How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7

The new backup utilities in Windows 7 are actually pretty impressive and creating an image will be possible in all versions. Today we take a look at creating a backup image of your machine without the need for a third party utility like Ghost or True Image. You just just finished installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 on your computer and have it set up to your liking. One of the first things you should do now is create an image of the disc so in the event of a crash you will be able to restore it to its current state. An image is an exact copy of everything on the drive and will restore it back to its current state. Its probably best to create an image when everything is clean and organized on your system. This will make the image file smaller and allows you to restore the system with a smooth running set up. Creating an Image in Windows 7 Click on Start go to Getting Started and then select Back up your files. 1-img

Next click on the Create a system image hyperlink.

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Decide where you want to save the image. You can choose an external drive, burn to multiple DVDs, or store it on a network location.

You can include other drives if you want as well but remember that will add to the size of the final image.

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

At the confirmation screen notice the amount of space the image may take. If something doesnt look right you can still go back from this point and make adjustments.

A progress meter is displayed while the images is created and backed up. In this example a disk of about 15GB in size took under 20 minutes backed up to an external drive. Times will vary depending on your system and where youre backing it up to.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[11-Feb-12 1:34:29 PM]

How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

After the process is complete you get the option to create a system repair disc which you should do and make sure to save it in a secure location.

When it comes time to restore the image, you will be able to use the System Recovery Options to get the system back.

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Image in Windows Vista Vista Ultimate, Business, and Enterprise allow you to create an image, but Vista Home and Home Premium users do not have the option. The process is similar in Vista, type backup into the search bar and click on Backup and Restore Center.

Then click on Back up computer and the wizard will guide you through the process.

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Conclusion This is a extremely handy feature and it actually works well. It is also nice that the feature will be available in each edition of Windows 7 instead of just the higher end versions. This will save you some money in not having to spend $50-80 on a third party utility. You should create an image when everything is fresh on your system so the image is not too large and the essentials of you machine can quickly be restored. For instance I created an image after a fresh install and putting Office 2007 and a few of my most commonly used programs. The entire image came in around 10 GB which is easily stored on an external drive or a few DVDs. Don't show again X

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By Mysticgeek on 09/24/09
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Comments (91)
1. September 24, 2009 4:30 am

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[11-Feb-12 1:34:29 PM]

How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

InDiSent Awesome!!! 2. September 24, 2009 7:06 am GoodBytes This feature is only on Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate edition. 3. September 24, 2009 11:54 am Mysticgeek @GoodBytes: The imaging feature was only available for the higher end versions of Vista, However, all versions of Windows 7 include the imaging featureeven Starter edition :-) 4. October 10, 2009 3:41 am Kathy Can the image then be restored to a different computer (same model) as in a computer lab environment? 5. October 14, 2009 6:58 am John Michaels On NeoSmart Technologies there is download for the Windows 7 32-bit and 64-bit recovery discs. You may want to put link in your article, because I find helpful this download. Download: http://neosmart.net/blog/2009/windows-7-system-repair-discs/ 6. November 10, 2009 3:56 am ajay I have tried to do a complete system image as well as a repair disk with my Windows 7 Ultimate OS. But I am receiving insert blank disk error message. but i am using new disks 7. November 25, 2009 12:27 pm Ernesto Very usefull thanks!!!!! 8. December 4, 2009 2:06 pm Onlooker You can only use a network drive location for W7 professional, Ultimate, and Enterprise; unfortunately. I was bummed to find this out as I wanted to create an image for my laptop on a external drive attached to my desktop. Now I have to unhook it and hook it directly to my laptop. More work, less convenient. 9. December 17, 2009 11:26 am hooroy Excellent article! Have fun this Friday 10. December 20, 2009 4:36 pm

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

mark skinner hi love the article on creating an image win,7 i may sound a bit thick or its late, can i/ or how do i get some articles emailed to me or downloaded to my computer ..my bloody hands killing me writing it all down yours in kind anticipation m a skinner ps, i have signed up for your email service, keep up the good work. 11. December 22, 2009 7:47 pm JonMCC33 I can confirm Mysticgeeks statement that the imaging feature is available on all versions of Windows 7. I have Windows 7 Home Premium and it is available to me. 12. December 31, 2009 10:40 am Rich I recently installed Windows 7 Ultimate on my laptop. I also installed a NAS (from Seagate) I went into Microsoft backup and restore to take my initial backup. There is about 10gig of user files including a music library. The backup started running and it looked like it was going to take about 6 hours. The status screen showed the files being copied and then it changed to saying Creating System Image of C. The whole process slowed down and after running 18 hours shows that it is 75% completed. Is this normal. My laptop is connected wirelessly to the router and the NAS is connected into the back of the router on a 10/100 port. Should it take this long? Any ideas what could be taking so long 13. December 31, 2009 1:54 pm philoso4 While it appears that Home Premium edition will allow you to setup backup, it will not recognize any network drives. Onlooker is correct. 14. February 25, 2010 11:21 am Noah Is this applicable to WinServer 2008r2? Im using that as an OS and the one thing missing is a native backup tool. Granted it is a server OS so I didnt expect it, but it had so much of Win7 already, I was curious if it was hidden somewhere. 15. May 2, 2010 3:36 pm SendMail Hi, Can you pls tell me how can i make System Image in Vista ? I have Vista Home Basic, Everyone now and then i use to get BSOD. i am always scared of Installing New Softwares, I am totally Frustrated with Vista.? Regards, 16. May 6, 2010 5:42 pm spencer when attempting to create a system image I get a notice that says backup failed. The reason I am given is there is not enough disc space to create the volume shadow copy on the storage location. Make sure that, for all volumes to be backup up, the minimum required disk space for shadow copy creation is available. This applies to both the backup storage destination and volumes included in the backup. Explanation then goes on to give examples of space needed. I have a external HD with 213.49 GB of free space, this is certainly enough, can anyone advise? I have also gotten a error code 081000033.

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

17. May 19, 2010 5:25 am golfdude I have around 200 gb on my main hd (RAID 1) and started a System Backup with System Image yesterday. I am backing the data up to a 320 gb external hd. It has been running around 16 hours so far and is only 45% complete. Any ideas why this would take so long? I have checked my power settings and the cpu hasnt shut off. Windows 7 Ultimate Q6600 quad core 8 gb ram 18. May 21, 2010 10:47 pm Don Thanks Guys! another Save, kept this computer out of the Landfill!!!! 19. May 24, 2010 12:57 am A Thanks a bunch 20. June 9, 2010 8:13 am burt First disc went fairly rapidly and store 53% of the data. Second disc slowed down when it got to the 79% spot it appears to have stopped. It hasnt moved or given an error report in 12 hours. 21. June 9, 2010 8:20 am burt First disc went fairly rapidly and store 53% of the data. Second disc slowed down, when it got to the 79% spot it appears to have stopped. It hasnt moved or given an error report in 12 hours. 1. June 22, 2010 4:16 am archie lukas Quote; This feature is only on Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate edition. bum bum bum bum bum.BUM 2. August 5, 2010 9:42 pm lokesh k.shm this article is very helpful for me. thanx for this article 3. August 16, 2010 10:45 pm julian casablancas If I have 3 partition in 1 hard drive and only create a backup of my c: drive. When its time to restore, will it delete my D & E partition? I dont want to backup my D&E because they only hold movies and apps. 4. August 31, 2010 5:29 am steve

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

I just upgraded a dell laptop from vista home premium to a windows 7 home premium after, i resized a partition to 40 gigs, and found out the image wants to be fifty gigs? is there any old windows folders i can delete to get this image size down?? thanks! 5. September 7, 2010 6:38 pm Jeff Can this be used image be used on other computer that are identical, like Ghost or true image? 6. September 29, 2010 12:12 pm ken Thank you for addressing this topic so clearly. I found it easy for anyone to follow. I previously made a restore disk and followed it up by creating an image as well to a portable usb drive ($80 200G). This article helped me know for sure that I made the right decisions in protecting my wifes new Dell laptop. Thanks so much! 7. October 14, 2010 4:16 pm Brian What would be useful would be for the imaging application to offer an extra option for where to store the disk image on the disk itself. Since it knows how much space is needed, it could offer to automatically repartition the disk, creaming off a separate lump for the disk copy. 8. November 6, 2010 2:52 am brian before I image my system, I make sure no viruses malware or relevant problems exist. For those of you having errors in creating a image, First I would wipe the drive (format) and reinstall all programs needed and dont browse the internet except to update windows. Then create a image!!!!! 9. November 6, 2010 11:29 pm Nature thank you sir your information. 10. November 25, 2010 4:35 am Marcus Bear in mind. At any given time, Windows 7 can and WILL put system information unique for full functionality in Windows 7 in the 100MB system partition, which will render all your Windows 7-made backups 100% useless. For example, a virus that access the partition will thus make the backup obsolete. Ghost-image W7 can only be made from an external boot-disk, or software that also clones and copies the 100MB partition info. Everything else is waste of time. Marcus, System Engineer. 11. December 8, 2010 1:26 pm slyaii After I followed the instruction and save my image to my networksay \\Server\Restore\Backup I then made a rescue disk and booted from the rescue diskfollowing the wizards to the last screen of Re-image your computer >> Search for a system image on the network. I manually typed in \\Server\Restore\Backup then type in my credentials and nothing happens

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

12. December 8, 2010 5:52 pm Vale Hi guys, I m having the same problem as slyaii. System image succesfuly done on a network drive. I try to restore the image, but when I got the screen asking for the network path, I type it in, it ask for my credentials and then nothing happens Any clues? 13. December 9, 2010 7:55 am Qureshi I want to create image of windows 7 professional and want to restore/deploy on other machine. Can i be able to do that by using the windows 7 built-in utility. if not can anybody help me out the way to create image using any third party software. I tried to create image using Acronis but its not working. Need help please Thank you! 14. December 13, 2010 7:03 pm slyaii @Vale, I finally got it to work vale. The files inside of WindowsImageBackup, you do not need to include in your path, just the folder before it. For example, my image is stored in \\ServerName\Folder\Folder\WindowsImageBackup just type this \\ServerName\Folder\Folder and that should do it. 15. December 22, 2010 8:56 pm Curly Ive been trying to make a system image on Windows 7 (64 bit) but it says it could be up to 400+ GB, which is obnoxiously large. Any tips on making this smaller aside from deleting files? 16. December 26, 2010 11:43 am mike @ Curly.My 64 bit W7 image is about 56gb and that includes about 8gbs of photos. 17. January 5, 2011 3:19 am haris can i use the image running at vmware..?? 18. January 15, 2011 8:49 am Robert Carnegie To make the system image smaller, make the Windows volume smaller, for instance: - Resize the Windows volume to use less than the whole disc. Problem 1 you should attempt this only when you have already made a backup of everything. Problem 2 you may need to use a non-Windows tool such as GParted Live to do this, automatically moving some tricky parts of an NTFS volume away from the volume end. And remember Problem 1.
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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Then you can create one or more separate disk partitions to put other files in instead of them being on C. - Also, put the Windows page file on a partition other than C. Its only temporary storage of currently running programs, and you dont need to back it up, you can create a new one. I think a fixed size is a good idea so that it doesnt get fragmented, and also that ideally it would be one of the first things on the physical disc. But what size? Well, can you afford to commit to permanent swap file use 3 times the RAM in your computer? Or 4 times? No one knows how much is or isnt enough, but find out the price of your hard disk and then the percentage of that that Im proposing that you assign to this use. Perhaps $10, for instance. Also, if youre trying to apply this to a FAT32 formatted volume, remember that files there cant be larger than 4 gigabytes, but with some secret trickery, you can have more than one swapfile on a volume. - Also, study how to disable the hibernation function and thus (the only way to) remove hiberfil.sys from C. Up to Windows 7 and beyond, the file has to be on C if it exists, 7 makes it initially 75% of your RAM size and probably at least half of one backup DVD that you dont need to use. It would be nice if Windowss own backup ignored the unnecessary contents of these huge files, but it doesnt. Of course you are limited to 4 primary partitions on one hard disk using MBR, and youll almost certainly have a terrible time trying to make Windows boot from GUID partitioning work, unless youve already got it. But if you do use an extended partition, it can contain several volume partitions in one. 19. January 18, 2011 1:55 am edward de la cruz I just bought a new pc with windows 7 & i created a system repair disc which took about half an hour but know i am in the process of creating a system image Its been doing this for about 17 hours & i am only half way through. Is this normal or is there a problem with my pc? 20. January 19, 2011 5:11 am Debra I have a pc with windows 7 & I am not able to process a backup or create a system image. I insert the first dvd and it arrives to 31% and its remained at 31% for about 27 hours & I am only on the first dvd. Please advise. I am curious if something is running in the background which could be interferring with the backup process. If so what could it be and I will manually shut it down. Also it says that the backup could require more than 300GB. Is there a way to compress the image so that it takes up less space? 21. February 1, 2011 4:31 am imran can i use ths disk for os install in other systems 22. February 2, 2011 10:13 pm bob it seems that if you want to make more than one system image backup, it will overwrite your original and you cant make sequential ones (very lame). Also, Marcus is spot on, if you get a bad virus and want restore your system image, you MUST have created the Boot DVD when you made the image, Windows, once infected, cannot be used to to restore an image, you need the BOOT DVD! 23. February 13, 2011 12:14 am Khariullah thanx alot. and that is really great i really needed that. 24. February 17, 2011 11:27 am daniel for those of you who with the less than ultimate or professional win7 oss and complaining about it not being able

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

to image to a network share, you can always map your network share as a service using something like autoexecnt (spelling) which will make the mapped networked drive look like a local drive ;) 25. February 18, 2011 1:21 pm Rony Folks My Windows 7 Ultimate x64 drive is 44 GB but when i create a system image it says that it needs 206 GB space to back up. It backs up my 2nd hard drive as well, which is 200 GB. I just want to back my C drive how can i do that? i tried by unplugging other drives during the installation but still it backs up the 2nd Hard drive. I did it with Ghost 15 too the size of the back up is 180GB and it took 3 hours to back it up. Isnt there any way that i can just backup the C drive? I dont have 200GB extra space for the back up. 26. February 19, 2011 3:16 am ahamd faisal thanks. can i use this iamge to run on any other new PC . 27. February 22, 2011 6:14 pm Oswald Xenton Does creating a system image results in saving a single file on the chosen partition (for example creating an image of C: on D:) or does it erase the whole D: and records a C: image on D: erasing all the data on D:? Thanks. 28. February 22, 2011 8:38 pm eCarsBay Thanks a lot! 29. March 7, 2011 12:16 am MouZ Good one. Highly useful.. thanks 30. March 9, 2011 8:55 pm Matthew I think its probably worth updating the article to say that you need not create a system repair disc if you already have a Windows Install disc, or OEM, because the repair features are built-in. Excellent article though. Its nice to have all the pics because it makes it easy to follow at a glance. Thanks HowToGeek :) 31. March 14, 2011 3:10 am Susanta I have one querry .please help me out .. Suppose I have made the image of the C: drive and I have D: and E: drive as well if i run the image file files are avalable D: and E: it will get affected ?? 32. March 16, 2011 10:34 am

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

parthiban to Susanta : no it wont get affected .. only C: will be restored to your previous state D: and E: drive will not get affected by this. 33. March 16, 2011 10:38 am parthiban Mr.Oswald Xenton pls think practically you are saving an image file of C: to D: ..D: acts as storage unit . it never deletes the contents of D: drive. do it and give your feedback 34. March 16, 2011 10:42 am parthiban Rony check whether you have selected your second drive for backup while chosing the drives to backup if it is then uncheck it and chose only C: for backup and also save this backup in some drive other than C: drive. 35. March 16, 2011 10:47 am parthiban hi Debra , i think u have selected all the drives from your system for backup to an DVD since content is more you cant write it to an external DVD. so,while going for backup select only the drive were Operating system is installed and save this image to an additional drive either your D: or any DVD then proceed with your process 36. March 22, 2011 5:14 am mauri I just clean-installed Win 7 Ultimate. I used Driver Genius Pro to find and install the latest drivers for my Toshiba Satellite. Disc image creation was fast (around 30 min or so) on my Internal Hard Drive of my Dreambox, which is hooked to my wireless router. Thank you very much for this simple guide! Keep it up guys. You make our lives easier. :) 37. March 28, 2011 11:25 am Mufn8r Im doing the Backup via the System Image option. I am on my fifth DVD and everytime it asks me to insert a new disk it tells me to label it the same as the first! For example; VISTA -PC 3/28/2011 7:30 AM 1. How am I going to be able to distinguish the disks if they are all labeled 1? I have a bad feeling the backup is looping. Also, as a testament to MSs incompetency, I had an issue with an install of Windows 7 Home Premium that wouldnt boot. I tried EVERY option via the Repair Disk but nothing could save the Operating System. I had to go buy a new Hard Drive! At that point I lost what little faith I had left in the Windows franchise. 38. April 1, 2011 9:24 am MikeC Maybe you can help I unfortunately have a RAID 0 array and a drive is failing, if I do a full system backup with Win 7 Pro to an external drive, create a boot disk then disable my raid, will I be able to restore the system on to a singe drive? The original Win 7 disk is gone and the system was pre loaded with XP or Vista then upgraded to Win 7 Pro. My main concern is losing my Win 7. I still have my Win key and activation number. 39. April 1, 2011 6:21 pm RickyTay

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

When you use system image disks will it restore everything including software programs, data etc. or do you have to reinstall the programs. 40. April 1, 2011 6:23 pm RickyTay Further to my earlier comment actually I wanted to restore the Windows 7 program only as I think the program is corrupted and leave other programs and data alone. 41. April 20, 2011 5:09 am Niranjan Good Very usefull 42. April 20, 2011 5:10 am Niranjan Reddy Good Very usefull 43. April 20, 2011 2:37 pm thudson Can I use this to make an exact copy to a new computer. I have a computer running windows 7 pro and am replacing it with a new windows 7 pro computer. I want to move everything from the old computer to the new computer. Can I use this to do that? Will it mess up drivers and such? I am switching from an HP to a Lenovo laptop but have a ton of programs that I dont want to have to re-install. So with that said will this work for me? 44. April 26, 2011 7:31 am Pedro Hello everyone, I have not gotten any straight answer to my question and help needed and as I see more like me needs to know as well. Can we make an image and then use that image on a brand new hard disk? I bought a Hybreed disk supposed to be faster and I want to make exact copy of my hardsik to the new hybreed and replace it. Can any one please comment. I/we would appreciate very much Thank you Pedro 45. April 26, 2011 7:34 am Pedro Hello me again, forgot to mention, when I tried it I get like an error saying if I remember well , New configuration detected and windows would not start. Both harddisks are 500 gigas. Thanx 46. May 7, 2011 3:28 am eowyn How do I get a system back up image for a new hard drive that has not been set up with Windows before? Can I download one? 47. June 3, 2011 10:41 pm

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Ivan David Pogue, in his excellent book Windows 7 The Missing Manual , writes this: If you were thinking of using a system image to turn a new PC into a replica of your old, crashed one, be warned: You cant restore a system image to a new PCs hard drive it itsmaller than the old one. (Yes, even if the data on the backup drive would easily fit the target drive.) Hope this helps! 48. June 21, 2011 9:03 am Ahmed Ali Dear I have windows 7 pro it is image DVD contain of windows 7 pro and office 2010 but the problem is that DVD just working with MAC address that was added before but now I wanna add more MAC addresses to this list how can you help me please it is very important think Note:- it is a licence Software best regards Ahmed Ali 49. July 6, 2011 10:58 am Tom Aresin it sucks, it actually does not work at all !!! at least, not for me!!! win7 pro, fully up to date, an attempt to create image of 100gb c partition to another partition with 160gb free space fails due to insufficient space!! wow!!! it took msft a couple of decades to engineer their failure to a perfection . win7 and the whole msft simply sucks the macrium and easeus can create the same image with no problem at all in about ten minutes, taking all of about 11gb for each image oh, how i wish i was young again, and capable of ditching this whole microsoft garbage . but who knows i might live long enough to see a usable linux, or perhaps some other os, who knows ill just keep waiting 50. July 12, 2011 9:38 am Tipu Pasha Extravaganza ! Thankz Alot 51. July 20, 2011 1:55 am Gil Salazar I used the image from one pc and successfully restored it to another identical hardware PC>. however the network will not connect. DHCP will not get an IP address. There are no driver errors showing, everything looks like it should work, It just wont connect to the network. Should I have used sysprep in any of the imaging steps? Would be an awesome addition to imaging if the network works :) any help is greatly appreciated. thanks ~Gil 52. August 4, 2011 3:39 am Dark Phoenix Kudos to TheKid7 at WilderssecurityForum for giving me this link. I just went through Hell trying to get 4 major popular imaging tools to backup and restore an image of my windows home premium 64 bit system, and none of them worked except for this built in image tool in Windows 7 ! Paragon Backup & Restore Advanced 2011, Macrium Reflect Free Edition, EaseUS ToDo Backup, Acronis True Image 2011 Home Edition none of them would work for me ! Most of them use the VSS shadow copy technology that win 7 uses so I realize now those programs are little
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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

more than front ends for the tools already in windows 7. No need to buy those at all if the same or better functionality is already in windows 7. 53. August 9, 2011 1:45 am Joe How can you be so exited about this piece of cr*p? I have a 2TB disk, partitioned into a 100MB hidden system (by Win7), 100GB OS/Windows partition and remaining space data. I want to make a system image of the system and OS partitions and save on the data partition. Not possible, Win7 insist on (1) making system images of ALL partitions on the disk or none and (2) is only able to store system images on a separate physical disk. How pathetic is that. 54. August 12, 2011 3:30 pm Joe It would be nice if you gave me/us instructions to make a backup with windows vista, 64 bit version. 55. September 6, 2011 2:46 am Veeresh Patil Hi, My Win 7 Profs OS is corrupted, I have taken the OS Image from the Other Laptop which is having the same configuration, Ist possl to Use that Image to restore my OS? I have kept my OS backup image in the Portable Hard drive, While Selecting the Image I am not able to see the Portable drive only :( Can any one please help on this ..:( :( Thanks Veeresh 56. September 8, 2011 12:04 am JOe Dempsey Veeresh YOu can probably only use that image to restore to an identicl laptop. It has to have the same hardware. For instance it copies system files and if you have say an nvidia card on one laptop and an ati on the other , then the system files will not be compatible. You might also have trouble trying to copy an image from an AMD PC to an Intel based pc. 57. September 13, 2011 7:33 am Collin Thanks a lot :) Gonna try it 2night 58. September 16, 2011 2:28 am Mighty Curious Has anyone TESTED his or her system image file by actually restoring? Part of me wants to do this to be sure the file works but part of me feel downright scared 59. September 19, 2011 10:00 pm SDreamer @Mighty Curious

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[11-Feb-12 1:34:29 PM]

How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

Yes it works. There was one account where it didnt work for me, and I wasnt sure if it was because the partition wasnt a primary partition. See I keep a system image on a separate partition on my laptop in the case i need to restore to a fresh Windows 7 install with the essentials included. Comes in around 15 GB for me. Its worked for me 3/4 times, where 1 time was from DVDs, 2 from primary partitions, and 1 failure when I tried it on a logical partition. I would test it though if you just made your system image, takes like 15 minutes to restore from the image. 60. September 19, 2011 10:02 pm SDreamer My question is, now that I have it, can I just copy the image to an external hard drive to make more copies of it? I keep one on a partition on the sam hard drive, and another copy on DVDs. The same hard drive one is if I need a system restore away from home. Think of it like the system restore that comes with laptops these days, the factory restore thing. 61. September 20, 2011 11:59 am J Dog Yo yo yo My compy that was rockin Win7 got nicked by some walking rectum at an event I had to work. Prior to this I used my Seagate jammie to create a system image and then created the recovery CD as per Win 7 instructions. I have a back up lap top that has plenty of HD space but it is older and rocking XP pro. In addition my back up piece is a DEL and the one that got jacked was a new Lenovo, (ugly f-ucker it was). Query Can I clone my stolen lap top onto the older one that has XP if I have the Win 7 image and recovery disk? Please say yes. I need that shiznit like pronto. Thanks! 62. September 26, 2011 9:11 pm dijl @J Dog No. 63. September 30, 2011 6:54 am Prince Nice ONe IT REAlLy WoRKed For ME Me IN Windows 7 64. October 9, 2011 7:04 am Bassel Thanks ,Now I do not have to use norton ghost 65. October 13, 2011 11:56 pm JUN Thanks for the clear instruction on how to create image on windows 7. 66. October 15, 2011 7:35 am John Can i use it to restore settings even after formatting hard disk on windows 7 ultimate ? 67. October 25, 2011 9:42 pm

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[11-Feb-12 1:34:29 PM]

How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

dwtjan I just got a new laptop with Windows 7 Home Premium. The last time I got a new computer that came with no discs, I did not make my own recovery repair discs before I crashed it trying to make a dual OS since I HATED Vista. Was not aware that Vista, at first, did not allow dual operating systems. Took me several weeks to receive the paid for recovery discs from MS. So this time I wanted to do that right away. It was always stated before that this was a ONE TIME thing. It did not state that this time. But more importantly, Im very excited to see I can set up my pc the way I want to and then burn an .iso image to reinstall exactly as it was at time of creating .iso. (I reinstall OS too often!) Also no where did it say if there was a limit to how many times this could be done. Ive tried to find the answer by calling HP. Could not understand them and it sounded like a riot was going on behind them. (Must have been out-sourced) I contacted MS online and got an IM tech, who then told me to call MS. I called MS and they said to call HP. I would like to make an .iso as soon as I THINK I have everything I want completed. BUT I know I will very quickly realize there were other things I wanted to have on it. If I cannot use this create an .iso image more than once, I know I will put off making an.iso until Im SURE I have all the things I want, which may be too late to as Ill be using the laptop while Im waiting to do this. CAN YOU BURN OR CREATE AN .ISO IMAGE MORE THAN ONCE? Thanks tons! 68. October 30, 2011 10:00 pm Sebastien I just create a system image through these steps. I do have one concern though. My C: drive is 68G and the system image is only 38G. Is my WHOLE (all apps/settings) C: drive backed up or only windows files/config/settings? I thought this image process would make a 1/1 bit copy. I hope my thoughts are clear and you could easily answer my question. Thank you 69. October 31, 2011 7:48 am Mr. WAB Awesome and my friend done this for me the same which is mention here, now my system is secure, whenever Windows need to repair or having problem i can run the image and it can be done by itself. thanks 70. November 6, 2011 10:33 am jb I have have 2 of the same new pcs and one of which has all my programs and configurations can both with the same windows 7 pro installed. If I image the pc with all my programs etc. can I simply restore it to the other same new pc without windows coming back and say it cant activate windows 7 or will not perform updates because it thinks the product id has already beeen used? Anybody try this yet?
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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

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How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

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http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[11-Feb-12 1:34:29 PM]

How to Create a System Image in Windows 7 - How-To Geek

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http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/4241/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-7/[11-Feb-12 1:34:29 PM]