Is a System Image time-limited to 30 days ?

poolmon · 07 Jan 2015

I just watched a YouTube video of a Win7 Image Restoration.
The author indicated he had trouble restoring a System Image that was over 30 days old, due to the fact that the 30 day activation period for Win7 had expired from the time the System Image was made. It returned an error message for an Image that was over 30 days old, whereas an Image that was restored within 30 days of making it did not. Can anyone definitively shed some light on this? Do I have to create a new System Image each 30 days to remain protected due to Microsoft activation requirements?

whs · 07 Jan 2015

This guy did not activate his system with a valid product key. Else there is no such restriction.

poolmon · 08 Jan 2015

whs said:

This guy did not activate his system with a valid product key. Else there is no such restriction.

So does this mean that if I create a System Image of a fully authorized/activated Win7 computer and 9 months later restore that 9 month old Image to a new HDD in that computer (assuming my original HDD goes down) that it will restore without issue/error code and not require a reauthorization/reactivation with Microsoft?

**Pauly** · 08 Jan 2015

You should be able to restore any image the date it was created is irrelevant as long as the hardware is the same

Of course there are occasional spurious errors but generally nothing that cant sorted relatively simply

whs · 08 Jan 2015

poolmon said:

whs said:

This guy did not activate his system with a valid product key. Else there is no such restriction.

So does this mean that if I create a System Image of a fully authorized/activated Win7 computer and 9 months later restore that 9 month old Image to a new HDD in that computer (assuming my original HDD goes down) that it will restore without issue/error code and not require a reauthorization/reactivation with Microsoft?

Yes, that is possible. However, I would recommend to make images more frequently so that you need not go back to an image that old. All the work you had done in the last 9 months (installations, updates, Favorites, etc.) would be lost.

And your user data should be on a seperate partition anyhow. And that should be imaged separately - whenever needed e.g. when you added a lot of files.