How to Use Windows 7’s System Image Backup Feature

windows 7 - control panel - system and security - backup and restore - page

In mid February 2009, shortly after installing Windows 7 Beta on my primary PC, I made the huge mistake of running an automated ‘Registry Cleaner’ program. Suffice it to say, it destroyed my system.

Because, my data is backed up on a nightly basis, I lost no data. But I did lose years (stretching back to my first Vista x64 install in January of 2007) of application installations and tweaks. Two months later I have finally (mostly) completed the long and laborious chore of re-installing and tweaking the many dozens of applications I use every day.

To ensure that I NEVER experience this special kind of hell again I decided to create an image of my primary system C:\ drive. I looked at various commercial system image/ghosting programs but decided that the system image feature built into Windows 7 was sufficient for my needs.

Highlights:

  • The process took about 30 minutes for a 100 Gig C:\ drive.
  • I was able to use Windows 7 and all my apps as normal during the entire time the image was being created.
  • Compression was terrific. It compressed my 100 GB system to a 45 GB image backup.

Below is a simple step-by-step description of how to use it. The process is simple:

  • Click on the Start button.
  • Type ‘Backup’ into the search box.
  • Choose the ‘Backup and Restore’ Center option.
  • This will take you to the ‘Control Panel –> System and Security –> Backup and Restore’ page (see image above).
  • Select the ‘Create an image backup’ option (circled in red above).

create a system image - where do you want to save the backup?

  • Choose where you want to save the image. You can choose between another drive on the same machine, a network drive or you can burn it to a bunch of DVDs. In my case I chose a largely empty local D:\ drive.

Glitch Re: Network Drive Credentials: There is a glaring glitch if you want to backup the image to network location. For example, when upgrading my laptop to Windows 7 RC 1, I wanted to save a laptop image to my Drobo which is hung off of a networked XP machine. However, I do not require password credentials to access my shared network drives. Windows 7 would not allow me to proceed with the image backup when the network credential fields are left blank. Grrr!

  • Click ‘Next’ and away it goes:

windows 7 - create system image - status bar

  • It took about 30 minutes to create the image of the 100 GB system C:\ drive on the locally attached D:\ drive.
  • The ultimate image is substantially compressed. The image on the D:/ drive was 47.5 GB – 47.5% of the original 100 GB size!
  • When done, you are given the option to create a bootable repair disk:

windows 7 image - create a system repair disc

  • As the message above implies, if you have the original Windows 7 install disk, you won’t need a separate recovery disk because the install disk provides an option to recover from such system images. That said, for the cost of a blank DVD, I chose ‘Yes’ here.
  • You next choose what DVD RW Drive to burn the recovery disk to – in my case the F:\ drive.

windows 7 - create a system repair disc - select drive

  • It took about 1 minute to burn the recovery disk.
  • On the local or network drive, the saved image is stored in a directory entitled ‘WindowsImageBackup’ (highlighted in the image below):

windows 7 image save directory

That’s it.

Now, I haven’t tested the image backup to confirm that recovery works as advertised. I trust that it will. I hope I never have to find out.

For a look at Windows 7’s built-in data backup system, see: ‘First Look at Windows 7’s Backup and Restore Center’.

Note: I don’t use the built-in data backup system. I much prefer Centered System’s Second Copy,

Comments

comments

15 Replies to “How to Use Windows 7’s System Image Backup Feature”

  1. The Windows 7 volume backup only backs-up one volume at a time. If for some reason you want the ‘system reserved’ volume backed up you’d have to do that separately. But the whole point of doing a volume image is so that you don’t have to go back to that base-line system created by the manufacturer. That’s the last thing I want. nnI always have to do triage on my system after purchase to get rid of all the crap-ware and useless cycle-burning utilities that are installed on new machines – and which will be reinstalled if you restore from the system reserved volume. Hence my love of Windows 7 volume imaging – no need to start from scratch each time.nnIn fact, with Windows 7 I now delete those manufacturer reserved volumes and stretch my c: drives volume to include them to reclaim the space! :)nn…Dale

  2. I find it difficult to believe that you would question something you have obviously not tried for yourself. Your tone makes it sound like you are calling Dale a liar and I can tell you this – he is NOT.rnrnI just recently used the System Image feature to create recovery DVD’s for Se7en Ultimate on an HP Pavilion dv6000 CTO machine. It works beautifully and with no problems. And you want to know something else? I created 6 DVD’s containing the backup WHILE USING MY COMPUTER!!rnrnDon’t speak until you know what you are talking about.rnrn

  3. Hmmm, it would have been nice to see that you *had* successfully restored. Creating a backup is nice and easy, but no images are available when I go to restore, I have tried saving image to internal secondary drive and to an external USB disk, the restore utility does not find either one. Very frustrating and rather useless.rnrnSteps to create are of no use if the restore feature is not working as expected (I am using the RTM build of Win7 BTW).

  4. I simply don’t believe your story. If it really would be important to you to have a reliable image of your operating system you never would image it while running the system and – even worse – work with this system while imaging. No one does this.

  5. Hmmm, it would have been nice to see that you *had* successfully restored. Creating a backup is nice and easy, but no images are available when I go to restore, I have tried saving image to internal secondary drive and to an external USB disk, the restore utility does not find either one. Very frustrating and rather useless.

    Steps to create are of no use if the restore feature is not working as expected (I am using the RTM build of Win7 BTW).

  6. I simply don't believe your story. If it really would be important to you to have a reliable image of your operating system you never would image it while running the system and – even worse – work with this system while imaging. No one does this.

  7. Yay for windows system image…had to restore from it today and it was a snap. Popped in the recovery disk restarted and booted to the cd rom. I followed the simple steps and chose NOT to format the other disks as one of the recovery options. When it was all said and done I had my machine back to about two weeks ago sans problems. My email accounts were still saved and the pst file was still intact from the time of the backup. I tried Acronis previously but the older version did not seem to like Windows 7 64bit. Now if only I can figure out how to dual boot to Ubuntu I will be totally happy.

  8. Was starting to see corruption issues on my 6-month old laptop (Win 7 64bit). Whilst waiting for a new drive to ship, I used the image tool to take daily snapshots to an external drive, while working. Internal drive gave up yesterday; new drive installed today; booted from Win7 dvd; restored from image on external drive (in about 25 minutes). Booted right up exactly where I left it yesterday. Windows System Image: two thumbs up.

  9. hey i have a question! do you need to back up the “system reserved” volume as well considering its needed for the operating system to run? or does the bootable disk sort that stuff out?

  10. The Windows 7 volume backup only backs-up one volume at a time. If for some reason you want the 'system reserved' volume backed up you'd have to do that separately. But the whole point of doing a volume image is so that you don't have to go back to that base-line system created by the manufacturer. That's the last thing I want.

    I always have to do triage on my system after purchase to get rid of all the crap-ware and useless cycle-burning utilities that are installed on new machines – and which will be reinstalled if you restore from the system reserved volume. Hence my love of Windows 7 volume imaging – no need to start from scratch each time.

    In fact, with Windows 7 I now delete those manufacturer reserved volumes and stretch my c: drives volume to include them to reclaim the space! 🙂

    …Dale

  11. I only wish the Win7 backup utility provided an automatic way of copying over old back ups, or deleting the old after the new was completed. On large volume systems, (1TB), your backup drive will quickly fill up if your creating system images + file backups as M$ recommends.

  12. I must be doing something wrong because every time I do an image it wants to backup over the prior image. I want the reverse. I want multiple images so I can recover to prior points in time.

  13. After doing many images in the last month, I discovered that the Win 7 image utility will do exactly what you want – which is what I don’t want. If it runs out of space it will automatically write over the earlier backup. I’d at least like it to warn me first so I could move the prior (about-to-be-deleted image) to another place. nnYou can always go in and manually delete old images from the drive you are putting them on. They are listed one after the other in the:nn WindowsImageBackupnnfolder on the drive you specified.

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