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Summary
Thebuilt-in backup utilities in Windowsare pretty solid.
you’re able to even create a full backup image of your PC without a third-party utility.
This tool is still included on Windows 10 and Windows 11.
Jordan Gloor / How-To Geek
The System Image Backup functionality is deprecated.
What Is a System Image Backup?
Asystem image backupis essentially a complete snapshot of an entire hard drive.
No need to reinstall Windows or your apps.
It would be like trying to plug your hard drive into another PC and expecting everything to load well.
With that in mind, however, image backups can still be really handy.
When you first fire up the tool, it will scan your system for external drives.
you might then decide where you want to save the image.
It can be to an external drive, multiple DVD’s, or on a web link location.
Select where you want to back up your backup and then click “Next.”
By default, the tool only backs up your system drive.
Typically, we like to create separate image backups for each drive.
At the confirmation screen, notice the amount of space the image may take.
If anything doesn’t look right, you could still go back and make adjustments.
If everything looks okay, hit the “Start Backup” button.
You’ll see a progress meter as the tool creates the image.
It can take a while.
In this example, we’re backing up a drive with about 319 GB of data.
It took about 2.5 hours when backed up to an external hard disk connected to our PC via USB.
