Create System Image in Windows 10  

NavyLCDR said:

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?"

You have the ability to create a bootable rescue CD/DVD. Every time you make a backup it offers this option, or alternatively you can make a rescue disc at any time. That allows you to restore the image even if Windows will not boot. Other repair options are also offered.

What I don't know is how a restore would be handled if the target drive were a new unformatted one such as a replacement. I also haven't tried the 'mount' option that seems to be available. I'm assuming that allows you to browseand copy files over from the image... but its not something that I have tried.

Full backups is the way to go. The differentials/incrementals are much more difficult to manage - especially if you get a corruption on one of them.

Quite right. Furthermore I use Acronis and the differential and incremental backups created by it are not much smaller in size than the full backups that are created by it.

whs said:

Full backups is the way to go. The differentials/incrementals are much more difficult to manage - especially if you get a corruption on one of them.

topgundcp said:

Windows build-in creates separate .VHDX files for each partition such as: System reserved, C Drive, Recovery partition, EFI etc..
Yes, you can mount a .VHDX file from Disk Management by attaching it, assign a letter which you can explore and selectively restore File(s)/Folder(s) using drag and drop, copy/paste...

Thanks. Its not quite as simple as I thought (I had it in in my head that there was a right click and mount option, lol must have been thinking of Acronis).

I learnt the hard way with Acronis and it rewriting boot info on a restore. New PC, new install of Acronis, all good except that doing a restore lost the manufacturer recovery partitions and 'MS on-line office thingy'. It was no great loss in the end though, it just spurred me into doing a clean install.

whs said:

Full backups is the way to go. The differentials/incrementals are much more difficult to manage - especially if you get a corruption on one of them.

For nearly 10yrs I've used incrementals with Acronis. Weekly/daily chains and then storing month end full backups for archiving. Never had an issue and I often used to restore images after trying stuff out.

So while I've never doubted Acronis's ability to restore a .tib file that its created, where my problems have been are in operational quirks and bugs that seem to get worse with each edition. True Image Home (2006/7) was the most faultless but of couse it won't run under 8.1 or 10 and it also won't recognise SSD's for using it just as bootable media.

Mooly, for mounting the VHDs, try disk management - see picture

Thanks, I'll have a play with that when I get chance.

I've been using Acronis True Image Home for years on all systems up to and including Windows 10 (with an MBR system disk). Acronis is very flexible. I like it.

I've just installed Windows 10 on a 120GB SDD in a new PC. I used the default GPT partitioning, and of course Acronis doesn't recognize the system disk.

I've been reading this thread and would really like to stay with my old version of True Image. I'm considering changing the SSD to MBR partitioning just so I can continue using True Image.

I don't need > 120GB for my system SSD. What am I really losing by using MBR?

@arnoldh
Well I had the same questions about MBR vs GPT last year. I was also running Acronis at that time for at least 7 or 8 years.
I ended up using GPT because my computer was UEFI (in bios) and ran much better under GPT style. GPT is the newer style while MBR is much older style. As far as Acronis goes, I stopped using it for making image backups, after finding out about Macrium Reflect Free edition. Macrium Reflect is much better method, uses a lot less disk space, no added bloat ware that came with my Acronis. Doesn't load all kinds of stuff into memory, like my Acronis did. My last version of Acronis took like over 250 MB of hard drive space too. Loaded 3 or 4 things into memory, everytime I booted up. I just got tired of it, after trying Macrium Reflect which uses very little hard drive space, makes a Rescue Disk which you can put on a USB or DVD for emergency reasons if you can't access your boot drive for instance. Of course the choice is yours. But Take a look at Macrium Reflect, try it for a while, you will see the differences I think pretty quickly, and its a free app.
Take Care, Michael...

Thanks. I'm trying Macrium Reflect Free at the moment. I see it doesn't do incrementals, but apart from that looks good. Maybe that's the way to go.