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Software to make & restore bootable image of C: drive in Win10

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m0unt41n 28 Jan 2016
Finally got Windows 10 and all the basic software I use sorted out on my PC and on a Surface Pro tablet. What I would like now is to be able to create for each a bootable USB flash drive with an exact image of the C: drive so that if in future it did not boot or got messed up I could boot it from the USB and then have the existing C: drive completely replaced by the image on the USB stick.

In years gone by I use to get with the PC a bootable CD with an image of what it was like fresh from the factory. Nowadays there is no CD / DVD and no CD / DVD drive just a USB drive.

Ideally I would like a bit of software which would automatically make the USB drive bootable, make an exact image of the CD drive including all the programs I have installed and write that to the USB stick sector by sector. Then if I booted from the USB stick it would give the option to automatically replace the C: drive with the image on the USB stick.

I suspect I can do it in stages: bootable USB, System Image Backup etc but since I do not have a Windows Install CD or ISO and I am not sure this would also make an exact copy of all the programs installed on the C: drive I would prefer a software program that did this all automatically, even if I have to buy it.

So any ideas of recommendations would be greatly appreciated.

Windows 10 Pro on the Surface, Windows 10 Home on the PC, USB 3.0 on both.
I already have a regular data backup system so this side is covered OK.
In reply to m0unt41n:

Don't you just want to create System Recovery and System Image files? At least I hope so, because I've just done that on a 'new' Win 7 machine...

The tools to do this are built in to Win 7, so I'm sure they're in Win 10 somewhere...
 The Lemming 28 Jan 2016
In reply to m0unt41n:

I have not took the plunge yet with Windows 10, but when I do I shall be buying a copy of Acronis compatible with Win 10.

At the moment I use an older version of Acronis that has mirror copies of my Windows 7 Operating System which I revert to from time to time should I need to fix a problem.

Is this the sort of thing that you are after?
 Hooo 28 Jan 2016
In reply to m0unt41n:

I use Veeam Endpoint Backup Free for this. It creates scheduled incremental backups that are a full system image. It creates a bootable USB drive with the recovery application on it. I have a large drive for the backup image and a small bootable one for the recovery. In theory you can put the backup image on the bootable drive, but I gave up on this as I couldn't find a big enough drive that would boot.
I have regularly restored from the images, the other day I successfully used it to go back to Win 8 after trying Win 10.
It's totally free, even for commercial use.
m0unt41n 28 Jan 2016
In reply to captain paranoia:

Win 10 has it but hidden.

However I wasn't sure whether it just makes an image of the System Files or makes an image of the complete C: drive including all the other programs I have installed. I want the latter, not the former. This is because having had the hassle of getting all the other programs configured and set up I did not later want in a restore to just restore Windows 10 and then have to install all the other programs.

Which is why I was looking for some software that would do it all automatically.
m0unt41n 28 Jan 2016
In reply to The Lemming:

Does it do a complete image of the C: drive or just a the Windows Operating system and after a restore you would have install all the other programs again?
 Hooo 28 Jan 2016
In reply to captain paranoia:

> Don't you just want to create System Recovery and System Image files? At least I hope so, because I've just done that on a 'new' Win 7 machine...

> The tools to do this are built in to Win 7, so I'm sure they're in Win 10 somewhere...

I've read that you can create a System Image in Win 10, but they've made it very hard to find. But I wouldn't bother anyway. I found Windows System Image utterly awful, it wasn't incremental or schedulable, and it regularly failed to restore.
m0unt41n 28 Jan 2016
In reply to Hooo:

Something like that except that I just do a single backup image of the complete C: drive and save that for either a problem or usually once a year a spring clean to redo the C: drive and get rid of the dross that accumulates.

All the data, emails, documents etc etc are on the D drive and real time backup to a WD MyCloud.
m0unt41n 28 Jan 2016
In reply to Hooo:

> I've read that you can create a System Image in Win 10, but they've made it very hard to find. But I wouldn't bother anyway. I found Windows System Image utterly awful, it wasn't incremental or schedulable, and it regularly failed to restore.

That's true and for something as important as needing to restore all of the C: if there is a disaster I was trying not to involve Bill Gates.
 Hooo 28 Jan 2016
In reply to m0unt41n:

> Win 10 has it but hidden.

> However I wasn't sure whether it just makes an image of the System Files or makes an image of the complete C: drive including all the other programs I have installed.

It does do a full image of the drive, but it's awful. They've done us a favour by hiding it. The only reason to use it us if you are blocked from installing a 3rd party solution.
 The Lemming 28 Jan 2016
In reply to m0unt41n:

> Does it do a complete image of the C: drive or just a the Windows Operating system and after a restore you would have install all the other programs again?

The entire drive.

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/personal/computer-backup/
m0unt41n 28 Jan 2016
In reply to The Lemming:

Thanks will have a look.

I had been using Redo
http://redobackup.org/

which in theory was ideal, used Linux so didn't need windows running to backup or restore, made an image of all of the C: drive. But since replacing my PC and getting the Surface Pro both having Win 8 then, when I tried the restores it had problems so have started looking for something else.

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