Create System Image in Windows 10  

copy of a drive or partition ------ they are not the same thing. as the creation software Microsoft provides will not copy individual partitions on the same drive. it copies the entire drive. so you can not create a recovery partition on the same hard drive and store the image there you must use a separate storage media.
There are other software image create which will make and restore the image to just the partitions needed without destroying the backup system restoration partition. you can even create a boot able hidden drive with the software for restoration as well as place a press f key in the boot process of the MBR to boot to the recovery partition which is factory.
Tell you what if the hard drive fails placing a new one and reinstalling the os to it is not an issue its not like your recovering data files from the broken drive anyway unless you have the cash to do so. this is a problem with the image creation software for windows........
so in your 1st statement of the tutorial " copy of a drive or partition " you are misleading.

your not the only one who hasn't spelled it out .

pattyandme said:

copy of a drive or partition ------ they are not the same thing. as the creation software Microsoft provides will not copy individual partitions on the same drive. it copies the entire drive. so you can not create a recovery partition on the same hard drive and store the image there you must use a separate storage media.

It always copies (or more correctly images) the partitions needed for Windows to run. Beyond that and you can user select other partitions on the same drive to add to the backup. It doesn't by default include these other partitions. That backup file can also be created and stored on any partition other than the one the OS is residing on. When you restore the image you have the choice of which partitions to restore.

You can dedicate a partition to be used as purely a place for backups and I think (although I haven't tried this), that if you then delete the drive letter from that partition it will then appear as hidden to file explorer, but your backups would be safe. So you could always manually move any recovery images there at any time.

Mooly said:

Try turning off system protection on the partition you want to store the images. Having done that run a disk clean and delete any previously stored shadow copies (or format the partition).

I'm finding Windows disk imaging far better than any of the third party offerings.

https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/4...dows-10-a.html

Thanks Mooly. One computer was sold The other one I still have.
I googled it, it seems to be known problem.
as for system restore it should be off on non OS partition. I'll give a try and update here.
For now Macruim Reflect is the best solution always worked for me.

still will not work. the system imaging software copies the entire hard drive. it doesn't restrict itself to the system partitions on a singe hard drive. you keep saying it does when it doesn't. the reason you can not store the image on the same hard drive is because it will over write the image when it restores the OS. that is why you get the error...... i tried formatting in fat 32 a utility partition thinking it would not group it in the image I was wrong it still copied the partition as inclusive to the image.........as windows will not allow the creation of any formatted partition not NTFS anymore...... please stop wasting peoples time trying to fix this when it was conceived intentionally. .............

pattyandme said:

still will not work. the system imaging software copies the entire hard drive. it doesn't restrict itself to the system partitions on a singe hard drive. you keep saying it does when it doesn't. the reason you can not store the image on the same hard drive is because it will over write the image when it restores the OS. that is why you get the error......

I beg to differ on that one. Storing 'running backups' (as I call them) on the main (its the only) HDD on the PC is the way I have always made full disk images. I'm going back to when I used Acronis with Vista,W7, W8.1 and now of course Windows own utility with W10.

The system image only includes the partition/s you tell it to and that of course should not include the destination the backup is pointing to. When you restore, only those partitions included in the backup are restored. Others are left alone.

I think if you could delve into this on the systems that are proving troublesome then you would find some permissions problem or the partition isn't set up correctly. I can confirm that WIndows backup works flawlessly on both my two PC's and where I am saving the backups on the same HDD as the OS. They are both laptops and so only have one HDD. I set up a friends the same way and that is operating perfectly too.

Mooly said:

I beg to differ on that one. Storing 'running backups' (as I call them) on the main (its the only) HDD on the PC is the way I have always made full disk images. I'm going back to when I used Acronis with Vista,W7, W8.1 and now of course Windows own utility with W10.

The system image only includes the partition/s you tell it to and that of course should not include the destination the backup is pointing to. When you restore, only those partitions included in the backup are restored. Others are left alone.

I think if you could delve into this on the systems that are proving troublesome then you would find some permissions problem or the partition isn't set up correctly. I can confirm that WIndows backup works flawlessly on both my two PC's and where I am saving the backups on the same HDD as the OS. They are both laptops and so only have one HDD. I set up a friends the same way and that is operating perfectly too.

Hi Mooly and thanks for the previous instruction.
Just to confirm system restore is turned off at least on one of them. the other one was sold.
There shouldn't be any problem with the partition the size is twice larger than the image.
This is some kind of known bug, in windows 7 I created an image 4 years a go but couldn't restore it when needed.
The only way I found (for me) is using reflect, it never let me down when needed. Aoemi seems to be another great option but I never fully tested it.
I will give these solution a try if I'll have time but I don't see why bothering if I have macruim. It is easier for customers to use windows image though
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/w...e550aa5?page=3
Regards