Make a Full System Image Backup in Windows

Make a Full System Image Backup in Windows
15 min read

Make a Full System Image Backup in Windows

Make a Full System Image Backup in Windows: Create a disk image file that you may use to mount as a drive or to do a flawless restore. Windows can be backed up in a variety of ways, some of which are more effective than others at particular tasks. The ideal type of backup for many people, including yours truly, is an image backup. A copy of the Windows boot/system drive, including all of its partitions, is included in such a backup.

Make a Full System Image Backup in Windows

This simultaneously records the OS, your preferences, your apps, and your data files. A single file called an image, which can be of many file kinds, including. IMG, contains an image backup. VHD(X) for Hyper-V virtual machines, WIM (Windows Image format), and ESD (a compressed Windows image file format intended for download via the Internet).

Make a Full System Image Backup in Windows

The “Control Panel” app can be found by typing “control panel” into the Windows Start menu. Choose “Backup and Restore (Windows 7)” (the feature is also available in Windows 10 and 11). From the left pane, choose “Create a system image”. Decide whether to store the backup on a network site, a DVD, or an external device.

What’s in a Boot/System Image?

An explanation of the components or contents of an image file begins with “It depends,” much like the best questions do. The C: drive, which Windows 10 and 11 refer to as the boot/system disk by default, is all that has to be captured in the image backup.

However, an image backup should ideally include all of the categories on the drive being backed up for optimum utility and recovery flexibility.

The Recovery File was previously installed in an earlier version of Windows 10 between the EFI and C: partitions. The C: partition’s size can now be changed by the Windows installation thanks to recent modifications. It may reduce the size of the partition to make room for a larger Recovery partition when upgrading from one version of Windows to another. By doing this, the disk layout is preserved rather than being overrun with new Recovery partitions, as occasionally happened on Windows 10.

What Is a “Whole-Drive” Image Good For?

The whole contents of the boot/system drive can be erased and restored from a backup by imaging the entire drive. Another option is to create a virtual disk or virtual machine from a whole drive image. An alternative Windows boot environment based on Microsoft’s Windows Pre-installation Environment (WinPE) runtime, which is utilized for the Windows installer and other functions, is provided by the Recovery Partition .

An optimized version of Windows is booted by the Windows Recovery Environment (WinRE), a specialised runtime environment. It can incorporate a variety of Windows applications and repair tools, including boot repair utilities, disc or driver scanners, partition managers, data recovery tools, anti-virus programmes, update and install/uninstall utilities, and much more, to run against a damaged or unusable Windows installation. Through Command Prompt, it enables command-line access.

The most fundamental and significant use of a whole-drive image is to quickly and easily swap out a problematic Windows installation with its associated boot and system disc infrastructure. However, there is much more that can be done with such images, such as:

  • performing restoration and repair procedures on a faulty or dubious Windows installation. Normally, to do this, boot to a different media and then launch rescue and repair from there. Therefore, the majority of reliable image backup programmes come with some sort of “rescue media” or “bootable recovery” feature. To perform rescue or restoration operations on the primary but problematic version of Windows you want to fix (or replace), you must boot your computer to an alternative disc. The same method also supports a “clean install” of Windows, which entails erasing the boot and system disc, repartitioning, and reformatting before building a brand-new (“clean”) Windows boot and system drive partition structure and contents.
  • Mount a virtual drive or virtual machine (VM) from an image. You can mount an image backup as one or more virtual drives (one for each disc partition in the image) using a number of reliable image backup programmes. In order to investigate, work on, or retrieve some or all of the backup’s contents, you can open and traverse its contents as if they were on a different Windows drive or as a Windows virtual machine (VM).
  • “Bare metal restore” refers to the ability to restore an image backup onto a computer without an operating system already installed. This is a method for getting an installation that was previously operating on a PC that is no longer usable or available to run on another PC. When a downed or damaged PC may still be utilised because its image backup can be installed and used on another system, this can be quite helpful.

Image Backup and Image Restore

Basically, creating an image backup entails taking a snapshot of each partition in the boot/system drive, then saving that snapshot in a highly compressed (and maybe even encrypted) format to some sort of storage device. Modern image backup programmes can operate with quick external media and are quick and effective.

Choosing the Right Backup Target

It makes the most sense to use a separate storage device for backups in order to maximize portability. Then, even if your PC is utterly unusable, you can just unplug the external backup device and transfer your chosen image to a different PC. I actually advise utilizing an NVMe SSD enclosure with USB 4 or Thunderbolt 4 that can accommodate a PCIe x3 (or greater) SSD with at least 512GB of capacity as your backup device; for more information, read our list of the best SSD enclosures.

Why are you doing this? Considering that it is at least 100 times quicker than flash drives, 40 times faster than hard drives, and 20 to 30 times faster than earlier SSDs (such M.2 flash drives). On such devices, I can regularly back up my test Windows PCs in under 4 minutes, although it takes a little longer to restore them (5–6 minutes; uncompressed backup size: 6–10 GB). Even my production PC, which has a lot of storage and from which I create a daily backup image of more than 60 GB, which contains two data drives in addition to my system/boot drive, takes less than 20 minutes to backup (5 minutes longer to restore, give or take).

Using Rescue Media to Restore

The majority of powerful image backup tools (see the section after this one) support file-by-file restoration. Use these to recover files that were unintentionally lost or destroyed. When a disc has been harmed, corrupted, or when OS or application updates make it simpler and faster to start over from your most recent image backup instead of attempting to remedy what’s wrong, you’ll perform an image restoration. As an illustration, last month I experimented with changing the ownership of some protected OS files in the Windows filesystem. I attempted to treat my self-inflicted wounds for 15 to 20 minutes before giving up and simply restoring the morning’s backup.

You must boot to alternative media in order to do an image restore on the boot/system disc. You will then execute a tool that locates your chosen backup image and copies it to a target storage device of your choice. Again, this totally removes the contents of the drive and, for each partition that needs to be restored, builds a new set of partitions on the target drive using snapshots from the image backup. The need for backup media should be obvious: you cannot remove an operating system from a drive while still utilizing the operating system and its services. It just isn’t effective!

Choosing a Suitable Image Backup Solution

Numerous programmes are currently on the market that can backup Windows images running either Windows 10 or 11. The outdated programme known as “Backup and Restore (Windows 7)” still exists in the Control Panel, but neither I nor Microsoft encourage using it.

According to a post from October 22 on the Microsoft Answers website, “Windows 7 Backup can only be used in Windows 10 and 11 to transfer files across from Windows 7.” It is far too outdated to function well as a regular backup. Using a more recent backup/restore programme for Windows 10 or 11 is far wiser and safer. In fact, this application failed to produce a successful backup when I tried to use it to back up a Windows 10 machine just now, as seen in Figure 4 (it either failed to run completely or completed with skipped files on a few Windows 11 computers). It continued to run for more than 2.5 hours (157 minutes) before giving this error as well. Do not use this tool for optimal results. Instead, give one of those suggested in the next section a try.

Table of Potential Candidates

Leading Windows backup tools that frequently appear in “best of” lists from a variety of sources are listed in the table below. I’ll utilize that table to contrast and compare their powers and restrictions in relation to certain significant elements that have already been covered. A genuinely comprehensive list of these tools may be found in the June 2023 Livewire article “32 Best Free Backup Software Tools.”

Six Good Windows Image Backup Tools (Mostly Free)

EasUS Todo Backup

Free version available Yes

Mount backup image as drive or VM Yes (drive) VM (No)

Build rescue media Yes

File & folder backup Yes

Image backup Yes

Free version link https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html

AOMEI Back upper Standard

Free version available Yes

Mount backup image as drive or VM No

Build rescue media Yes

File & folder backup Yes

Image backup Yes

Free version link https://www.aomeitech.com/llyy/download/aomei-backupper.html

Drive Image XML

Free version available Yes

Mount backup image as drive or VM No

Build rescue media No, but works with Standard Windows PE

File & folder backup Yes

Image backup Yes

Free version link https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm

MiniTool Shadow Maker

Free version available Yes

Mount backup image as drive or VM Drive (Yes) VM (No)

Build rescue media Yes

File & folder backup Yes

Image backup Yes

Free version link https://www.minitool.com/backup/system-backup.html

Redo Rescue

Free version available Yes

Mount backup image as drive or VM No

Build rescue media Yes

File & folder backup Yes

Image backup Yes

Free version link http://redorescue.com/

Macrium Reflect Free (Free version goes off-market on January 1, 2024)

Free version available Yes

Mount backup image as drive or VM Yes

Build rescue media Yes

File & folder backup Yes

Image backup Yes

Free version link https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

I’ve been using Mariam Reflect for a while, and it’s the programme I use to back up my production systems every day as well as my test and family member PCs every week. When backing up to or recovering from USB 3.2 or Thunderbolt 4 NVMe SSD enclosures, the source of the timing data mentioned previously in this piece, I often witness transfer rates of up to 2 GBps. After Reflect stops supporting its free version on the last day of 2023, I will choose one of the remaining packages (either AOMEI Back upper or MiniTool Shadow Maker), having tried all of the aforementioned ones.

 Over the past three years, Macrium Reflect restores have made it possible for me to recover from the following potential disasters with the least amount of disturbance, loss of time, and productivity:

  • Taking ownership of files in the C:WindowsSystem32 file hierarchy was a failed experiment.
  • a 2011 purchase of a 1TB Seagate 2.5″ HDD has failed as a data disc.
  • 3 computers were rendered unbootable due to damage to or loss of boot configuration data (BCD).
  • Up to a dozen Windows Insider Windows 10 and 11 preview installations that encountered driver issues during or just after installation can be recovered.

A crucial capability that enables me to continue to feel at ease as a Windows Insider MVP is access to a known good working image backup with tested tools, abilities, and knowledge to restore systems to functional state. When Insider Previews are available, I download, install, and test them on all channels (Canary, Dev, Beta, and Release Preview). Although I’ve had to resort to restoring an earlier release image and then missing one or more interim releases in order to keep some of those test systems working, I haven’t yet met a situation from which I couldn’t recover.

One Last But Vital Backup/Restore Trick

Any new files or altered preferences, registry adjustments, software or application installs, and so forth that happened after the backup were lost if you restore any image backup to a PC. However, image backup offers a potential fix for this. Before restoring your most recent backup of an image to a system that is still operational, you can take an image backup of the current image.

You can mount an image as a virtual disc with the majority of image backup programmes. To duplicate (or document) changes that took place after the old image was taken, you can mount the new image when you restore the old one. That should at the very least prevent the loss of data files—for me, that means documents, spreadsheets, and so on. You can transfer settings and preferences from the installation that will soon be abandoned back into the known functioning image that will get you where you need to go as long as you can grab a file, generate a registry snapshot (.reg file), or take some other kind of note of them. Do not overlook!

FAQ

How do I make a full backup of my PC?

Use File History to backup your computer.

To access a backup, go to Start > Settings > Update & Security > Backup. Select an external drive or network location for your backups after adding a drive.

How big is a Windows system image backup?

around 500 GB

How big is a backup image for Windows 10? The system image contains an exact copy of every data on the computer’s hard drive at any given moment. If a 1 TB drive has 500 GB of space, the system image will be about 500 GB in size.

What is Windows full backup?

As said, a full image backup creates a copy of your entire system that you may store on an external device or on the cloud. If necessary, you can restore the whole Windows backup to any device that is compatible.

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Ahmad Mustafa 20
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