Windows 10 Restore question?

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  1. Posts : 11
    Windows 10
       #1

    Windows 10 Restore question?


    I recently upgraded to Windows 10 from 7. I purchased a second Seagate Back-up Plus 2 TB external HD and used the Windows OS backup feature to make an image of my PC. It took about 5 hours to complete the image. Upon completion I looked at the image on the external HD and found the image file is 25.5 KB. I have a second Seagate 2 TB external that I have been using for 3 or 4 years with an image of a second computer using Seagate's Disc Wizard that shows the image at 205 GB. I will mention that I can't use Seagate Disk Wizard to create an image on the new drive because it is not compatible with my Anti-virus software Web-Root.

    My concern is if my computer were to crash as it did about 4 months ago and the hard drive needed to be replaced, will this new image on the new Seagate HD be available to restore my computer? When I made the image, Windows asked where to copy the image to and the new Seagate 2 TB as selected, but a file 25.5 KB in size seems a little small or am I missing something??

    dgreen
      My Computer


  2. Posts : 1,249
    Windows 8.1, Win10Pro
       #2

    That's way too small to be an OS image.

    Personally, I would never use a built-in backup or imaging app as I've found third party apps that work better, faster, and are free.

    Macrium Reflect backs up 40GB on my machine in under 10 minutes. Even on an older, slower, Win7 machine where the user insists on keeping everything in their default folders on the C: partition, the MR backup still takes only 45 minutes.

    And, with the MR backup, you can "mount" an image file, as if it were a "drive" and retrieve individual files and folders from it.
      My Computer


  3. Posts : 92
    Windows 10
       #3

    I'd second that, Macrium is a far better solution for system backups than the built-in tools.
      My Computer


  4. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #4

    Windows 10 backup should create a .vhd file. You can mount the .vhd file as a virtual hard drive - because that is what vhd stands for, after all . So if you want to see if your image is actually there, try right clicking on the backup and see if you can mount it.

    I agree 125% that Macrium Reflect Free is a much better backup choice.
      My Computer


  5. Posts : 11
    Windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #5

    I did download Macrium Reflect software and tried to clone my HD but I got a dropdown that says my external HD sectors are not compatible with the sectors used by Macrium. I contacted Seagate and the drive was re-formatted to GPT, that didn't help either.

    Any other suggestions??

    dgreen
      My Computer


  6. Posts : 2,832
    MS Windows 10 Home
       #6

    Mark Phelps said:
    That's way too small to be an OS image.

    Personally, I would never use a built-in backup or imaging app as I've found third party apps that work better, faster, and are free.

    Macrium Reflect backs up 40GB on my machine in under 10 minutes. Even on an older, slower, Win7 machine where the user insists on keeping everything in their default folders on the C: partition, the MR backup still takes only 45 minutes.

    And, with the MR backup, you can "mount" an image file, as if it were a "drive" and retrieve individual files and folders from it.
    From what I am see - the Macrium Reflect system will backup whatever HDD, type formatted, or OS that you might have.. I have seen several good acticles posted about it in the past here on WinForums, and will be checking it up - and testing it.
    Does it also does reformatting, types, and paritioning ?

    Any more comments about Macium Reflect or Macium Reflect Free are appreciated.
    all be safe and thanks. Cliff M.
      My Computer


  7. Posts : 1,249
    Windows 8.1, Win10Pro
       #7

    acmanten said:
    ...Does it also does reformatting, types, and partitioning?...
    NO -- but the free downloadable version of Minitool Partition Wizard does all of that, and more.
      My Computer


  8. Posts : 18,424
    Windows 11 Pro
       #8

    dgreen said:
    I did download Macrium Reflect software and tried to clone my HD but I got a dropdown that says my external HD sectors are not compatible with the sectors used by Macrium. I contacted Seagate and the drive was re-formatted to GPT, that didn't help either.

    Any other suggestions??

    dgreen
    v5: Incompatible Disk Selected
      My Computer


  9. Posts : 92
    Windows 10
       #9

    Mark Phelps said:
    NO -- but the free downloadable version of Minitool Partition Wizard does all of that, and more.
    A word of warning about Minitool and Windows 10 - I resized the main partition on one of my PCs, increasing the size by including some unpartitioned space before it, and somehow this led to registry hive corruption when I rebooted. This was with Minitool 9, so it may not be completely compatible with Windows 10 at the moment.
      My Computer


  10. Posts : 16
    Windows 10 x64
       #10

    I looked at Macrium Reflect Free .. and sorry I will not be doing it. The reason .. the download is on CNET, and that is the site where I bricked my computer about a year ago after downloading some software there.

    So .. though it sounds good, I will not go there, as any reputable software is able to host their software themselves and not have people go to some 3rd party location to get their software.

    I will stick to the Windows 10 system image option which I have running from a batch file .. and works perfectly.
      My Computers


 

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