Difference between revisions of "Making a system image"

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Creating a new disk from the image can be done using a bootable system recovery disk, which I have in my physical DVD files.
 
Creating a new disk from the image can be done using a bootable system recovery disk, which I have in my physical DVD files.
 
Update 12/31/2012:
 
 
I got some errors reported on drive C: from the HP hardware diagnostics.  Just in case this is a real problem, I decided to make a new disk image.  The backup failed with this message:
 
 
The operation failed due to a device error encountered with either the source or the destination. If
 
the source or destination volume is on a disk, run CHKDSK /R on teh source or destination volume,
 
and then retry the operation. (0x8078012D)
 
 
Additional Information:
 
The request could not be performed because of an I/O device error. (0x8007045D)
 
 
A web search for the I/O device error code yielded an suggestion by a microsoft person to turn off "shadow copies" on the drives.  [http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_vista-hardware/what-is-an-io-device-error-0x8007045d/addb5549-46c1-4a74-8666-56f0decd96af The forum is here.] A search for 0x8078012D brings me to [http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_7-system/backup-fail-windows7-0x8078012d/ed690f1f-b0f1-4039-a6a1-6c649b92d9ad this forum], which also has some interesting suggestions.
 
 
Now running CHKDSK /R on drive U:
 

Latest revision as of 10:56, 1 January 2013

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I have done this twice before, but did not write about it. Windows Backup provides an option to make a system image of the C: drive, and optionally of other drives. This system image is the simplest and safest way I have found to restore my system after a catastrophic drive crash. I have done it once before, and it worked well. My regular backups do preserve the data, but rebuilding from scratch is a big project even if the source material is available.

To do this, you bring up the Backup program and click on the left side..."Create a System Image." I put these images on drive U: and right now, there is an image I created 3/21/2012. There should be room for another snapshot, but there is a warning that old system images might be overwritten. That is ok, because what is there now is pretty old, but I wonder why it does that when these is room left. Maybe it needs contiguous space.

Creating a new disk from the image can be done using a bootable system recovery disk, which I have in my physical DVD files.