Image Backup - Win 10

badrobot said:

It's not about preserving what you have installed but rather saving the time to do a complete re-install and avoid the ever annoying Microsoft account setup when bugs present themselves or Microsoft pushed a destructive update. Up to you.
I've installed W10 TP like a primary OS on my PC. I will be using it in place of my main Win 7 OS which is intact and safe on a separate SSD.

You are totally correct about having a backup.

I have always made them for operational systems and tested on the betas. Keeping the Recovery system intact, is important to me. If you do have an OEM system, you need to have the Factory Image partition backed up somehow, and any other strange partitions from the original install. Dell is willing to sell there own version of backup software, which I assume will restore the install back to what it was. I also assume the other backup options you mention would include all the partitions on a drive so they could be reinstalled correctly. I may have to start using one of those.

Right now, I have the same type of setup as you, with the beta on a separate drive.. But since many of us will have nightmares for years concerning the 8 to 8.1 process, I wonder if Microsoft will be using the same type of thing for Windows 10. I probably need to do an install over a working 8.1 system to see how it works. They are still using the smaller Recovery Tools partition in 10, which I was disappointed to see, since that limitation was involved is some of the problems encounter during the update.

If you are changing your system configuration by removing the ability to do recoveries, that is fine for you. I would prefer to keep my system in its original configuration, especially when "testing" a beta. Maybe on an OEM systems, if you do not have the install media, it would be good to have other options in case of problems with the image.

The smaller partition I was referring to was the 300 MB Recovery Tools partition on UEFI installs. It will backup normally when creating a System Image, but was the cause of the Imaging problems related to Shadow Copies on the 8 to 8.1 updates. The 350 MB (MBR configuration) one was also involved on some installs. Microsoft increased the size in the later updates so I hoped they would make that size a standard for non-oem installs.

jimbo45 said:

Hi there
Still using ACRONIS for my backups - works fine.

Cheers
jimbo

Ditto here. Long time user of Acronis (present version 2015). Also use Terabytes Unlimited's Image For Windows. Both performed without issues.

Rich

I've been a long time user of Acronis as well.
I haven't bothered to install any version of it to Windows 10 yet. However of course using Acronis boot disk I've created a backup image of my Windows 10 partition just like the OP point is to do, makes it soooo easy in minutes to restore when needed as I test different things that surly I will want to image it out back to square one quickly.

Damn, 10 minutes, my poor old computer is getting a bit slow.