System Image Backup using Windows 10

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I was playing around with the “Image Backup” in Windows 10 and backing up to a external HDD.  It appears that toward the end of the process you are asked if you want to create a “System Repair Disc” (DVD).  I did that out of curiosity.

But, I’ve got a couple of questions:

1. It seemed to me that a “System Repair Disc” is required to boot from and then you “point to” the location of the backup, in my case the external HDD.  I could never get the external HDD backup source to boot by itself regardless of fiddling with the bios. Is this the case?
2.  Once you’ve created a “System Repair Disc”, can you use that same disc for any future backup.  In other words, would the disc….be generic ?

Thanks for the help.

Mike

 

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You can backup from a running system, but you can’t Restore a system that’s in use.

You backup to the external HDD.
When you get ready to restore, you have to connect the HDD to the computer, then BOOT THE COMPUTER FROM THE REPAIR DVD. That runs the restore operation from the DVD, and the System is not in use. Then you point tell the backup/restore program to restore the computer from the backup on the HDD. The backup/restore program will be able to see both the System disk and the backup image.

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Yes PKCano, that all makes sense.  Where I was confused is:

1) If the System Repair Disc is required to boot, then why (on the menu) make it optional.

and

2)  Reading my Windows 10 Inside Out 3 book it says:…….making a system repair disc is redundant if you already created a recovery drive…….

Just wondering.  Thanks for your help.

Mike

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Mike wrote:

making a system repair disc is redundant if you already created a recovery drive

… do you already have a “recovery drive”, or a system image? The system image, and it’s System Repair Disk are legacies of older OS versions.

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the most easy, to be trusted, and simple way is to make a systemimage or diskimage with non microsoft software, to repair :: and boot with the bootable cd dvd usbstick and copy/replace the image back to the original place…..

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Mike wrote:

I could never get the external HDD backup source to boot

Using a 3rd party product I created the recovery disk on an external disk. This created a small partition on the disk and I then used a partition manager to create a second partition, where all the backups go. I can now boot from the external disk and restore from same.

The same is possible when you create a Windows recovery drive – there is an option to backup to the recovery drive.

cheers, Paul

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I do this as well but with a install of windows that never (in good times) gets used. Thinking of this I believe if doing a recovery from such a stump windows install to disconnect from the internet while the stump windows is booted.

Just because you don't know where you are going doesn't mean any road will get you there.

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Mike wrote:

I’ve got a couple of questions: It seemed to me that a “System Repair Disc” is required to boot from and then you “point to” the location of the backup, in my case the external HDD. I could never get the external HDD backup source to boot by itself regardless of fiddling with the bios. Is this the case?

Yes, it is not bootable by itself.

Once you’ve created a “System Repair Disc”, can you use that same disc for any future backup. In other words, would the disc….be generic ?

Yes

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[Vincenzo]

Mike wrote:

1) If the System Repair Disc is required to boot, then why (on the menu) make it optional.

You may have previously created that same disk, or created a recovery drive.

 

2) Reading my Windows 10 Inside Out 3 book it says:…….making a system repair disc is redundant if you already created a recovery drive……

A recovery drive is a flash drive that does the same thing, boots the computer to the Image Restore utility. You create one from Control Panel/Recovery

.

As a side note, recovery disks are kind of old-school, are slow, and many computers now do not even have an optical drive. Recovery drive is much more useful.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Vincenzo.

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[Mike]

Lot’s of good information here.  Thanks.

For the record, while the Windows Image Software (Recovery) program that’s built into Windows 10 (brought up from Windows 7), is pretty bare-bones.  It’s works amazingly well once you figure out the limitations.  For instance, I backed up an OS only in about 10 minutes.

After reading the comments and then suddenly sitting up in bed at 4AM, I had one of those Aha moments.

The reason why you need a repair disc along with your backup drive is simple:  You can’t boot at all into an installed Windows environment, or even to the into the Safe mode repair options that are part of a Windows installation.

Thanks to all,

Mike

 

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Mike.

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PKCano wrote:

You can backup from a running system, but you can’t Restore a system that’s in use.

Yep, right under your original post. Took sleeping on it!

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