Making a backup image

Just a thought, what's a reasonable time taken in creating a backup image given a C drive with no data, just Win7 plus a few small programs and Office Professional + Two Video editors and one photo editor.

On my boxes, using either Acronis (which I am licensed for) or Macrium Reflect Free...it takes about 3-7 minutes for me to create my images. When it's just the OS, it's around 3. With a good number of apps and such loaded, it's closer to 7.

Using the Win 7 method as per Brinks tut mine takes about an hour! Odd thing is I thought it should produce an ISO file. I get two VHD files one of 101 Gb and one 5Gb!

The Windows backup does not create an ISO file...it actually creates a virtual hard drive file. When you want to restore this backup...you boot from the DVD, choose repair and point it at the drive that has your backup.

I would really recommend something like Macrium Reflect free. Far more options and configurability. Not to mention, you can easily move the files around. The Windows option is very particular and if you copy it from one partition to the other it generally won't work.

Thanks to you both. I have downloaded the Macrium Reflect and will install an look at tomorrow. Many thanks for the suggestion.

This is what I get with Macrium.