System Image saved to external HDD larger than when burned to dvd's

[bobhangsit]

I Just finished reinstalling all my apps after a clean install of Windows 7 and wanted a system image to fall back to in case of disaster. To be doubly sure I would have an image, besides saving it on an external hdd, I decided to burn it to dvd-r's also. Windows and all my apps currently take up just under 32 GB on my C drive. This is how much space Windows estimated it would take for the image. There was 225 GB free space on the destination drive when I began the process and when it finished, there was 202 GB free space left.

I had been prepared to use around 8 dvd's to burn the image so I was very surprised that it only took 3 with the last one only using about 1 GB for the vhd file. Apparently the two copies of the image are not the same and I'm wondering if I can rely on either of them to get me out of a jam.

 

[Gary]

The compression rate is probably larger when saving to DVD's. Welcome to the Forum BTW

 

[bobhangsit]

Thanks for the reply and the welcome. I wanted to say in my OP how much I value this forum but figured I'd better get to the point quickly. Compression rate, huh? From 23 GB to about 10; that's pretty impressive.