Backup and Restore (Windows 7) Questions

Most on this forum recommend Macrium Reflect (free) as a more reliable imaging solution. The built-in Windows offering is often described as unreliable. I am one of the few who has persevered with Backup and Restore (Windows 7). It's not so much that it's unreliable, it's more that it's temperamental and can easily loose sight of an image that could be restored. The actual restore itself seems to be reliable - if you can find the image.

When you use Backup and Restore (Windows 7) to create a system image on another drive (preferably an external HDD) it creates a folder on the root of the drive named WindowsImageBackup. Inside this folder there's another folder with the same name as the PC being imaged. This contains various sub-folders containing catalog files and the .vhdx files that are the images of each partition of the system being backed up. Typically (for an MBR system) there will three, the boot partition, the recovery partition and the system partition (the C: drive). Renaming these individual PC folders is one of the things I've learned to avoid.

JamesJoey said:

I'm not quite sure which one I would be restoring.

'Restore System Image' will always display the creation date of the image(s) it can see as available to restore.

Backup and Restore can be temperamental, renaming a PC's folder in the WindowsImageBackup folder can sometimes (but not always) prevent it being seen as available for restore. There are three ways to preserve multiple images of your PC.

The first is built into Backup & Restore. Provided there is sufficient free space on the drive you keep the system images, creating a second system image of the same PC will add it to the existing image. On restoring you will be offered a choice of dates that can be restored. Note that if the free space is limited the older image may be deleted when making a new image. Backup & Restore warns you of this, but give no control over this, nor does it tell you that an older image has been removed. The first you'll know of it is when you try a restore.

The other two ways involve renaming. It is safe to rename WindowsImageBackup itself. Creating a new system image will create a new WindowsImageBackup to hold the PC's system image. This way you will only ever see one image available to restore, you'll have to choose which image to restore by renaming the appropriate WindowsImageBackup folder back to its correct name before booting from the repair disk.

The way I prefer to use is to rename the PC before making its system image. The WindowsImageBackup folder will hold multiple subfolders for different PCs. Renaming a PC effectively makes it a different PC as far as Backup & Restore is concerned. I make a system image after each cumulative update, naming the PC to include the OS build number so I know which is which (and renaming the PC back to its proper name after the image has been made). This way booting from the repair disk allows a choice of multiple images to restore.

To be honest, although I have learned to live with Backup & Restore, from what I've seen others say of Macrium I'd recommend it too. It seems more robust and versatile that the MS offering.

PS: Never ever save an actual Windows 7 system image to a WindowsImageBackup folder that holds Windows 10 images. This is guaranteed to make the Windows 10 images unavailable to restore. If you really must save images for several version of Windows (as I do for System Two in 'My Computers' below) Then rename the WindowsImageBackup folders so that you have a separate one for each version of Windows. I have one for all editions of Windows 10 and a separate one just for my Windows 7 images.

Bree said:

Most on this forum recommend Macrium Reflect (free) as a more reliable imaging solution. The built-in Windows offering is often described as unreliable. I am one of the few who has persevered with Backup and Restore (Windows 7). It's not so much that it's unreliable, it's more that it's temperamental and can easily loose sight of an image that could be restored. The actual restore itself seems to be reliable - if you can find the image.

When you use Backup and Restore (Windows 7) to create a system image on another drive (preferably an external HDD) it creates a folder on the root of the drive named WindowsImageBackup. Inside this folder there's another folder with the same name as the PC being imaged. This contains various sub-folders containing catalog files and the .vhdx files that are the images of each partition of the system being backed up. Typically (for an MBR system) there will three, the boot partition, the recovery partition and the system partition (the C: drive). Renaming these individual PC folders is one of the things I've learned to avoid.



'Restore System Image' will always display the creation date of the image(s) it can see as available to restore.

Backup and Restore can be temperamental, renaming a PC's folder in the WindowsImageBackup folder can sometimes (but not always) prevent it being seen as available for restore. There are three ways to preserve multiple images of your PC.

The first is built into Backup & Restore. Provided there is sufficient free space on the drive you keep the system images, creating a second system image of the same PC will add it to the existing image. On restoring you will be offered a choice of dates that can be restored. Note that if the free space is limited the older image may be deleted when making a new image. Backup & Restore warns you of this, but give no control over this, nor does it tell you that an older image has been removed. The first you'll know of it is when you try a restore.

The other two ways involve renaming. It is safe to rename WindowsImageBackup itself. Creating a new system image will create a new WindowsImageBackup to hold the PC's system image. This way you will only ever see one image available to restore, you'll have to choose which image to restore by renaming the appropriate WindowsImageBackup folder back to its correct name before booting from the repair disk.

The way I prefer to use is to rename the PC before making its system image. The WindowsImageBackup folder will hold multiple subfolders for different PCs. Renaming a PC effectively makes it a different PC as far as Backup & Restore is concerned. I make a system image after each cumulative update, naming the PC to include the OS build number so I know which is which (and renaming the PC back to its proper name after the image has been made). This way booting from the repair disk allows a choice of multiple images to restore.

To be honest, although I have learned to live with Backup & Restore, from what I've seen others say of Macrium I'd recommend it too. It seems more robust and versatile that the MS offering.

PS: Never ever save an actual Windows 7 system image to a WindowsImageBackup folder that holds Windows 10 images. This is guaranteed to make the Windows 10 images unavailable to restore. If you really must save images for several version of Windows (as I do for System Two in 'My Computers' below) Then rename the WindowsImageBackup folders so that you have a separate one for each version of Windows. I have one for all editions of Windows 10 and a separate one just for my Windows 7 images.

I gave up using the Windows tool as I had restores fail on me. I have never had an MR restore fail. In any case MR is quicker, and gives smaller images, and is just all round more flexible.

The real game changer to me is the ability to mount an MR image as a virtual machine in Hyper-V. Also Rapid Delta Restore (paid version) is awesome - worth paying imo for that alone.