Create System Image in Windows 10  

I've never had an issue with restores. ^ Lol, just seen Bree posting :) My experience has been similar in that it works reliably. Moving and renaming images, well I now know why that can cause problems because of the hidden and unseen 'restore points' that accompany the file.

I can't just remember what happens now, whether you only retain the ability to restore the first or the last in the chain. Logic says it would only be the first base image that was restorable if the hidden data was not still associated with the original file.

I backed up my computer 2 ways fortunately - an image file and particular folders, both to an external drive. I used "Bounceback-18" software. Then I erased the hard drive and started from scratch due to many unexplained issues I had on the computer. "Bounceback-18" reports that I can restore particular files and folders from an image. However when I tried to restore my files from the image in my own admin directory (C:\users\Ed), I got an access is denied error due to permissions and I could not restore them. So, I'm interested in getting a different backup software.

I am doing this at home, so I have no need for security. I wish a backup software would change permissions on my user files and folders to "blanks" or null so I that I could restore with ease. Fortunately the backups of particular folders saved me or I would not have been able to restore from the image.

Would you recommend a better software for backup and restore to a different machine? I understand the previous comments, but what good is an image backup if you cannot restore to a different machine if need be? If you change the hard drive, isn't it essentially a "different machine"?

Macrium Reflect is excellent free software and I believe the Pro (Paid) version can re-install to different hardware , however a new HDD or SSD does not constitute "new hardware" in Win10 , a new Motherboard may due to Driver issues.

I use MR to clone and Image Drives all the time , you can also explore Images for Files etc if needed.

KB

tried to restore windows from a back up image and got the following message.

windows cannot restore a system image to a computer that has different firmware. the system image was created on a computer using EFI and this computer is using BIOS.

could someone please enlighten me about this?

Was the image made on the same PC that you wish to restore the image to ? I'm no expert on UEFI Bios vs Legacy Bios but it sounds like you have either made a substantial change to your system (change from legacy Bios to UEFI) or you are using different PC's

Others may know more :)

it was made on same pc and for time being on same hard drive but separate partition. I think in bios my mother board is set to legacy bios if that matters, I don't know. the mother board is a msi tomahawk.