After a complete weekend lost watching all the present content on KZfaq about recovery drive, repair disc, system image, file history, set up backup, system restore, and so many other intertwined terms that work combined or sometimes substitute one another (yeah, after a complete weekend all these things are not completely clear to me) I'd just like to express how your videos are the best ones on these matters. The most clear in my opinion. Thanks for making them so complete. I'm sure that if I could have an afternoon with you I would leave as an expert on this subject, you know everything. The completeness on the theme, the clarity on the explanations, the appropriate editions for the understanding of the common noob like me. Thanks a lot. I just would like if you had videos on all the doubts I have, like the counterparts of all the mentions I did for Win7 and linux. But for what you offered in your channel so far, I have nothing but to thank you a lot!!!!!!!!

THIS VIDEO coupled with the other one about how to make a recovery drive using a memory stick has been an absolute gem of a learning lesson. thank you Dave. appreciate your hard work.

Excellent! Clear and concise, straight to the point. Great tutorial!

You have been an absolute lifesaver with this tutorial! Thank you! For your recovery usb drive and wipe and reset tutorials too! I have to send my HP Spectre 360 back to the retailer for investigation, as one of the thunderbolt USB ports has failed, and it appears to heat up quite quickly too, during ordinary usage. They told me I had to send it back wiped, just in case! I was panicking big time, until I found your amazing tutorials and advice. So simple and straightforward. What more can I say. As a 67 year old woman from the UK, who likes to think she’s more than a little up there, technically minded, and up for a challenge, it truly was a blessing in disguise!

Hi Dave; I found your videos and boy they're a real help to unscrambled O S systems even to 76-year-olds that did not have pcs even in school and very little at work before retirement. Thanks a really big bunch!!

Nice video buddy. Extremely helpful and easy to understand. I don't know why is it so hard for other people to explain in their video of "what is the system image". Most of the videos are junk.

I just bought a new laptop and looked for videos on how to make a system image and a windows recovery drive. Your videos are the clearest and easiest to use i found. Thanks so much.

Hey Dave, thank you for your KZfaq "How to Make a System Image backup" It was a life saver. Cheers Mate

Great tutorials as usual. Thanks for all the effort. All your tutorials are easy to follow well explained and very informative.

Great explanation. Just had a complete catastrophe from a botched windows update. I lost all of my data and will not be making the same mistake again. Now that I have my computer up and running again after formatting both my hard drives and using a USB drive to boot from and install windows on my main drive I will be making a system image as shown in this video. Very clear and easy instructions thank you!

Thanks, it was a good reminder to complete this before I need it. Very clear and easy to follow. To improve further it might help if the backing music is dropped, it allows us to focus on your instructions.

Here I made a system image with aomei and restore to another pc, worked well.

Great video Dave. I have spent hours trying to find a video on what i was looking for and i think you have nailed it. Thank you

Great video. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of my hard drive completely crashing without a recovery disk. Super helpful in the event this happens again.

Thank you for this beautiful guide. It took me a total of 35 minutes to completed a "System Image backup" with a storage size of around 200 GB.

Thank you for all the useful vids you made explaining backups. I wrote all your instructions and will do both, regular manual backups and create a system image with the recovery disc. Appreciate your time.

Thank you Dave, it was very informative on how to look after all the different ways of doing a good backup, I really needed to know earlier when i lost all my data BUT now i have it all backed up. Thanks again.

Hey Dave, an FYI, I used your video and backed up my windows 11 today. It did exact job as win10. Thanks a lot buddy, you are the best!

Thanks for taking the time to make this video,nicely explained and at A pace where we can take take alot of info in ,calm and steady the way to go ,i just liked and subbed

Thanks Dave, you made the process simple to understand and complete.

Thank you for taking the time to make this awesome tutorial. Super nice!

Best video I found so far regarding this process. Thank you very much.

Just a tip, you can hold your left shift key and click on restart and it will make your computer reboot into the recovery environment :) You can do this instead of turning it off 3 times.

THANK YOU DAVE , was my first experience to install the windows 10 to a new ssd hard drive ,{into a old computer with windows 7 and a failing old hard disk drive }, everything was perfect THANKS to all your instructions clear and to the point . All our thanks and appreciations !

Thank you Thank you Thank you.. Explained simply and in detail. Finally someone who talks like a human being not a geeky tech nerd assuming we all know what we are doing.

Another well-done tutorial, thank U Dave.

Please continue what you're doing you're so helpful !!! Thanks 🇮🇳💕🇮🇳

Thank u so much...the way u explaining all stuff is marvelous ❣️❣️❣️

Thank you so much. My computer crashed and it took hours upon hours to get it up again. Wish I had made a recovery disc and watched your wonderful videos. I made a recovery USB to use if my computer crashes in the future.

These backup videos of yours are very helpful. Because backup isn't the sexiest topic I guess, there aren't that many good videos out there, but it is very important and you make a great job explaining this. Well done sir. Keep up the great work. Subscribed :)

When want you back to YT!!! Thanks for the excelent tutorials

That was the best tutorial video I have ever seen! Outstanding!

Great video, very informative and professional. Thank you.

Terrific video. Very informative and instructional. Thanks!

Nice information, I am going make a System image backup, and I also watched your other video of making a Windows 10 USB recovery drive. We all know that it's not "IF" your hard drive will fail. It's "When" will your hard drive will fail. When this happens using your videos I should be able to replace my hard drive and restore Windows and files that I have backed up.

So beautifully explained, and simple. Thank you I am learning new stuff here, big thumbs up

Very well done. I never understood the new way that Windows does backup since they moved away from NT Backup after XP/2003 Server. You remedied that in this and your last videos like no one ever ever been able to or documented well enough to. I like the file versioning better from before too, although at least that change they can make an argument for. Now that I understand it, I know that I'm not missing anything, and wouldn't consider using it. With ShadowProtect and Macrium Reflect, you can easily do automated continuous incrementals, (Synthetic Full Backups) that can give you 15 minute snapshots. You can browse or roll back and entire computer to a consistent point in time from minutes ago to months ago. You can also have them do periodic full images, all unattended. Moreover, you may want a copy of your old machine for software, operating system, or any other reason in the future. You can turn their backups into virtual machines and boot them on completely dissimilar hardware, and move them back in minutes. I've had to do that before with a server at a factory and they ran on it for 4 days and didn't notice any difference in performance or any other aspect. (Which you can do with Windows 10 images as well) Health checks are done automatically. The one that makes the most sense for home use is Macrium, while I tend to use ShadowProtect on servers. Macrium is $70 a license and $140 for 3. The free version will do about everything the pay-for version will except Synthetic Full Backups. It even makes it easy to restore from larger to smaller partitions.

Thanks a lot, I lost my data and learnt from my mistake and your video helped me take precautions for the next time around. I am now prepared to face the future. :)

Yes, years ago, w/win8, my drive would lose its mind; repair wouldn't work, but I could get into the "advanced options" and restore the system image backups I made. I got used to doing this on a regular basis. It HAS been a long time. Originally, I had to start from scratch and re-install updates'n'things. Later, I discovered I could make a system image that included installed programs, etc. Back then, I could make incremental system image backups so it was pretty slick. Thanks for the advice about using a quality usb drive for the recover drive in your prior video.

I am just about to join the windows 10 party so your video here has been a great help to me as my new laptop arrives tomorrow, and this will be the first thing I do. Thank you for the video

Very informative and easy to follow, thank you.

Good video. Very helpful and concise.

Hey Dave, It was an awesome trick !!!.... Thanks a lot for this

Excellent as are all your other Videos Dave

Informative vids, thanks. Subbed 👍👏

Dave. Excellent video. Thank you so much.

Sir, Your videos are spot on !

u r a savior. thnx for the saving videos. learned so much and its not that complicated.

Repaired computer returned and system image restored - successfully! Once again, thank you, BIG time!

Thanks Man this really help full video ,keep going.

Thank you very informative, I backup with Aomei which is a easy tool for me

Well FINALLY. For I have been trying to recover a FULL computer; after the internal HDD failed. And I have a "backed up" HDD; with even a "computer" Image and a "Shadow Copy" plus every Files on the old HDD. But NO one could tell me how to recover my computer; and told me only how they recover files. That will NOT fill my wants.! Yet I have backed up my computer EVERY night; for years; with "ALL" things backed up. But I did not know what to do; when my internal HDD failed. Not even Microsoft could tell me. Sad, but OH so true. And you told us that in a short time. WOW!. Thank you kind Sir for that. Awesome!

Thank you so much buddy!!!! Your video saved me, thanks so much for your effort

Great job on the video. Thank you!

great video easy to understand keep up the good help info

Thanks for useful information, 👍

I had no idea which external hard drive to choose. I just looked for a solid-state external hard drive and Seagate had excellent reviews, so I bought one. I finally got around to using it. But today, I decided to create a system image. So, I closed everything and restarted. Then I cleaned my PC using CleanMyPC, then restarted again. Cleaning, I noticed, took 9 seconds off the restart time. Down from 31 seconds to 22 seconds. Which is only up 7 seconds from the original start-up time. But I had fewer apps, etc... Anyway, I am happy to see you recommend the Seagate HD I bought and I'll be even happier if, by the time I finish watching this video, I will learn how to save and make use of this specific system image. Especially if it can undo all the bs that happens after a windows update! What's curious to me is, I bought this old computer in late 2018, or early 2019 at the latest and it only took 15 or 20 minutes to create a system image. But maybe that's because I don't have video games on this computer? I am confident everything went well because it did say the system image had completed successfully. A question I have is what do the scheduled backups do to the system image? Nothing, right? They are two separate processes, right? They save all the new photos, apps, etc, correct? And the system image restores the computer's functionality... So if when I restore the system, will I still retain all the new things I added since I created the image? Dave? Or anyone who might know?

Very Helpful! Thank you!

Excellent video my friend

Dave, Thank you so much again, you have the best videos on KZfaq, clear and detailed, thanks again for taking the time to make those videos, Appreciated.

wonderful explanation

Good stuff!!! I saved my computer using your info. Thanks

Great Tutorial! Thanks it really help.

What to do when I have no system back up and cannot boot

Very helpful, thanks!

Just used this now in 2024 ... brilliant thank you so much

Thank you!

THanx.... Great presentation of important information.

TYSM ^^ Needed this along with the USB Recovery to replace a failing HDD - Aloha form Maui^^

Tnx now i install windows and all programs in just 7 min

Thanks. Very educational 👍👍👍

Dave ... u r a good man 🤗 .... thank you 😊

Good evening Dave, I tried to find a way to direct message you to say thank you, but was unable to. You helped me in a very unconventional way. I have been spending many, many hours trying to get an SSD installed on a dell optiplex with the OS cloned from a HDD. I tried so many programs, clonezilla, acronis, shadow mask and many more. Every single one even the standard windows 10 loader had issues getting the installer and hardware to work and boot - Dell love to have their own non-standard peripherals and Bios. After watching your video I was able to 'Backup' a system image of the HDD and use the windows restore to 'restore' the backup onto the new SSD - IT literally took 15 minuets ! I am so happy, I thought the SSD had died and that machine for my workshop would have to run from a HDD forever. Thank you again, your videos at first were a little basic for me but I was not too familiar with the image backups. Thank you again and I will now setup pooled drives and have all my family's machines using the built in windows 10 backup with the occasional image backup. Thank you so much Dave !

I made image backup with aomei, it's really convenient.

Thanks for the information

This backup took my computer well over 2 hours to complete! How long did it take for yours to do?

Thanks a lot for this video tutorial sir.

Thank you sir Dave.

Thanks for your tutorial

It is new technology for me .i need to watch few time to follow up. Thanks

thank you for your explaination

I would also recommend using File History which is similar to Time Machine on MacOS. It keeps versioned copies of all data on the fly. It’s included with all versions of Windows 10.

Thanks, very professional

Hi Dave, I just discovered your great videos. An excellent video of how to create a full system image using windows but could you make a video using Macrium Reflect 7 Free? It is much faster and more reliable than windows and can also make a full clone of your drive within the same program. You could also explain the differences between Intermediate and differencial backups etc, and between Cloning and a System image. What do you think?

Years ago, my laptop suddenly refused to load windows. I bought a disc containing Ubuntu and used it, but I kept losing my desktop. It seemed like a Unity issue, so I went to Linux Mint. Mint extended the life of my laptop for the next five years. I finally got a new laptop last year, and I'm afraid of it happening again. Thank you for showing us how to back it up. I have some DVDs here for a recovery disc, plus a thumb drive.

VERY good quality video. Thanks! Question: can you create a system backup like this on a hard drive that already has some data on it? or does the target drive for the backup have to be empty? Thanks in advance!

V informative and good way to explainig . Thanks bro

thanks you! much help.

Hi Dave, and everyone.. Firstly thanks to Dave for coming up with these videos, recognize the amount of effort spent to layman explain these techie things especially on backup and recovery. Kudos. So just to clarify, : in case i need to revert my whole local C drive including contents apps data drivers all in that C drive (OS plus ALL files in my C drive), i will need both System recovery usb + the system image hard disk?? Wont it work with just the system image hdd? Another thing to observe, - there's quite a number of queries here but would really appreciate some responses (much much appreciated). Cheers!

Thank you Dave for your very useful video. I was wondering what size of an external hard drive would I need to do regular system backups if I have 512GB disk in my PC laptop? Can I do backups of files and a disk image on the same external HDD?

Thank you. Your great.

Hi Dave, 2 important comments. 1.- You can recover an image from a computer model to another by using a program called ACRONIS ECHO. this allows you to recover the image and after that reinstall the drivers of the new computer. 2.- You did not mention if the backup file can be shared in the external hard drive with other files or the system will erase other data of the external, I might want to have 2 separated images in my external hard drives, also once I want to recover, if it is possible to actually find the directory of where those images are located in the external HD

Thanks for the great videos! You should consider lowering the volume ramp-up of the the 2 second music breaks, in your videos. It hurts. Question: can you create a system image on an external drive that also has data backed up, or does it need to be dedicated to only being a system image? I have a 3 TB WD Elements, and I'd like to put an image on it. If it is possible, would I need to partition the drive?

Your videos are amazing. To the point and concise. Keep it up !!

Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for a clear and concise explanation. I wish I had found your videos sooner. I am currently in the process of doing an system image backup to an external Seagate hard drive. However, I did a copy and paste of my hard drive to a folder I setup on my Seagate. Will this give me the same results. I didn’t think to look in settings for a backup command there. So far my computer has been copying 14,119 items and it’s been a little over 4 hours. Tx in advance for any advise. Diana from Ontario, Canada.

Clear and concise video, thanks. My son set up my new, his old computer with a raid setup for the operating system, and an extra non raid data drive. I have just upgraded to win 10, and need to know when I over-write my backup Win7 HD, I believe that the system should treat the raid setup (the C: drive) as one continuous drive. Am I correct? I am familiar with Linux but not so much with Windows and don't want to make an incomplete image. Thanks, Bob

This was such a well explained video to follow thank you! I also have a few questions about making a system image about a brand new laptop. (1) I've just backed up my new laptop and it took 6 mins 45 seconds to create a system image and it is taking up 33.8GB on my hard drive at the moment out of 1 TB. Is this normal? (2) Also if I make another system image in the future once my computer has more files, will this be stored separately? (3) Finally can I use this hard drive normally to store other things or would you recommend keeping it separate? Thank you Dave!!

"More importantly, I hope you never need it."... Are you KIDDING!? I CAN'T WAIT for my computer to crash, now!!! 🤣

cool video simple and not with stupid things thank you i have one question, when we want to take the image back up from hard drive with usb, does it have possiblity that ll delete all datas in side the usb hdd ?