Create System Image in Windows 10  

The procedure of creating System Image in Windows 10 seems bogus. Yesterday I tried it three times and the creation went till the end and reported that the System Image was successfully created. When I went to look at it, its size every time was below 4 kilobytes.

Today I spoke to a Microsoft Representative and explained to her the problem. She straight-away washed her hands off and asked to to contact Microsoft Support. I then gave up on the problem.

There are further developments. Someone in Microsoft contacted me on another issue and I told him about the System Image problem. He then took control of my computer and following the procedure described in this tutorial that I had also followed created the System Image of 22.70 gigabytes. I haven't tried to restore it yet.

I've been forced (if that's the right word) to resort to Windows own backup utility for my clean W10 install. As a long time user of Acronis, I'm sorry to report that the latest version of True Image has far too many serious (potentially OS breaking) issues...

I've used Windows backup in the past and its always been OK, but now its time to get serious and test it out for real. I've already successfully imaged my system and restored it but I have questions :) which if any of you know the answers to would be great, but I'm also hopefully going to do some serious experimentation to see for real what it all does.

So in no particular order...

1/ Is there a limit to how much space in a given partition (or external disk) is available for backup storage. In other words, in a 100Gb partition, is 100Gb available to Windows backup, or is there a cap on it such as 30 or 70% etc.

2/ On one run of backups onto the same partition, I noticed it seemed to do the expected full backup and then the following one seemed like an incremental adding only around 1Gb to the total space used. When you restore, it has the option of picking either backup which again sort of confirms the 'incremental' suspicion. If it is incremental, do the incrementals reflect full system changes to the OS or are they just changes to user file data ?

3/ I'm under the impression that to archive backups successfully, that it is going to be up to me to keep a list of what they are, and to perhaps rename them on the proviso I reinstate the original name for a restore. Windows calls each one by the same name with no means to choose your own at creation.

4/ I haven't tried zipping the backups, that's on the 'to do' list.

5/ This is an odd one. I have two empty (as yet) partitions and I included them in the backup. When formatted, the partition reports 100Gb of 100Gb free. After each backup, that space comes down, first 99.9, then 99.8, then 997 and so on as each new image is made. I find that bizarre. Reformatting the empty partition restores it back to 100/100.

6/ When you run Windows backup it rather vaguely reports that previous images may be overwritten. What rules does it follow for this ?

Is there an official Microsoft document detailing how it all works ?

These are all things I need to try and test and investigate. A reliable imaging program is the single most important program I have, and the fact Acronis broke my clean install on three separate attempts means I need to look elsewhere. As long as Windows own is reliable, and as long as I really understand all its quirks then at this point I'm happy to use it.

Mooly said:

A reliable imaging program is the single most important program I have, and the fact Acronis broke my clean install on three separate attempts means I need to look elsewhere. As long as Windows own is reliable, and as long as I really understand all its quirks then at this point I'm happy to use it.

Macrium Reflect Free.
Macrium Reflect Free


I can't answer any of your questions about built in Microsoft imaging because I've never had to nor wanted to use it.

Thanks. I might consider something like Macrium in the weeks to come. As long as I have a base image to revert back to then I know I can try different options and see what works.

One dark thought I have in all this is that because W10 changes so much with different builds and so on, one real concern is that 3rd party software may well work today and not tomorrow. Backup software is tailored to suit the OS concerned, and so if that changes, then there is no guarantee that the program will still work correctly. And W10 is constantly changing.

No it doesn't verify. Its very basic compared to Acronis, you just get offered which partitions or drives you want to back up and it goes ahead does it. There are no options at all. That said, it does seem to work well. I do want to explore it more though.

I've used Acronis pretty much daily from TI10 with Vista (still using that), TI2012 with W7 and TI2014 with W8.1. Last week I opted for TI2016 to use with W10 and it was a total disaster. Backups could not be added to the backup list for restore unless you deleted all the tasks first. Worse of all, once you had clicked thorough a few options it started to display an "Acronis is terminating procedures and your PC will shut down in 2 minutes" message every time you wanted to shut down. I had three attempts at installing it onto clean W10 images and all were the same. The Acronis forum is awash with complaints over TI2016 and so enough was enough, I'll be putting in for a refund.

I am using TI since 2003 and am now using TI15 on Windows 10 without a problem. I was thinking to upgrade to T!16 but shall now wait.

In the meantime I have tried the Windows 10 System Image App and there are still lots of problems there too that I reported on this Forum. Only yesterday I complained to MS that the Mail Tile wasn't working and four technicians hemmed and hawed about it but couldn't solve the problem. The fifth one asked me to reinstall Windows and from him I learnt that one could do so without losing the installed third party programs. The reinstallation corrected the Mail Tile problem and a few other problems as well.

Mooly said:

No it doesn't verify. Its very basic compared to Acronis, you just get offered which partitions or drives you want to back up and it goes ahead does it. There are no options at all. That said, it does seem to work well. I do want to explore it more though.

I've used Acronis pretty much daily from TI10 with Vista (still using that), TI2012 with W7 and TI2014 with W8.1. Last week I opted for TI2016 to use with W10 and it was a total disaster. Backups could not be added to the backup list for restore unless you deleted all the tasks first. Worse of all, once you had clicked thorough a few options it started to display an "Acronis is terminating procedures and your PC will shut down in 2 minutes" message every time you wanted to shut down. I had three attempts at installing it onto clean W10 images and all were the same. The Acronis forum is awash with complaints over TI2016 and so enough was enough, I'll be putting in for a refund.

The thing with backup programs is that its to late to find out if they work OK when you really need them. You have to fully test them first and be confident that they are going to do what you expect.

Acronis TI2016 seems very buggy with W10 but having said that, if the .tib file has been created then it is usually restorable, even if you have to use bootable media to do so. When it starts interfering with Windows itself is where I draw the line.