How to Create System Image Backup in Windows 10

What is System image backup in windows 10?

A system image is a copy of the drivers required for windows to run. It can also include additional drives. A system image can be used to restore your computer if your hard drive or computer ever stops working and however you can’t select individual items to restore.

It is very simple to create system image backup in windows 10 and there are already many tools available which are used to create a system image backup in windows 10 and most of them used are Symantec Ghost or Acronis True image and if you are a IT geek you may be already familiar with this tools.

Windows has included by default a System Image Backup feature since Windows Vista and it offers some compelling benefits over the race not the least of which is that backups can be created and restored without the need for any external media or CD, DVD, USB Flash Drive very easily.

How to Create System Image Backup in Windows:

By Default in windows, if you search in the Start Menu or Cortana in Windows 10 with combinations of words like system or image and backup will display a quick link to the System Image Backup utility. There are two ways to access it, and we will see all of them in detail,  though I fully expect one of these to be removed in a forthcoming Windows 10 update.

The method I expect to be removed is to click Backup and Restore (Windows 7) in the Control Panel and then to click the Create system image link that appears in the top left of the window. The possible expected reasons for this to be removed in a forthcoming update is that this is included as it was in Windows 8 to support migration from Windows 7 who had files backed up using that OS’s file backup utility, and in the Windows 8.1 update it vanished. You should not think of this as a long-term feature of Windows 10 and therefore should not use the file backup utility it also provides.

How to Access System Create System Image Backup

The another consistent technique of accessing the System Image Backup utility is to open File History in the Control Panel, a System Image Backup link will appear in the bottom left of the window. By clicking the link opens the Backup and restore (Windows 7) page, but this as I mentioned is very likely to change, perhaps by the time you read this.

The System Image Backup utility opens as a wizard that offers you three locations for storing your backup, on a local hard disk or partition on the PC  and they are

Issues on storing your Backup on DVDs when you create system image backup:

There are possible issues which can throw up in future and the first of which is storing your backup on DVDs.

Most of the DVDs have tend to have a limited lifespan and this is an issue with storing and creating system image backup and so they can’t be trusted and relied upon for long-term archival storage. A “typical” Windows 10 installation, however, at about 25GB in size would require up to 6 DVDs, and few of windows installation require around 100GB will require 23 DVDs and which is not at all a suitable options. If your system image consists of low and in emergency kind of thing then you can go with DVD option and move your image file later on to the other HDD.

Creating system image backup substantial time investment for both creating and restoring the backup, and that’s assuming that none of the discs fail in the interim period.

Issue with Network storage when you Create system image backup in windows 10:

Network storage can also present a problem which is expected as it a storage of network storage. You can create your backup on any network location accessible on your PC. This can include server network shares, Network Attached Storage (NAS) , and USB hard disk plugged into your network router but important thing is you must never store a System Image backup on a network share you only connect to by Wi-Fi . The reason for this is that the System Image can be restored only from the Windows 10 Recovery Options, and these have no way to load Wi-Fi drivers as such it cannot connect to remote storage by any method other than by a physical network (Ethernet) cable.

There is also the small matter of your files. On some PCs, where files are stored on a server and synced using a roaming user profile, or where all your files are synchronized to a cloud backup service such as Dropbox or Google Drive and where you don’t have many files, you might be content to leave them sitting in your C:\Users folder respectively.

If you use OneDrive however, or if you have more files than can easily and quickly be downloaded from a web service and you should always store your files on a separate physical hard disk or partition on your PC.

The reason for this is that a System Image is a full snapshot of the disk or partition on which Windows 10 is installed, at the time the backup image is taken. When you restore this backup image, that entire disk or partition will be restored exactly as it was at the time the backup was made. If files are stored on this drive or partition in the C:\Users folder (or elsewhere) they will overwritten, and older versions of your files will be restored.

With cloud backup services such as Dropbox or Google Drive this doesn’t present too much of a problem, as restoring a backup will require those services to completely resync all of your files downward from cloud storage anyway. OneDrive works differently, however, in that it can simply pick up from where it left off before.

There’s also the fact that including personal files in a system backup will inflate the size of the backup file, perhaps considerably, and if you need to perform a complete format-and-clean reinstallation of Windows 10, you won’t restore them anyway.

It is always a good option to movie your Shell User Folders (Documents, Pictures, Music, Video, etc.). Moving your files away from your copy of Windows 10 is a good idea anyway, since if you have a major problem with Windows 10 that requires a clean reinstallation of the OS, you won’t lose your files in the process.

Choosing Backup location when you create system image backup in windows 10:

When you have chosen your backup location, you will be asked which hard disks or partitions in the PC you wish to include in the backup . Anything you can’t exclude because it’s essential to the operation of Windows 10 is greyed out, and you’re likely to not want to select anything else.

Though, as you may have a small partition on which you store hardware drivers or other setup files for the PC that would be useful to include, or you may have a separate partition on which some win32 apps are installed.

When you click Next you will be presented with details of the backup location and partition inclusion options you have selected, and asked to begin creation of the System Image Backup.