Windows 10: Previous backup Disk images with Win 7 , Keep?

Now that my computers are updated to Windows 10 , are the old back up disk images with win7 of any use ? Can they even be used to revert back to Win 7 ? Should I just delete them and make new disk image with win 10. Tks

:)

 

Can a Windows image backup restore Win 10 computer to Win7?

I have upgraded my Win 7 computer to Win 10. On my external hard drive I have a Windows image backup from before the upgrade to Win10. Not sure that I would ever want to but... can this image backup of my previous Win7 installation be used to restore my
computer to Win 7? Would it work? If not, why not? Would I use the Windows Repair Disk I created for Win 10 , or the one I created for Win 7?

 

System Image Creation Failed

System Image is a Windows 10 backup program. It can be accessed through Win 7 backup but it is not a win 7 program. (Don't use win 7 backup for backups. It is just for restoring win 7 backups. Use File History for regular backups in win 10.) You must have
an external or second internal drive to store the image, not disks or thumb drives or a partition on the boot drive. What is Local Disk D? It is not listed in the drive list. Local Drive E is listed and seems to be available if you change the backup location
to E. Check Disk Management to see what you have. You can assign new letters and or names to the external backup drive such as Drive R or S etc. Use letters towards the end of the alphabet.

Remember that a system image is diff from regular backups. It is all or nothing. Restoring an image is for complete reinstallation of everything. The hard drive will be overwritten with the image--such as when you install a new hard drive. You cannot restore
individual files. It is for disaster recovery and does not get updated automatically. You should make a new image when there is a big change such as after a big upgrade of windows.

In a computer with a ssd and a data hard drive, the data drive should not be used for backups. It should be part of the system image. You need to access the image on an external drive to restore the image if the boot or data drives fail. A Recovery disk
will be your boot disk so be sure to make one on a dvd or thumb drive. It has to be on bootable media.

To get to system image backup, open File History and use the link in the lower left corner.

 

Hi,

That depends on how they were made. Windows 7 backup or Macrium Reflect image etc...

Up to you but having an image of the current installation is a must IMHO.

Cheers, *Wink

 

If you are 100% sure you're staying with Windows 10 then why keep your Windows 7 images. If you created the Windows 7 images using Microsoft's image creation tool then you can create a new one in Windows 10 that will overwrite the old image. You can use the old image to revert back to Windows 7 if needed. Restoring an image overwrites the drive you backed up so it doesn't matter which Windows is on there.

 

I made the disk images with Macrium Reflect. I think I will just keep the latest win 7 images made prior to win10 update for the time being. I will also make win10 image for each of the upgraded computers as well. So far I am quite happy with win10 . I will delete the Win7 images after a month or so .

 

As a follow up : I created the Macrium Win PE Recovery image iso and wanted to burn it to my DVD burner when I discovered than after the Win 10 upgrade , windows did not detect my DVD drive *Sad so I temporarily saved the ISO in the computer .

Since I don't use DVD or CD in the computers very often , I did not check for this in my other computers. True enough , all computers with win 10 upgrade did not have DVD drive shown either in Win Explorer or in Device manager. I was frustrated and after a search I found that the easiest way to get the Optical drives recognized is to uninstall the IDE ATA/Atapi drivers for Ch0 and Ch1 then reboot the computer . That did the trick.

 

Hi,

Can't say I had any problem with the DVD drive not being recognized on W10 but in the mean time you could burn the ISO file to a USB thumb drive (or other external media) using something like Rufus.
Make sure it's bootable.

Alternatively, you can also add Macrium's Rescue to the boot menu of W10 if you don't mind a slower boot time at start up.

Ciao, *Wink

 

After I got the DVD to be recognised, I burned the iso to DVD. I think I will also make a bootable thumb drive as backup. Tks