD fails, you have to be able to start your PC in order to take the first step.

That would be the first issue facing you. Your SSD is dead. Whatcha gonna do?

You don't "restore Windows from the Disk Partition image". You restore partitions--one or more---however many are represented by that MRIMG file you made.

It's more like: you start the PC somehow, you get to a Macrium interface with it's menus, you tell Macrium that you want to restore your MRIMG file, you find that file within the Macrium interface, and you then tell Macrium to what drive you want to restore.

The method used to start the PC should lead you directly to the Macrium interface. That's the purpose of the Macrium recovery media that you should have made immediately after installing Macrium on your current SSD.

That recovery media MUST be bootable.

That restoration process will re-create the partitions represented by that MRIMG file on your chosen (new) hard drive. That hard drive will then be bootable, just like the original hard drive.

If Windows was on the original drive, it will be on the restoration--ready to use right then, already "installed". If a letter to grandma was on the original drive, it will be on the restoration.

Without this restoration, that MRIMG file isn't very useful.

If it works. It usually does. Not always.

 

I already replied to that previously. I would buy a new SSD. The point was to be able to restore my old installation of windows on the SSD instead of starting all over again with a fresh install of windows. If this isn't possible then it is pointless and a waste of time. Perhaps in some years we will have software that does this.

I don't understand a bit of what you mean, and it is making the problem more confusing, as if it wasn't already confusing enough. Let's put it to the side for now, and maybe in some years we will have some simple software that can easily restore windows.

 

Aye aye, over and out.

 

You obviously do not understand!

You do not boot from the image. You boot from the Macrium Rescue software.

It is better to keep the rescue software on a separate drive to the backup image really.

All imaging tools work in the same way.

Read this great tutorial.

Backup and Restore with Macrium Reflect Windows 10 Backup Restore Tutorials