Windows 10: System Image Question

When I go make a system image in Windows 10 and I am at the window "Which drives do you want to include in the backup" I see that EFI System is selected, OS (C) (System) is selected and also WINRETOOLS (system) is selected. There is also a RECOVERY (l) but it is NOT selected.

When I do select RECOVERY (l) I get the following message: "The 'RECOVERY (l)' is on the same physical disk where the backup will be saved. If this disk fails, you will lose your backups."

I'm confused in that I am backing up to a completely different hard drive than the harddrive where my OS resides and there is NO RECOVERY (l) there .

Why am I getting this message?
Why isn't the RECOVERY (l) selected already the same as the others?
Do I need to backup RECOVERY (l) and if I do create a system image with all selected does it hurt anything?

Thanks!

:)

 

System Image Question

You can put your system image onto your 1tb drive or a 128gb drive or probably into a 16 or 32gb usb thumb drive as long as the system image fits.

My windows 10 C drive is about 120gb, the C: drive used space is about 25gb but the system image made with a 3rd party tool is about 10gb and its on a 128gb thumb drive with backups to it one day per week, and also a separate backup image into the 60gb
E: partition 2days per week. And there also is an original copy of its first system image on a 250gb SSD attached to my wifi access point.

If I were to have drive failure in my laptop, as long as the drive bought to replace it is equal to or larger than my dead drive, that system image will work to give me windows 10 back & all my files that on my dead C: Drive.

 

System Image Question

I've read online (so it must be true!!) that in order to restore from a system image both hard drives need to be exactly the same size.

Is this true? I'd like to put mine on a 1tb drive but my PC is 500mb

Thanks!

 

Use Macrium Reflect Free Or AOMEI Backupper
Both free and do better job than Windows Built-in

 

Hey tenofhearts12-

Are you able to back up to a flash drive?

I know that when I launch the Windows Imaging utility it automatically searches for the best place to create the image and it defaults to my second internal HDD. Within the drop-down menu for other destinations, it shows a couple other drives, including a couple of flash drives. It does not show my main drive, however.

Also, as topgundcp mentioned, both macrium and AOMEI are great too and can accompany the Windows utility.

IMHO, the answer is YES. Everybody should have recovery images backed up. And no, it should not harm anything.

I use three of the free ones, along with Windows, and I create daily images. Perhaps a bit of over kill, but I find that it's much easier to load an image when there's an annoying problem, rather than spending too much time chasing down the answer.

I'm sure you already have, but if not, are you sure you have the correct path to the other drive entered?

 

Even Macrium Reflect free or fee often checkmarks anything/everything it finds on internal and external hard-drives. You have to UNcheckmark all the squares that you do not want backed up. Then, proceed to indicate where you want the backup image to reside.

 

Thanks!

 

thanks!

 

Thanks!

 

Please do yourself a favour and use Macrium Reflect or any other disk imager. In my tests (and many others) the Microsoft System Image service rarely if ever works.

There's a lot of free options out there. While not a traditional backup, there's the free Rollback Rx Home edition which I use. It's a really reliable program.

 

Speak for yourself.
I have been using Windows' own built-in system image backup since the days of Windows 7.
I used it to restore the image many times with Win 7 in the past and now with Win 10. It NEVER fails.

If it does not work for you, naturally you look for one that does. But don't be judge and jury.

 

Hi,

That's actually Windows Backup getting confused thinking you want that partition as a destination, not as a source.

Cheers, *Wink

 

@davidhk
You could be music to my ears! I'm a newbie here and would much appreciate help with Win 10 Sys Image Backup

I'm rebuilding a friend's Dell XPS 8100 system (6 yrs old) after a physical hardware disk crash - as in My(His) System Specs
The mobo has hardware RAID 1 and theoretically mirrored disks. In fact the disk never mirrored so he had death on disk failure.
Fortunately a 3 week old data backup and a laptop keep him going while I fix his box.

I've rebuilt it as a non-mirrored system and upgraded successfully to Win 10.
The system is working and fully Windows Updated. It has no data, and the SysImage to HDD is less than 32GB.
I now want to hand him back a working system, a System Repair DVD and a baseline System Image **ON DVDs**!!!
- and that's my problem - using DVDs (or USB - NB USB2)
The idea is to lock these away never to see the light of day again - unless lightning strikes again.
I don't care how long or slow it takes, as it's a one-off.
BTW I do not have his 500MB USB backup available to me and don't want to touch it in any case at this stage.
He **does** have a second hard drive and I will configure that for daily/weekly use.

But first I want to wrap my work up in a neat read-only package, (a set of DVDs)
and then demonstrate full system recovery on a second virgin hard disk (which I have ready)


This is what goes wrong in Win 10 System Image:

When I try to create a sys image on fresh DVD media, it first formats then fills the DVD for a while and asks for another DVD, giving me clear labelling instructions "Win 10 Image on [date] at [time] 1". I believe that final "1" means "Disk 1 of n".
Backup then fills the second DVD... but I get the identical message and the green progress bar does NOT progress.
I'm very confident (after 7 DVDs) that it is simply redoing Disk 1 in a never ending loop.

My questions
1) Am I using wrong blank media? I used DVD-RW +R media
2) Can it be old hardware ?? (I've checked that the DVD firmware is the latest version).
The mobo chipset is no longer current, but Device Manager has no shrieks or unsatisfied drivers
I have successfully dropped a couple of test files onto a formatted, empty DVD and can read the whole of a 300 page PDF
3) I have also messed around trying to image to a 32GB USB...
I successfully created one (by imaging to a "networked" USB drive as //[ThisComputerName]/[USB_VolumeName]/
Yes, OK, it took forever, but backup completed with no error and I could see stuff in File Explorer...
...but the Win 10 Recovery environment would not locate the backup, (even tho' it could see the USB drive as C: with its correct volume name). So I've given up on USB and am now concentrating on the "official" DVD method.

I hope you respond on this oldish thread
Thanks in advance

 

I would sincerely advise you to start a new thread for yourself so that people will concentrate on helping you instead of being distracted by the original question.

Thank you.

 

@spilly
This is exactly way I always recommend using a 3rd party image backup app, and not windows backup. I have read many posts with users making their windows backs and then when they did to restore one of them, they fail. DVD's are becoming less and less useful as time goes by. Everything is more towards usb devices. DVD's are becoming a thing of the past. You said what you want to backup is less than 32 gig. You have some options here. You could try a 32 GB usb stick, it might hold everything, but I would go for a 64 GB usb stick instead. Use a Program called Macrium Reflect Free version. Install it on the hard drive, then make a Rescue Media Boot disk, from within Macrium Reflect. Using the USB stick. This USB rescue stick only needs to be a 4GB stick. Their cheap to buy. With this bootable rescue disk you can access any image backup that you have made with Macrium Reflect. Incase the user can not access their OS hard drive, this rescue disk can restore the OS back to original condition. Then make a complete image backup of the users C-Drive (OS) to either a 2nd external drive, or a 2nd internal drive. It is possible to even make the image backup to a USB stick, if its large enough to hold the complete image. Here is the link for Macrium Reflect Free.
Macrium Software | Macrium Reflect Free
At least give this a try, you just might come to like this program as much as lots of us on here already do *Smile
Mike...