Resolved Create a system image

Will this action backup the entire drive as is, or will certain apps, documents, videos, pictures, etc. be excluded?

 

Hi Evan Omo, please bare with me for I seem to be getting a little dense in my old age.

From what I gather via your posted link is the system image will backup the entire hdd to an external hard drive, usb, or dvd. This would be ideal for oem owners such as myself. I wouldn't have to reinstall using their pre installed software.

Then I use the backup files option to backup any new or deleted files. Run this option weekly, monthly, whenever.

These two backup options work hand in hand together.

Have I missed anything?

 

Duge, the Windows System Image creates only backups the hard disk/partition on which your Windows is installed. It may or may not suit how your computer is setup.

If like most of the OEM's computers, all you have is only one hard disk & only one partition (C\, it would backup everything - the Windows system & data. If your system differs, like mine, where you store data on some other partition/hard disk it would not be backed up.

I won't suggest Windows System Image as your primary backup solution as I have found that I have not been able to restore the image as it refuses to read/access the image on other hard disk/partition randomly & arbitrarily.

There are a lot of other excellent & free options out there. One of them is AOMEI Backupper which I have been using for last 1 year & highly recommend. It can create a system image, a partition image or hard disk image.

 

Hi rsinfo. Still confused. I understand AOMEI Backuper can do a system image, partition image, and/or hard disk image. How is it different from a clone? Which would be best for an oem backup solution, image or clone?

This oem has 1 disk with 2 partitions. C:\ which is the main partition and D:\ which stores HP's pre installed software. If I ever have to do a complete reinstall, and I have, I use the D:\ partition to format and reinstall Windows back to factory condition. Then I have to uninstall all the programs I don't want and install the ones I do want. PITA. In case of HDD failure I have made a copy of D:\ on dvd's.

I'm looking for a way to backup the hard drive just as it is now using either an image or clone so I won't have to do all the uninstalling/reinstalling as before.

Also looking into a solution to backup files that have been changed/modified after the hdd image or clone. I think AOMEI Backupper will do this but does it save the changes to a folder for me to backup on disk later or will I have to copy to dvd every time changes/modifications are made?

When restoring from and image or clone, can this be done over a partition/hdd that has an operating system already installed or will I have to format the partition/hdd before I can restore?

 

Clone & image are basically ways of creating a backup of your partition/hard disk. Clone normally refers to make a copy on another hard disk which can be used as it is whereas image is a file which needs to be manipulated by the software to get the files on the hard disk.

Difference Between Disk Cloning & Disk Imaging.

You want to image the complete hard disk on another media & not clone it as it would require the same exact hard disk.

The imaging software does everything for you. It would create the necessary partitions & format them without your intervention.

 

Thank you. Your link helped greatly.

 

Resolved but I can't remember how to resolve it.