Partition Windows 7 hard drive and run a full image.

Good evening,

I have spent the last couple of days cleaning up my computer.
It's amazing what you keep because you think you might need it one day.
Weekly housekeeping is certainly the way to go from now on.
What is the best way please to partition my C: drive and fully image my system to that partition.
Can this be done as the hard drive only has C: at the moment or is it best to reinstall Windows 7 and create two partitions on reinstall.

Thanks in advance :).

You can't image to the drive in use is c you can shrink it create another drive and image to that

Thank you for taking the time to answer samuria, I appreciate it.

I do realise that I can't store an image on the same partition as the OS.
I want to partition the C: drive to setup a partition Z: for example, and then save the image there.
What I really want to know is can I, and how do I go about this please?
Is Windows 7 adequate to do this within its system or is there another more stable and better alternative?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the reply, I will look into that later.

I have spent the afternoon playing detective with regards to this.
Can I not though use the Disk Management to shrink C:?
Then could I not though use Partition or Volume - Create New and then image to that?

Thanks in advance.

I just read...

https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/2672-partition-volume-shrink.html

which does seem to do what I want, which is just to make a new partition, say Z: and then image C: to it.
Is the Windows 7 Disk Management not sufficient for my needs?
I was hoping to get this done tomorrow if possible.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my request, it is appreciated.

Thanks SIW2,

I have just read both articles from AOMEI with regard to partitioning and imaging, they both sound extremely good. I will do some more investigating this evening with the view to using them tomorrow maybe (I can't believe they are both FREE).

One quick question please.
If I was to go with the Windows Disk Management and Imaging, and in three months time I wanted to do another Image, can I overwrite the previous Image or will I have to name it something else, ending up with two Images, and also using more disk space?

I know AOMEI also covers Full, Incremental and Differential Backup which is attractive.

Thanks in advance.