How to make a System Image backup 

After a complete weekend lost watching all the present content on RU-vid about recovery drive, repair disc, system image, file history, set up backup, system restore, and so many other intertwined terms that work combined or sometimes substitute one another (yeah, after a complete weekend all these things are not completely clear to me) I'd just like to express how your videos are the best ones on these matters. The most clear in my opinion. Thanks for making them so complete. I'm sure that if I could have an afternoon with you I would leave as an expert on this subject, you know everything. The completeness on the theme, the clarity on the explanations, the appropriate editions for the understanding of the common noob like me. Thanks a lot. I just would like if you had videos on all the doubts I have, like the counterparts of all the mentions I did for Win7 and linux. But for what you offered in your channel so far, I have nothing but to thank you a lot!!!!!!!!

THIS VIDEO coupled with the other one about how to make a recovery drive using a memory stick has been an absolute gem of a learning lesson. thank you Dave. appreciate your hard work.

Excellent! Clear and concise, straight to the point. Great tutorial!

You have been an absolute lifesaver with this tutorial! Thank you! For your recovery usb drive and wipe and reset tutorials too! I have to send my HP Spectre 360 back to the retailer for investigation, as one of the thunderbolt USB ports has failed, and it appears to heat up quite quickly too, during ordinary usage. They told me I had to send it back wiped, just in case! I was panicking big time, until I found your amazing tutorials and advice. So simple and straightforward. What more can I say. As a 67 year old woman from the UK, who likes to think she’s more than a little up there, technically minded, and up for a challenge, it truly was a blessing in disguise!

I just bought a new laptop and looked for videos on how to make a system image and a windows recovery drive. Your videos are the clearest and easiest to use i found. Thanks so much.

Hi Dave; I found your videos and boy they're a real help to unscrambled O S systems even to 76-year-olds that did not have pcs even in school and very little at work before retirement. Thanks a really big bunch!!

Thank you for this beautiful guide. It took me a total of 35 minutes to completed a "System Image backup" with a storage size of around 200 GB.

Great explanation. Just had a complete catastrophe from a botched windows update. I lost all of my data and will not be making the same mistake again. Now that I have my computer up and running again after formatting both my hard drives and using a USB drive to boot from and install windows on my main drive I will be making a system image as shown in this video. Very clear and easy instructions thank you!

Here I made a system image with aomei and restore to another pc, worked well.

Nice video buddy. Extremely helpful and easy to understand. I don't know why is it so hard for other people to explain in their video of "what is the system image". Most of the videos are junk.

Thanks, it was a good reminder to complete this before I need it. Very clear and easy to follow. To improve further it might help if the backing music is dropped, it allows us to focus on your instructions.

Great video. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of my hard drive completely crashing without a recovery disk. Super helpful in the event this happens again.

Hey Dave, thank you for your RU-vid "How to Make a System Image backup" It was a life saver. Cheers Mate

Just used this now in 2024 ... brilliant thank you so much

Hey Dave, an FYI, I used your video and backed up my windows 11 today. It did exact job as win10. Thanks a lot buddy, you are the best!

THANK YOU DAVE , was my first experience to install the windows 10 to a new ssd hard drive ,{into a old computer with windows 7 and a failing old hard disk drive }, everything was perfect THANKS to all your instructions clear and to the point . All our thanks and appreciations !

Thank you for all the useful vids you made explaining backups. I wrote all your instructions and will do both, regular manual backups and create a system image with the recovery disc. Appreciate your time.

Great video Dave. I have spent hours trying to find a video on what i was looking for and i think you have nailed it. Thank you

Great tutorials as usual. Thanks for all the effort. All your tutorials are easy to follow well explained and very informative.

Yes, years ago, w/win8, my drive would lose its mind; repair wouldn't work, but I could get into the "advanced options" and restore the system image backups I made. I got used to doing this on a regular basis. It HAS been a long time. Originally, I had to start from scratch and re-install updates'n'things. Later, I discovered I could make a system image that included installed programs, etc. Back then, I could make incremental system image backups so it was pretty slick. Thanks for the advice about using a quality usb drive for the recover drive in your prior video.

Best video I found so far regarding this process. Thank you very much.

Well FINALLY. For I have been trying to recover a FULL computer; after the internal HDD failed. And I have a "backed up" HDD; with even a "computer" Image and a "Shadow Copy" plus every Files on the old HDD. But NO one could tell me how to recover my computer; and told me only how they recover files. That will NOT fill my wants.! Yet I have backed up my computer EVERY night; for years; with "ALL" things backed up. But I did not know what to do; when my internal HDD failed. Not even Microsoft could tell me. Sad, but OH so true. And you told us that in a short time. WOW!. Thank you kind Sir for that. Awesome!

Thank you Dave, it was very informative on how to look after all the different ways of doing a good backup, I really needed to know earlier when i lost all my data BUT now i have it all backed up. Thanks again.

Thank you Thank you Thank you.. Explained simply and in detail. Finally someone who talks like a human being not a geeky tech nerd assuming we all know what we are doing.

Thanks Dave, you made the process simple to understand and complete.

Thank you so much. My computer crashed and it took hours upon hours to get it up again. Wish I had made a recovery disc and watched your wonderful videos. I made a recovery USB to use if my computer crashes in the future.

Just a tip, you can hold your left shift key and click on restart and it will make your computer reboot into the recovery environment :) You can do this instead of turning it off 3 times.

Please continue what you're doing you're so helpful !!! Thanks 🇮🇳💕🇮🇳

Repaired computer returned and system image restored - successfully! Once again, thank you, BIG time!

Nice information, I am going make a System image backup, and I also watched your other video of making a Windows 10 USB recovery drive. We all know that it's not "IF" your hard drive will fail. It's "When" will your hard drive will fail. When this happens using your videos I should be able to replace my hard drive and restore Windows and files that I have backed up.

Thank you for taking the time to make this awesome tutorial. Super nice!

That was the best tutorial video I have ever seen! Outstanding!

I had no idea which external hard drive to choose. I just looked for a solid-state external hard drive and Seagate had excellent reviews, so I bought one. I finally got around to using it. But today, I decided to create a system image. So, I closed everything and restarted. Then I cleaned my PC using CleanMyPC, then restarted again. Cleaning, I noticed, took 9 seconds off the restart time. Down from 31 seconds to 22 seconds. Which is only up 7 seconds from the original start-up time. But I had fewer apps, etc... Anyway, I am happy to see you recommend the Seagate HD I bought and I'll be even happier if, by the time I finish watching this video, I will learn how to save and make use of this specific system image. Especially if it can undo all the bs that happens after a windows update! What's curious to me is, I bought this old computer in late 2018, or early 2019 at the latest and it only took 15 or 20 minutes to create a system image. But maybe that's because I don't have video games on this computer? I am confident everything went well because it did say the system image had completed successfully. A question I have is what do the scheduled backups do to the system image? Nothing, right? They are two separate processes, right? They save all the new photos, apps, etc, correct? And the system image restores the computer's functionality... So if when I restore the system, will I still retain all the new things I added since I created the image? Dave? Or anyone who might know?

Thanks for taking the time to make this video,nicely explained and at A pace where we can take take alot of info in ,calm and steady the way to go ,i just liked and subbed

Sir, Your videos are spot on !

Another well-done tutorial, thank U Dave.

I made image backup with aomei, it's really convenient.

When want you back to YT!!! Thanks for the excelent tutorials

Thanks a lot, I lost my data and learnt from my mistake and your video helped me take precautions for the next time around. I am now prepared to face the future. :)

I am just about to join the windows 10 party so your video here has been a great help to me as my new laptop arrives tomorrow, and this will be the first thing I do. Thank you for the video

Very well done. I never understood the new way that Windows does backup since they moved away from NT Backup after XP/2003 Server. You remedied that in this and your last videos like no one ever ever been able to or documented well enough to. I like the file versioning better from before too, although at least that change they can make an argument for. Now that I understand it, I know that I'm not missing anything, and wouldn't consider using it. With ShadowProtect and Macrium Reflect, you can easily do automated continuous incrementals, (Synthetic Full Backups) that can give you 15 minute snapshots. You can browse or roll back and entire computer to a consistent point in time from minutes ago to months ago. You can also have them do periodic full images, all unattended. Moreover, you may want a copy of your old machine for software, operating system, or any other reason in the future. You can turn their backups into virtual machines and boot them on completely dissimilar hardware, and move them back in minutes. I've had to do that before with a server at a factory and they ran on it for 4 days and didn't notice any difference in performance or any other aspect. (Which you can do with Windows 10 images as well) Health checks are done automatically. The one that makes the most sense for home use is Macrium, while I tend to use ShadowProtect on servers. Macrium is $70 a license and $140 for 3. The free version will do about everything the pay-for version will except Synthetic Full Backups. It even makes it easy to restore from larger to smaller partitions.

Excellent as are all your other Videos Dave

Great video, very informative and professional. Thank you.

wonderful explanation

Terrific video. Very informative and instructional. Thanks!

Years ago, my laptop suddenly refused to load windows. I bought a disc containing Ubuntu and used it, but I kept losing my desktop. It seemed like a Unity issue, so I went to Linux Mint. Mint extended the life of my laptop for the next five years. I finally got a new laptop last year, and I'm afraid of it happening again. Thank you for showing us how to back it up. I have some DVDs here for a recovery disc, plus a thumb drive.

Dave. Excellent video. Thank you so much.

So beautifully explained, and simple. Thank you I am learning new stuff here, big thumbs up

These backup videos of yours are very helpful. Because backup isn't the sexiest topic I guess, there aren't that many good videos out there, but it is very important and you make a great job explaining this. Well done sir. Keep up the great work. Subscribed :)

Thank u so much...the way u explaining all stuff is marvelous ❣️❣️❣️

Good video. Very helpful and concise.

Thank you very informative, I backup with Aomei which is a easy tool for me

Thank you sir Dave.

Very informative and easy to follow, thank you.

u r a savior. thnx for the saving videos. learned so much and its not that complicated.

Thanks for the information

Tnx now i install windows and all programs in just 7 min

Dave, Thank you so much again, you have the best videos on RU-vid, clear and detailed, thanks again for taking the time to make those videos, Appreciated.

Great job on the video. Thank you!

Very Helpful! Thank you!

Excellent video my friend

Thanks for useful information, 👍

Very helpful, thanks!

Good stuff!!! I saved my computer using your info. Thanks

Thanks. Very educational 👍👍👍

Thank you so much buddy!!!! Your video saved me, thanks so much for your effort

Thank you!

I would also recommend using File History which is similar to Time Machine on MacOS. It keeps versioned copies of all data on the fly. It’s included with all versions of Windows 10.

Hey Dave, It was an awesome trick !!!.... Thanks a lot for this

thank you for your explaination

Thanks Man this really help full video ,keep going.

Thanks, very professional

Thanks a lot for this video tutorial sir.

Thanks for your tutorial

Good evening Dave, I tried to find a way to direct message you to say thank you, but was unable to. You helped me in a very unconventional way. I have been spending many, many hours trying to get an SSD installed on a dell optiplex with the OS cloned from a HDD. I tried so many programs, clonezilla, acronis, shadow mask and many more. Every single one even the standard windows 10 loader had issues getting the installer and hardware to work and boot - Dell love to have their own non-standard peripherals and Bios. After watching your video I was able to 'Backup' a system image of the HDD and use the windows restore to 'restore' the backup onto the new SSD - IT literally took 15 minuets ! I am so happy, I thought the SSD had died and that machine for my workshop would have to run from a HDD forever. Thank you again, your videos at first were a little basic for me but I was not too familiar with the image backups. Thank you again and I will now setup pooled drives and have all my family's machines using the built in windows 10 backup with the occasional image backup. Thank you so much Dave !

THanx.... Great presentation of important information.

It is new technology for me .i need to watch few time to follow up. Thanks

TYSM ^^ Needed this along with the USB Recovery to replace a failing HDD - Aloha form Maui^^

thanks you! much help.

Dave ... u r a good man 🤗 .... thank you 😊

Great Tutorial! Thanks it really help.

great video easy to understand keep up the good help info

Hi Dave, and everyone.. Firstly thanks to Dave for coming up with these videos, recognize the amount of effort spent to layman explain these techie things especially on backup and recovery. Kudos. So just to clarify, : in case i need to revert my whole local C drive including contents apps data drivers all in that C drive (OS plus ALL files in my C drive), i will need both System recovery usb + the system image hard disk?? Wont it work with just the system image hdd? Another thing to observe, - there's quite a number of queries here but would really appreciate some responses (much much appreciated). Cheers!

Thank you. Your great.

Thanks for sharing.

Informative vids, thanks. Subbed 👍👏

What to do when I have no system back up and cannot boot

It worked for me several times. Be advised on staying in the same UEFI/Legacy boot as the backup image was made in.

This is a useful way but if you have no system restore point you have to turn to aomei to do this.

Your videos are amazing. To the point and concise. Keep it up !!

Thank you

Don't know if any have had this issue when creating a Windows 10 System Image but I tried to successfully create a system image 5 times and each time the status would reach 97% then stall and never fully complete. Then a thought dawned on me and that was to NOT hide my desktop icons and make sure the "Show desktop icons" was selected from the right mouse click desktop context menu. I was finally able to create a Windows 10 System Image after much frustration! 😃👍

nice BG music, from royalty free music

ty

V informative and good way to explainig . Thanks bro

Yes, I have had a "catastrophe" in the past: a power on/off situation in the 110v Household power ... it blinked on and off a few times in a second or so ... resulting in a power surge that took out the hard drives in both my Linux Desktop and my Windows Desktop. The drives in both of these computers had given me their money's worth ... over 8 years old each, I think, and I needed an excuse to upgrade to SSDs in both. Restoring my Linux Desktop hard drive was not too hard, but there were peculiarities that needed to be addressed: The size of the original hard drive was bigger than the SSD I replace it with. The Windows Desktop was a bit of a chore reinstalling my licensed copy of Windows 10. I am just a user and not a computer repair tech and I am quite aware of how easy it is to do even more damage to your equipment and software and files if you don't do EXACTLY what is required. The computer industry is at least partly responsible for the confusion that users experience due to ambiguous terms and vague directions. Room for improvement. I have to thank you for your well thought out videos and your clear communication on the subject on hand. Always remember that those listening to your videos may not and probably don't have the same level of understanding that you have.

This backup took my computer well over 2 hours to complete! How long did it take for yours to do?

Very useful. My PC died recently.

This was such a well explained video to follow thank you! I also have a few questions about making a system image about a brand new laptop. (1) I've just backed up my new laptop and it took 6 mins 45 seconds to create a system image and it is taking up 33.8GB on my hard drive at the moment out of 1 TB. Is this normal? (2) Also if I make another system image in the future once my computer has more files, will this be stored separately? (3) Finally can I use this hard drive normally to store other things or would you recommend keeping it separate? Thank you Dave!!

Thank you Dave for your very useful video. I was wondering what size of an external hard drive would I need to do regular system backups if I have 512GB disk in my PC laptop? Can I do backups of files and a disk image on the same external HDD?