Create System Image in Windows 10  

Mooly said:

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.

Not a concern with Macrium Refelct Free because you can create a bootable rescue disc. The bootable rescue disc will always work to restore the image, if for example a cumulative update breaks your installation.

That's a bit like Acronis, in that as long as the backup file is created, then its restorable one way or the other. I just like the convenience of running it all from Windows tbh. You can create a bootable recovery disc for W10's backup program, it asks you every time you create an image.

Why you guys are even thinking about using Windows backup which can be VERY un-stable sometimes is a mystery to me. Acronis is now bloatware and I have bought EVERY version for last 8 years now. Last version took up huge amount of hard drive space too, added all kinds of startup services. And, has bugs too boot.
What a lot of us DO use, and is VERY reliable is Macrium Reflect and its FREE. You can make your system image from the desktop or make a rescue disk from the Macrium Reflect main menu. This is a rock solid program for making image backups, uses very little hard drive space. no bloatware. Just works!!!
http://www.macrium.com/reflectfree.aspx

Thanks, I know Macrium is very highly thought of, and I may well go down that route.

If you have become used to Acronis you may not find Macrium all that good. Far better to create a System Image from the application available in Windows 10.

Mooly said:

Thanks, I know Macrium is very highly thought of, and I may well go down that route.

I am still using W10's own application and am finding it excellent up to now. My Windows partition is only around 21Gb in size including all my programs and data, and both making images and doing restores take only around 2 to 3 minutes.

And it all works with no overheads and background processes running. File History takes care of hour by hour (actually set to every 15 minutes) changes in my user files.

Yes Windows imaging utility is very good. Only that it doesn't compress the image enough. My C: Partition is 40.3 gigabytes. Acronis Image is 24.5 gigabytes and the Windows Image is 34.4 gigabytes. Also to restore Windows image the install media is required but not for Acronis.

Mooly said:

I am still using W10's own application and am finding it excellent up to now. My Windows partition is only around 21Gb in size including all my programs and data, and both making images and doing restores take only around 2 to 3 minutes.

And it all works with no overheads and background processes running. File History takes care of hour by hour (actually set to every 15 minutes) changes in my user files.

junglee said:

Also to restore Windows image the install media is required.

Or you could create a Recovery Drive.

junglee said:

Also to restore Windows image the install media is required but not for Acronis.

You don't need install media to recover a disk image, its handled via Windows, just the same as Acronis. A couple of clicks and its all underway.

I miss the ability to do incrementals as that meant a weeks backup chain of 7 images only took around 16Gb in total with standard compression. Acronis was buggy though, although if you put the effort in to learn and get around the problems it was manageable. Windows may be basic, but on the other hand its great to have something that seems to work faultlessly every time... not that Acronis would ever fail, it was just buggy. For example in TI2012 and W7 and TI2014 and W8.1 I often experienced problems when Acronis asked for a reboot to commence restore. It would often freeze on the reboot and you had to do a forced shutdown and begin again. Also finding the location of the data base in the program files (so that you could manually edit it) was the only way to start with a clean slate and get of all the previous tasks. Not doing that, and Acronis would create empty ghost folders in the backup locations.

All that is behind me (and so to the dreadful TI2016 offering).

Mooly said:

You don't need install media to recover a disk image, its handled via Windows, just the same as Acronis. A couple of clicks and its all underway.

Isn't one of the reasons to have a backup is in case something happens to the Windows installation on the computer that causes it to become not bootable? So if my Windows crashes or my hard drive fails and I replace the hard drive....ummm....if recovery is handled via Windows how is that going to work? I have this image sitting here on this external hard drive, now what?

I wonder how many people find themselves in the situation of a computer with a black screen with one line of text "Operating system not found" and an image on an external hard drive or a network storage location and scratching their heads ask, "Well, now what do I do?"