so I want to make the image disk before I update to win 10 ver 1903. macrium shows all the partitions like C:, G, D, system reserved, dell support, etc. which one do I actually need to make an image?
tried doing C: only and it is way too huge for a thumb drive of 16gb, so how big is it? way to big for a dvd disc
thanks!
M. Songs
Can you post a screen shot from disk manager show all info. What ever the size on disk will be the image size you can compress an image but it wont give you a lot more you will need other parition as well if you want to restore
Use the option on the left hand side of the Reflect window "Create an image of the partitions required to backup and restore Windows" which will ensure you can restore a bootable PC. I don't trust MS updates and would backup all system and user partitions.
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It will be roughly half the size of the occupied space on the partitions represented by the image--if those partitions add up to 200 GB occupied, it would be roughly 100 GB.
Macrium has a "high compression" option that would save you a bit of space, but not much. In my experience, it might squeeze that 100 GB down to 80, but not to 40.
If D is a data only partition, you most likely would not need to include it. Likewise, you shouldn't need the Dell support partition.
But if you have enough space on the USB drive, you can certainly include ALL partitions if you prefer.
A USB flash drive is not the preferred destination, but certainly better than nothing. You can get a 128 GB flash drive for 20 or 30 dollars.
If you have all your application/ game install media, keys etc, or you can easily download to re install them, you could always un install all those items to reduce the size of the image file to be created.
If you have an Nvidia graphics card you could also un install the drivers/ Geforce experience using DDU, that could reduce the C:\ drive size by a Gb quite easily, you could always download and re install after you restore the image to disk.
I use an External Hard Drive with an eSATA connection made by Roswell. I back up al the partitions on C:\
You are going to need something other than that 16GB flash drive. For now to backup and for later to make periodic full disc images. Going without a full drive (all partition) backup is a bad move. You can just reinstall Windows but without the backup disc image you have lost all user data, e-mails, installed programs, etc. Best to bite the bullet and get a 1TB or larger USB connected hard drive to use for now and later.
I would do a complete drive, all partitions, disc image (backup). Most partitions, except C, are small and won't make much different in size of backup.
The only thing that will not be valid, after upgrade, is the Dell recovery partition.
Each of my two laptops have two 1tb ext usb backup/restore HDs, each HD contains two SysRes partitions, two C partitions, 1 D partition -- full images thereof. I have W7Pro.
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