System Image Question

spilly · 08 Feb 2016

davidhk said:

Speak for yourself.
I have been using Windows' own built-in system image backup since the days of Windows 7.
I used it to restore the image many times with Win 7 in the past and now with Win 10. It NEVER fails.

@davidhk
You could be music to my ears! I'm a newbie here and would much appreciate help with Win 10 Sys Image Backup

I'm rebuilding a friend's Dell XPS 8100 system (6 yrs old) after a physical hardware disk crash - as in My(His) System Specs
The mobo has hardware RAID 1 and theoretically mirrored disks. In fact the disk never mirrored so he had death on disk failure.
Fortunately a 3 week old data backup and a laptop keep him going while I fix his box.

I've rebuilt it as a non-mirrored system and upgraded successfully to Win 10.
The system is working and fully Windows Updated. It has no data, and the SysImage to HDD is less than 32GB.
I now want to hand him back a working system, a System Repair DVD and a baseline System Image **ON DVDs**!!!
- and that's my problem - using DVDs (or USB - NB USB2)
The idea is to lock these away never to see the light of day again - unless lightning strikes again.
I don't care how long or slow it takes, as it's a one-off.
BTW I do not have his 500MB USB backup available to me and don't want to touch it in any case at this stage.
He **does** have a second hard drive and I will configure that for daily/weekly use.

But first I want to wrap my work up in a neat read-only package, (a set of DVDs)
and then demonstrate full system recovery on a second virgin hard disk (which I have ready)

This is what goes wrong in Win 10 System Image:

When I try to create a sys image on fresh DVD media, it first formats then fills the DVD for a while and asks for another DVD, giving me clear labelling instructions "Win 10 Image on [date] at [time] 1". I believe that final "1" means "Disk 1 of n".
Backup then fills the second DVD... but I get the identical message and the green progress bar does NOT progress.
I'm very confident (after 7 DVDs) that it is simply redoing Disk 1 in a never ending loop.

My questions
1) Am I using wrong blank media? I used DVD-RW +R media
2) Can it be old hardware ?? (I've checked that the DVD firmware is the latest version).
The mobo chipset is no longer current, but Device Manager has no shrieks or unsatisfied drivers
I have successfully dropped a couple of test files onto a formatted, empty DVD and can read the whole of a 300 page PDF
3) I have also messed around trying to image to a 32GB USB...
I successfully created one (by imaging to a "networked" USB drive as //[ThisComputerName]/[USB_VolumeName]/
Yes, OK, it took forever, but backup completed with no error and I could see stuff in File Explorer...
...but the Win 10 Recovery environment would not locate the backup, (even tho' it could see the USB drive as C: with its correct volume name). So I've given up on USB and am now concentrating on the "official" DVD method.

I hope you respond on this oldish thread
Thanks in advance

davidhk · 08 Feb 2016

I would sincerely advise you to start a new thread for yourself so that people will concentrate on helping you instead of being distracted by the original question.

Thank you.

OldMike65 · 08 Feb 2016

@spilly
This is exactly way I always recommend using a 3rd party image backup app, and not windows backup. I have read many posts with users making their windows backs and then when they did to restore one of them, they fail. DVD's are becoming less and less useful as time goes by. Everything is more towards usb devices. DVD's are becoming a thing of the past. You said what you want to backup is less than 32 gig. You have some options here. You could try a 32 GB usb stick, it might hold everything, but I would go for a 64 GB usb stick instead. Use a Program called Macrium Reflect Free version. Install it on the hard drive, then make a Rescue Media Boot disk, from within Macrium Reflect. Using the USB stick. This USB rescue stick only needs to be a 4GB stick. Their cheap to buy. With this bootable rescue disk you can access any image backup that you have made with Macrium Reflect. Incase the user can not access their OS hard drive, this rescue disk can restore the OS back to original condition. Then make a complete image backup of the users C-Drive (OS) to either a 2nd external drive, or a 2nd internal drive. It is possible to even make the image backup to a USB stick, if its large enough to hold the complete image. Here is the link for Macrium Reflect Free.
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx
At least give this a try, you just might come to like this program as much as lots of us on here already do :)
Mike...

cereberus · 09 Feb 2016

HanginJang said:

Please do yourself a favour and use Macrium Reflect or any other disk imager. In my tests (and many others) the Microsoft System Image service rarely if ever works.

There's a lot of free options out there. While not a traditional backup, there's the free Rollback Rx Home edition which I use. It's a really reliable program.

I always recommend using at two different image backup up tools initially, in case one fails. I am an unashamed advocate of Macrium Reflect Free which has worked for me across many devices. I found the internal windows system to be less reliable.

What you find is a particular tool may work fine on your pc, but others may find it doesn't work on theirs.

Ultimately, you have to experiment to find the one that works best for you.

Although Macrium has never let me down, and I use it all the time, I always make an occasional backup with Easeus Todo which also has worked well for me (but I prefer Macrium as it is faster).

Point is "Do not put all you eggs in one basket"

Regardless of imaging program used, you should always backup critical data separately as well, in case a full reinstall became necessary.

I actually keep my OS and programs on one drive, and data on another - makes data backup much easier and prevents creating huge image files.

PiKo · 09 Feb 2016

davidhk said:

Speak for yourself.
I have been using Windows' own built-in system image backup since the days of Windows 7.
I used it to restore the image many times with Win 7 in the past and now with Win 10. It NEVER fails.

If it does not work for you, naturally you look for one that does. But don't be judge and jury.

In Win7 system image recovery always worked. The first time I needed a system image recovery in Win10 it did NOT work. A new Win10 installation was necessary. Moreover, with each Win10 update, my restore points are gone. So, my confidence in backup-restore facilities in Win10 is below zero.