Windows 10: My system image backup also includes the data disk

I have just made a system image backup and realize that both my static disk c: which contains the system and the large capacity disk which contains the data have been saved.

This means that I will restore all my data, if I have an update problem and I will loose everything I have updated since then.


How did this happen ? How can I avoid it ?


Thanks


Henri

:)

 

Is My Understanding of Windows Bare Metal System / Images Backups vs. File Backups ... and Restores Correct?

So my understanding of it is like this, there are two types of backups, and they are Image Backups and Data / User File backups...

• Image Backups (System Backups / System State /Disaster Recovery Backups)
  • The Creation Process
    • Can be created with wbadim system state backup
      
    • Then if the Data / User File Backups are included in it, they can be removed by mounting the Image Backup, and removing the Data / User Files from it to save on space (see
      this)
  • What it Includes / Excludes
    • Excludes the Data / User File Back
    • Includes installed programs and OS system files.
    • On Windows, you'll probably also want to remove any temp files from the image such as:
      • pagefile.sys
      • hiberfil.sys
      • swapfile.sys
  • When?
    • It's best to make this after you have the machine setup the way that you want with the programs already installed on it, and after updates are installed, you'll want to back it up again...this isn't always possible, but it's likely the best time to do this.
• Data / User File Backups (User File Backups)
  • The Creation Process
    • Usually a full backup is created and then incrementals or differentials after that (and of course use a strategy like GFS)
  • When?
    • Run more frequently than image backups, these backups are scheduled and run when few people are using the system...
  • What it Includes / Excludes
    • Only includes the data /user files, and it does not include any of the system files and program files like the Image Backup.

Then when you need to do disaster recovery, you restore the Image Backup first, and then when it's been recovered you add back in the
Data / User File Backups to the system.

I know that the Data / User File Backups (User File Backups)
can be removed from the xvhd file back created in the system state backup to decrease it's size by mounting it and deleting said files. But I'd like to know if I first restore the
Image Backups (System Backups / System State /Disaster Recovery Backups), and then restore my Data / User File Backups will I still be able to use the machine as it was when I did the backups?

Is my understanding of this correct? Is there anything I missed?

Thank you,

Andrew J. Leer

 

System Image Backup Fails on Windows 10 - Error codes 0x80070002, 0x807800C5, 0x80780081, 0x8078004F

I had similar issues making a system restore image backup and was able to get it to run successfully after doing the below steps.

The issue I encountered was due to the backup drive having an EFI partition. The drive used to be used on a Mac system and was formatted originally for HFS+. When I looked at the drive in Windows Disk Management, I noticed an EFI partition on the drive that
I could not delete.

To get the backup to run successfully I had to clear the EFI partition from the backup drive using diskpart.

Warning: These steps will delete all data on the backup drive.

• Open CMD.exe
• Type "diskpart" without quotes to run the utility
• list disk
• select disk "x" where x is the backup drive
• clean
• create partition primary

From here I went into Disk Management console and the disk was listed as a RAW partition. Right click the drive, select format (NTFS) and then right click it again once you have created a volume and change the drive letter.

I reran the system image creation utility and it was able to successfully create the system image. Hope this helps anyone else in this particular predicament!

 

Best "Disk Image" Software (Poll)

Also include Avanquest's Perfect Image to the list. And they have few other backup solutions too.