Can I move a HDD image to another HDD? And a few more questions...

When you make an image of the system, it makes that image as it is now.
If I understand what you are trying to do:

* You made an image of your system on Drive D, after a fresh install, and would like to move this image to Drive F.
* Then you would like to copy the image to an external drive, as a backup.

Are Drive D and Drive F actually separate Hard drives, or partitions on one disk?
If they are separate, I cannot see any reason why you cannot use the "Send To" function to move this image from D to F, but please wait for further information from others, as I have never done this myself.

I suggest that you go to the top of the Help and Support page, click "Tutorials" and read the following:

* "System Image - Extract Files Using Disk management"
* "Imaging With Free Macrium"
* "Backup Complete Computer"

The Tutorials are comprehensive and you should find the information you need there. They were very useful to me when I first began using Windows7.

EDIT: whs was posting whilst I was typing. Follow his advice.

No backup software will backup to a point before the actual time of the backup. Logic would dictate that that is not possible. How will the bsoftware know what state your disc was in at a point in the past? IMHO It is always best that you know exactly what you are doing before you embark on a new feature, that way you tend to avoid unnecessary pitfalls.

leuce said:

I'm 100% willing to install Macrium Reflect and use it, as you suggest, but how can I ensure that the image that I make today is an image of the state of the computer as it was yesterday, before I started installing all my programs? I'm surprised that this is so hard to understand.

Macrium creates one file. It will have an mrimg extension. That file will be roughly half the size of the space occupied by the partitions contained in the images. If the imaged partition occupies 100 GB, the image file will be about 50 GB.

You can treat it like any other file---save it wherever it will fit. Move it at will.

Images can't go back in time, just as a photograph cannot. If I take a picture of you at noon, it will look as you were at noon, wearing your blue shirt--not as you were an hour before or later, wearing your red shirt.

Similarly, if you make an image of your C drive at noon when C contains no programs, that image file is stuck in time--that's what it will contain forevermore.

If you install some programs an hour later at 1 pm, you'd need to make a new image if you want to return to the 1 pm state. Restoring the noon image will take your PC back to when it had no programs--as it was at noon.

leuce said:

Do you mean, I must make an image of the image?

No.
You should be making another image of the OS on the drive/partition you wanted to copy to.

You can easily move Windows inbuilt images to folders within a partition then back again to the root for recovery (it just amounts to a directory change like moving any file). Physically moving the images across partitions or drives involves a physical move of GBs of data and is not recommended.

Macrium is a better option. Even with Macrium you don't want to be moving images across partitions or drives as normal practice.

I've had no issues moving/copying Windows images to a different drive. They won't be picked up in the backup control panel if moved.
I would advise using robocopy instead of the basic Windows copy function when copying large files/images though.

I understand that it is easy to move these images. But what do you do with them if the recovery program cannot find them. You would have to bring them back and reissue their original name.

In principle you are right. But if that folder has a new address, it will not find it. And since there is no "Browse", you cannot direct it to the new location.

Provided the folder WindowsImageBackup is in the root of a partition (ie. not within some other folder) and the internal files have not been corrupted then Windows system image restore should find it. I used to be a heavy user of Windows inbuilt imaging and never had a problem renaming and or moving the WindowsImageBackup folder to other folders - provided you moved it back to the root with its original name.
I got lazy and dropped 2 imaging programs and settled for the more flexible Macrium.