A system image, as the name suggests, is an image or what you might call a complete copy of the current state of your computer’s hard disk (or any of its partitions). It will include all system settings, files, and Windows configurations.
You can use system images to restore your computer’s data and settings in the event of a hard drive failure. However, keep in mind that you cannot restore individual files or settings using this procedure. It will always be a full recovery. Therefore, you should also continue to back up individual files and folders instead of relying solely on this system image as your last savior.
In this article, we will see how to create a system image in Windows 7 systems using the backup and restore center. We covered it in a previous article (the one we linked to in the paragraph above). Let’s dive deeper into its settings.
1. To get started, type backup in the start search bar and you’ll see Backup and Restore show up in the results. Click it.
2. On the Backup and Restore Center window, on the left side, you’ll find a link that says Create a system image. Click it.
3. You can back up the system image on an external drive, on a DVD, or on another computer on the network (if that’s an option). You could even back it up on a separate partition on the same hard disk, but that’s not recommended for obvious reasons.
It will automatically detect the most suitable location for backup. Like, in the following screenshot you can see that it detected my external hard drive plugged in.
4. Next, you must select the drive you want to back up.
5. It will confirm the settings you have selected before starting to create the image. It also indicates the amount of space the image can take up.
6. When you press Start Backup, it will start creating the image. Depending on how much data you have, this can take anywhere from a few seconds to an hour or two.
7. After finishing creating the image, it will ask if you want to create a system repair disc, just go ahead and create this disc.
You will find a system image folder called WindowsImageBackup in the location where you saved it (Yes, you can’t choose a folder or a folder…you can just select the drive where you want to save the image).
So that’s how you create a system image in Windows 7. In Vista systems, the process is almost the same except for a few changes in the interface.
If you run the Home or Basic edition of Windows Vista/Windows 7 then you won’t find the backup and restore thing and won’t be able to use what we’ve discussed. But don’t worry, we’ll soon have an article that introduces some useful third-party tools for creating system images.
Categories: How to
Source: thpttranhungdao.edu.vn/en/
