recovery vs image

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  1. Posts : 4,453
    Win 11 Pro 22000.708
       #11

    calvin said:
    well just yesterday I told the wife the next time she went to Wal-Mart to pick up another thumb drive what size would you recommend to create the image on
    It will usually be compressed to be smaller than the total used space on C:. Depending on how much stuff you have there, it could be tens of gigabytes.

    The most practical backup device is usually an external (USB) hard disk. You can get those at Walmart, too. My 3TB Seagate one was about $120US at Costco. (You can now get a 4TB drive for that price.) The write speed tends to be higher on such drivers than some (not all) thumb drives. The main problem with the external hard drives is that they tend to die if subjected to mechanical shock while the platters are spun up. (Simple solution: don't drop it while it's on.)

    That said, I scored a 128 GB USB3 flash drive on sale at Best Buy for $30US a few weeks ago. It has an image of C: for Windows 8.1 for one desktop, and Windows 7 for a laptop. There's space for more. Another 64 GB drive holds the image for a second desktop. I can restore a desktop in less than 10 minutes. (Did it all the time while I was playing with the preview builds. Always upgraded from 8.1 to whatever preview build was current.)
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  2. Posts : 2,799
    Linux Mint 20.1 Win10Prox64
       #12

    IMO, it is better to get a HD around 500GB, cost around $40 ~ $50, it is faster to backup and restore + you'll have plenty of space.
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  3. Posts : 56
    win10
    Thread Starter
       #13

    i'm using macruim reflect is there a way to compress the file ?
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  4. Posts : 1,524
    Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 16299.15
       #14

    NavyLCDR said:
    YES! The recovery disc is only the program that allows you to restore the image.
    It's more complicated than that in Windows 10, which will put more on the Recovery Drive.

    If you tick the box to include System files, it creates a usb drive which will reinstall Windows 10 on a blanked drive.

    So there's more of an overlap with the System Image now.
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  5. Posts : 1,524
    Windows 10 Pro (32-bit) 16299.15
       #15

    topgundcp said:
    IMO, it is better to get a HD around 500GB, cost around $40 ~ $50, it is faster to backup and restore + you'll have plenty of space.
    Just to note that I wouldn't use that for the windows Recovery Drive though, because that wipes the disk clean - get a USB thumb drive for that.
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  6. Posts : 134,237
    Windows 11 Pro (x64) 23H2 Build 22631.3296
       #16

    NavyLCDR said:
    Depends entirely on how much space you are using on your hard drive. Probably won't be able to find a USB thumb drive big enough to hold a hard drive image if you have anything else besides Windows on it.



    That's because the other poster is doing a backup to another hard drive (either installed or external) using a program with better compression than Windows 10 built in backup.
    I agree with you, Windows backup sucks. :) But I still do mine a little different than you guys. I use an Acronis Boot disk (dvd) then make a complete copy of my partitions and all my programs, unto a 2nd hard drive installed on my computer. Whole job takes me 6 to 8 mins top. But I just have a home computer, no work files on it. My Windows 10 and all my programs only take up 50 gig of space.
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  7. Posts : 56
    win10
    Thread Starter
       #17

    i just checked and my C drive has 74.2 GB of used space
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  8. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #18

    calvin said:
    i just checked and my C drive has 74.2 GB of used space
    Then with Macrium Reflect high compression you might get away with a 64gb flash drive, but 128gb would be for certain.

    Also, before doing an image backup, you can run disk cleanup (Windows 10 included program) to remove temp files, and I also use CCleaner to catch a few more files.

    If you never plan on going back to a previous operating system, when you run disk cleanup for the first time there is an option to delete system files or system update files or something like that. Click that box and disk cleanup will restart and delete the temporary update system files.

    SanDisk Cruzer Glide USB Flash Drive 128GB by Office Depot OfficeMax

    It's USB 2.0 so it would be a little longer for a backup.
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  9. Posts : 54
    Windows 10
       #19

    NavyLCDR said:
    Depends entirely on how much space you are using on your hard drive. Probably won't be able to find a USB thumb drive big enough to hold a hard drive image if you have anything else besides Windows on it.
    Plenty of thumb drives are big enough for a OS image these days. You can get a 128 GB one for about $30, which is bigger than my entire C:\ partition which Windows 10 is installed on. I'm currently using 21.5 GB of the 100 GB partition. Granted, I've only had Windows 10 installed for a few days (and it was a clean install), so I don't have all of the programs I use installed yet, but I have a lot of them installed, including the biggest one I use (Adobe Illustrator CS4), and the rest of them that I use aren't very big. By the time I get everything installed, it will probably still be under 25 GB. I always save all of my files (documents, music, videos, etc.) to a different partition, so installed programs are the only things which take up additional space on my C:\ drive. This saves a lot of time and hassle when reinstalling Windows.
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  10. Posts : 56
    win10
    Thread Starter
       #20

    you fellas are a ton of help , thanks
      My Computer


 

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