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Plug in external drive. Download install and run Macrium. Tick the boxes of what you want to image and select the drive. Click the button.
That's the base image.
Subsequent images- you find the backup specification created by the above, and a couple of clicks and that starts.
A helpful tip to make sure your external drive is always allocated the same letter:
In Disk Management, allocate it e.g. letter R (some letter late in the alphabet you'll not use).
Do that when you first plug the drive in.
That means Macrium will find it next time.
Tutorial
https://www.tenforums.com/tutorials/...ore.html?ltr=M
Video
https://www.tenforums.com/general-su...tml#post355809
and there's lots of help and videos on Macrium's site.
Creating disk images lets you restore Windows and all your disks and partitions to a previous working state, quickly and probably without technical help.
You can recover from:
- a failed disk drive (restore to a new one)
- ransomware (which encrypts your disk)
- user error
- unrecoverable problems from failed updates to problem programs
- unbootable PC (hardware faults aside)
Images also act as a full backup- you can extract files too.
You can even use images to help you move more easily and quickly to a new PC.
Can be used with Laplink software to transfer your build automatically to another PC
Imaging can even help you sleep at night knowing you have a second chance.
Many here recommend Macrium Reflect (free) as a good robust solution and more reliable than some others. It’s
- more feature rich
- more flexible
- more reliable
than Windows Backup and Restore system images.
It's well supported with videos, help and a responsive forum.
There are other such programs, free/commercial, some with simpler interfaces, but Macrium R is one of the most robust and reliable.
How long does it take?
SSD+ USB3 - maybe 15 mins for the first system image, less thereafter
HDD + USB2 - maybe 40-50 mins
That’s with little personal data, few programs installed.
- of course, depends how much you have on C:
(You can and should image all your partitions and disks)
Once you've created your first image, keep it updated with e.g. differential imaging- which images just changes from the first image, more quickly, and creates a smaller image file.
You need a backup medium - say- twice as large as the total amount of data you are imaging to keep a reasonable number of differential images. This will vary dependent on the number of images you keep, so is only a rough practical guide.
Some comment that system restore isn't always reliable; if it works and solves the problem, great. But sometimes restores won't work or fail. And of course a restore point only covers a limited number of aspects of the system. That’s where disk imaging comes in.
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