Solved Pre-installed Operating System Backup

[HenriK37]

What is the best way to create an image or back-up disc of a pre-installed operating system when no OS media is provided with the PC involved?

I have a PC with the 64 bit Win 7-Pro OS pre-installed but no media was provided. The OS has been updated thru October 2016 but nothing else has been installed on the hard drive. What is the best way to create a back-up DVD of the OS should a complete re-installation of the OS ever be required due to hard drive failure and similar disasters?

Thanks, in advance, for any comments, advice, and/or suggestions.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
Most of us use system imaging with Macrium reflect free
It has startup repair in it's winpe cd or flash drive media and is easily created with a simple cd not dvd
Imaging with free Macrium

Create Backup Image with Macrium Reflect by Britec - YouTube

 

[ignatzatsonic]

What is the best way to create an image or back-up disc of a pre-installed operating system when no OS media is provided with the PC involved?

What is the best way to create a back-up DVD of the OS should a complete re-installation of the OS ever be required..........?

Those are 2 different questions.

You can use Macrium or a similar application to answer the first question. That would create an image of the OS as of that moment in time that could later be restored to a hard drive--complete with anything else on the C partition. It has to be formally "restored" to be useful. It doesn't "install" Windows as such.

The Macrium image is in the form of one single file, typically 20 plus GB in size. It won't fit on a DVD. You store it on a secondary drive, possibly external, and restore from that drive when necessary.

But Macrium will NOT give you "a backup DVD of the OS". If you want that, I'd download an ISO directly from Microsoft and then burn that to a DVD or put it on a bootable USB flash drive. That would let you do a clean install of Windows from scratch with this DVD or flash drive. No applications. Nothing else but Windows proper.

You can't do a clean install with Macrium--it's a restoration application that restores you to some previous state. Complete with whatever defects may have existed when the image was made. Period. That's all it does.