A strange problem for sure. The only other thing I can add is that all three of my setups were clean installs onto unallocated space, and then having installed W10, I created the required partitions. Two in my case. One partition for daily use of backups, the other to store what I term 'recovery images'.
Whatever you use, you have got to be able to trust it to work when needed. Macrium I know is very popular and always get a good word on here.
Thats the way I installed windows, delete the partitions, created one partition for recovery, install windows in the unallocated space,
activate windows, Install missing drivers manually, go to do the image and it fail.
for me its better with reflect but when it come to customers it is easier for them to restore via windows.
Thanks for trying to help
most factory restoration partitions are fat 32. I've noticed that you cant format a fat 32 partition in win 10 HOME anyway.
This may work with a partitioned drive before the installation of windows........how ever without hiding the drive before installation with an unknown type using pt-edit, windows will install on drive d:
Ok update what worked for my panasonic laptop
I went to system restore to the E partition for the backup. I saw it was disabled but the space for use was 100%, I deleted all restore points and set the space to 1%. I rebooted and the image was created successfully. Thats a bug for sure it shouldnt of happen but to anyone that need to create an image this thing worked.
Please note that I did not disable sys restore for the OS partition only the E that was already disabled.
Kind regards
I fiddled with it til I was blue in the face and finally went to Macrium Reflect on a separate drive with WinPE and bootable usb if needed. Never could get the 'on board' deal to work and to be honest using it in the past on W7 it had issues when my OS would crash, like the 'image' wouldn't be recognized and that sort of thing.
I have to agree with you, as I have tried quite a few different apps for backups, Windows being one of the worst in my opinion, fails way to often for lots of folks. Since using Macrium Reflect, have had no issues what so ever. Plus has extra features that can come in mighty handy. But....too each his own. :)
I agree with both of you there were problems for me as well in windows 7 couldnt restore the image when needed and another prob I couldnt restore it to new drive. 5 years past and 3 new version of windows pasts so I thought on windows 10 lesson should of been learned and bug fixed but it seems to be the same and I cant trust it.
Remember the image is much smaller on macruim thats something important as well
Anyone tested Aoemi? fully tested that mean recovering image successfully
Kind regards
I used the free version of AOMEI when trialling enterprise versions of W8.1 It was fine, and restores worked as expected. I didn't create bootable media though, just ran it from Windows. One bug (that strangely is also the same on the current Windows backup utility as well) is that in W8.1 the Windows Update history was missing. When you restored, the history was blank... no updates have been installed. Of course they are all still there, its just the history list that is excluded from the backup. I reported it at the time to AOMEI and assume its been fixed.
(I still find it odd reading all the problems about Windows imaging utility. I have tested it exhaustively in W10, and proved that the images behave as if incrementals are being made, that any image in the backup tree offered as available for restore are correctly restored, that you can rename the image files and move them around at will, and that it works 100% of the time either from within Windows or using the bootable media you can create. No system overheads... it just works (lol, for me anyway :))
I when first installing W10 went to the System Image utility in order to save the 'fresh' new copy (just in case ya know) and found it would not function as it did in W7 (even though they look and act the same) I even started a thread on this forum to that effect. Had an admin try to run it and he too had issues. Mine would run to about the half-way point then stop and shut itself down. I was trying to place it on an external (completely formatted and clean) 1 TB HHD and windows would stop and say there wasn't enough room even though it was showing the drive as 956 GB available. I also tried it on two other 1 TB internal drives with the same result, no room.
As stated I broached the issue here on this forum and several people helped me and after a few days of messing with it decided to go the route they all choose which was to use Macrium and it has worked very well. At the time I had a hard time wrapping my head around it and didn't understand all that was said on my OP but found by just going ahead and doing it that it was really a lot easier than what I was reading, it'll more or less walk you through it (even the WinPE deal so if you ever have to boot to the usb it'll know where to look) I put Macrium on another drive all by itself and it does several weekly updates to stay on top of things and only takes a few minutes...
I've used Windows System Images in the past(W7)and to be honest never had much luck trying to get it to work as advertised, no matter how I tried; most of the time it wouldn't even 'see' the image and I almost always had to reformat and start all over again, which is a huge PITA when I have several TBs of games an such to re-download, because of all the registry files necessary to run 'em.
I was as reluctant as a June bride using Macrium but now feel it is one of the best out there and thanks again to all the TenForum guys (and gals) that helped me....it does work and work well.
I really needed to put Windows backup through its paces yesterday as I was trying some stuff out that involved totally wiping my main drive. Two issues cropped up, one I know about and which is actually more of a question, the other... well I perhaps anticipated it and so I'll mention it in case anyone runs into this problem.
So to be sure of recovering the complete drive I made two system images. One with Windows Backup, the other using an old Acronis bootable CD (it was actually True Image from 2007 which is fine for any OS as long as its run from the CD). To be sure of recovering the Windows image, I created a bootable USB drive using the offered Windows option. So far so good.
Next and I did what I wanted to do which was reinstate Vista from an image in order to recover some files, then I wanted to try the 64 bit version of W10 as this old machine is running the 32 bit version and to test some drivers. All done and time to put W10 back.
First problem. The bootable W10 recovery drive (32 bit version) will not allow recovery of a 32 bit image over a 64 bit one. It seems it looks at the already installed OS and then deems the one you want to replace it with is not suitable. I find that odd, but it seems that is the way it is. Not a common scenario I know but frustrating.
That meant I had to use the Acronis image which installed OK. As a check of the bootable Windows USB Recovery drive, I then tried again and of course it worked. 32 bit OS, 32bit image, all good.
The other issue, or question, call it what you will is this.
When you make a disk image in Windows onto a formatted partition or drive you get a single folder called WindowsImageBackup. This single folder contains the backup files needed to restore the image. Here's the question. Lets say the drive is 100.00Gb in size and the backup folder is 25Gb. Free space is now 75Gb. If you delete the backup image, there is still some space used... and quite a lot, around 3 to 4Gb per image. File explorer shows nothing, even with hidden files displayed. So if you've run the backup 3 or 4 times and then delete the folder you are down many Gb in available space. A disk cleanup including a system file clean and using the 'more options' to delete shadow copies still changes nothing. The space is not freed up. The only thing that works is to format the partition or drive and begin again with the backups.
I have no idea what Windows is doing here, and why the space is not recoverable using Windows cleanup tools. It is something to bear in mind though if you are a user of the disk imaging utility.
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