Windows 7: Creating system image questions.

I made a system image with the built in feature of Windows 7 following this tutorial Backup Complete Computer - Create an Image Backup



Today I made another but the first one made was erased and replaced with the new one. According to the tutorial Windows automatically erases older images once they take up more than 30% of the space on the back up location. I only had the one image on there and it was no where near 30% of the space. Why was my older image erased?

Welcome

It seems that it only makes one and deletes the other, always.

In any event this is what you do.

Make a system image, now. Put it on an external hard drive and forget about it.. Every month make a new one and keep it on the Hard Drive in the computer.

As time goes by you may need to use the image, because of a virus or your hard drive went down, either way you cannot or should not use the one on the internal. Wow, you have problems. Wait you made one and put it away.

You can use this for image.
http://www.paragon-software.com/home/db-express/

Good Luck

One thing I do here for the builtin option before creating a second image is slightly rename the "WindowsImageBackup" folder to something like "WindowsImageBackup_FIrst" or perhaps June or the month in order to allow for the next one to sit side by side on a storage drive here without worry of one overwriting the other.

For incremental backups rather then one time images created the Acronis True Image software(retail) will actually mount an image once created where you can set it for read or read and write allowing you to add new files or even remove some. It will appear as a new drive with the eact same drive label with a different drive letter.

OK thanks. Changing the image name by adding the month worked. I made another image and it was saved to the external HDD along with the image that was already on there. I can keep as many as I want this way without the old ones being erased until I decide I want them erased.

Glad that it worked out. Have at least one on an external hard drive, in case of failure.

Hope you have enough drive space for multiple images! There's one thing to know renaming to see more stored is that you have to total the size of each image created and compare that to the actual amount of disk space for any external hard drives used. The alternative is using removable media like dvd-rws with several set aside for each new image.

The images will show how it looked having more then one image on the main storage drive but with a price tag as seen when looking at fast drives filled up.

I usually install my OS, windows update and activate and make 1 vanilla image right there. Then, about once per month I take another image of the drive. I usually only keep that vanilla image and the latest month. I don't see myself ever wanting or needed to go back to some point in the middle.

I am using a 500 GB external drive that I also use to put back ups on for two other computers. So this drive has back ups for 3 computers on it. I use Macrium Reflect for all three plus I use Drive Image XML on the XP machine and the built in imaging feature on Windows 7. The result is each machine has back ups from two different imaging programs. I don't believe there is such a thing as too much back up. Macrium and Drive Image compress them pretty well so space is not an issue. I just start deleting old ones when space gets low.

I also make the plain vanilla image and keep that. I also do the monthly back up but I keep them for a while. I have had it happen where my most recent back up would not work and I was glad to have older ones. I have also had situations where one imaging program failed but another worked so I always use two imaging programs and make two images just in case. Very redundant but worth it to me and the price of external HDD is so cheap cost is no issue.

Speaking of image restore failures I just saw one with Acronis True Image last night after seeing the new Windows Live Essentials beta installed and act like a virus! Suddenly the tuner card shortcut pinned on the taskbar vanished as well as seeing the Start menu>All Programs folder greyed out and the av protection trashed as well.

When Acronis wouldn't restore an image made a few days ago I simply started up the restoration option in the Backup & Recovery to get everything back and working again. The tuner card app, av protection, and full version of WLM are all working now as they should. Something went wrong with the beta install for sure!