Full image of a system

[tinpanalley]

I've had to reinstall Windows, I have what are my essentials for running my computer for personal and work use, and a really super clean set up. I need to have a frozen version of today in the easiest way possible to recover later if my Windows 10 ever needs to be reinstalled again so I don't have to go through everything I have gone through over the past days again to get to this perfect spot.

1. What is the best (free ideally) software to do this?
2. How likely is it to get a solution where you'd connect an external hdd and literally restore to a new hdd from there without needing that software again? Does that exist?
3. Is installing Windows 10 again first always the better way and THEN recovering an image?

[2FA]

Not easy to do once you're out of the installer but Windows has it built in. Check link in my signature.

 

EDIT: some of the stuff may be a little out dated but overall the same

[Tabs]

Macrium Reflect Free handles all that. It includes the ability to create a recovery iso that can be booted from USB, and from there, you can restore an image from any accessible media. The iso it generates is just a Windows PE image with Macrium Reflect pre-installed.

[Gikero]

Aomei Backupper Standard is free, you can make disc images and has a tool to create a WindowsPE disc (Windows Preinstallation Environment) the run the image from a disk or network attached storage. Also flexible enough to let you slipstream in drivers for your system, if needed. Pretty flexible.

As you can see, there are multiple ways to skin this cat. ( The cat is your OP. ^__^ )
 

3 minutes ago, 2FA said:

Not easy to do once you're out of the installer but Windows has it built in. Check link in my signature.

 

EDIT: some of the stuff may be a little out dated but overall the same

Bookmarked your guide. Quick reading looked good, I am excited to try it out. Thanks for the info.

[tinpanalley]

On 5/22/2018 at 5:37 PM, Gikero said:

Aomei Backupper Standard is free...also flexible enough to let you slipstream in drivers for your system, if needed. Pretty flexible.

What is it that is different about the drivers thing you mentioned from other programs like Macrium? Does Macrium not include an image with drivers?

On 5/22/2018 at 5:32 PM, Tabs said:

Macrium Reflect Free handles all that.

Thanks guys.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

16 minutes ago, tinpanalley said:

What is it that is different about the drivers thing you mentioned from other programs like Macrium? Does Macrium not include an image with drivers?...

Macrium Reflect and other imaging programs essentially create a snapshot of your entire drive or partition (if you select only one partition) so it will include any installed drivers.

[Tabs]

1 hour ago, tinpanalley said:

What is it that is different about the drivers thing you mentioned from other programs like Macrium? Does Macrium not include an image with drivers?

Thanks guys.

 

1 hour ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Macrium Reflect and other imaging programs essentially create a snapshot of your entire drive or partition (if you select only one partition) so it will include any installed drivers.

 

More specifically I believe he meant that the Windows PE builder will integrate drivers from the host system for networking and storage devices, to ensure that if you build a recovery ISO it will have all the drivers needed to physically restore your machine. It would suck to need to restore your machine and suddenly find that your sata controller doesn't have drivers in the recovery image.

 

Macrium reflect integrates these drivers also by default when generating a recovery image. It's a big thing to consider, especially for the latest AMD platforms, since the latest Windows PE doesn't yet have native support for ryzen or threadripper chipsets. If you store your backups on a network share, it's important that you have networking drivers in the iso too. Lots of little things most folk don't initially consider when dealing with backups.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 minute ago, Tabs said:

 

 

More specifically I believe he meant that the Windows PE builder will integrate drivers from the host system for networking and storage devices, to ensure that if you build a recovery ISO it will have all the drivers needed to physically restore your machine. It would suck to need to restore your machine and suddenly find that your sata controller doesn't have drivers in the recovery image.

 

Macrium reflect integrates these drivers also by default when generating a recovery image. It's a big thing to consider, especially for the latest AMD platforms, since the latest Windows PE doesn't yet have native support for ryzen or threadripper chipsets. If you store your backups on a network share, it's important that you have networking drivers in the iso too. Lots of little things most folk don't initially consider when dealing with backups.

You missing the entire point of imaging. An image is the equivalent of a photo negative. You use the image to create an exact replica of the original as it was at the time it was taken, pretty much the same as a photo negative is used to create a print of the subject that is exactly as it was a the time the picture was taken. Images will include everything, including all drivers on the drive or partitions you are imaging.

[Tabs]

Just now, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You missing the entire point of imaging. An image is the equivalent of a photo negative. You use the image to create an exact replica of the original as it was at the time it was taken, pretty much the same as a photo negative is used to create a print of the subject that is exactly as it was a the time the picture was taken. Images will include everything, including all drivers on the drive or partitions you are imaging.

Yes, and to be able to write the whole system image back to the drive you need... the sata drivers on the bootable restore media image, that is, the bootable image used to restore the backup, in case you're being confused between the two uses of the word "image". Both of the recommended software in this thread build Windows PE based recovery media, and if these media did *not* include hardware specific drivers, there would be no easy way to restore the system backup, whether complete or not.

 

You may wish to re-read what everyone else has said  

[Lady Fitzgerald]

1 hour ago, Tabs said:

Yes, and to be able to write the whole system image back to the drive you need... the sata drivers on the bootable restore media image, that is, the bootable image used to restore the backup, in case you're being confused between the two uses of the word "image". Both of the recommended software in this thread build Windows PE based recovery media, and if these media did *not* include hardware specific drivers, there would be no easy way to restore the system backup, whether complete or not.

 

You may wish to re-read what everyone else has said  

Actually, you need to reread what i wrote. When restoring an image it is done from a recovery media, usually an optical disk or a USB thumb drive. You do NOT need to have the sata drivers already installed to be able do the restore. Otherwise, how would you explain that I have been able to restore the boot drive on several machines from images many times?

 

There is only one correct usage of the word image. Where do you get two from?

[Tabs]

1 minute ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

Actually, you need to reread what i wrote. When restoring an image it is done from a recovery media, usually an optical disk or a USB thumb drive. You do NOT need to have the sata drivers already installed to be able do the restore. Otherwise, how would you explain that I have been able to restore the boot drive on several machines from images many times?

 

There is only one correct usage of the word image. Where do you get two from?

Is it seriously beyond your comprehension that your recovery media (the usb or cd you talk about) needs to have drivers in order to access the hardware on the machine? If you have never used a bleeding edge system you may never have had this issue - Windows PE is continually updated with more and more out of the box drivers for more modern hardware. If you use hardware that's more than a year old and use the latest PE version your PE image will *already* have basic drivers to enable support.

 

If you don't understand this concept than I'm sorry, but there's little more I can say to explain it to you. Hardware doesn't just *magically work*, it needs drivers to work. For example, on my Z170 motherboard, if I try to boot a Windows PE image based on 1607 or older, I do not get out of thee box networking. It simply doesn't have drivers for the i-219 network adapter. If I tried to restore my machine last year without *integrating the driver manually*, I would be unable to restore the image from a network share within the PE environment. That's why this functionality is important, and - as you seem to have done - often completely overlooked.

 

Do you understand? That's why I explicitly mentioned Ryzen and Threadripper as an example, since 1709 PE images do not have built-in chipset drivers for these systems, and cannot access hard disks without integrating them.

[Lady Fitzgerald]

25 minutes ago, Tabs said:

Is it seriously beyond your comprehension that your recovery media (the usb or cd you talk about) needs to have drivers in order to access the hardware on the machine? If you have never used a bleeding edge system you may never have had this issue - Windows PE is continually updated with more and more out of the box drivers for more modern hardware. If you use hardware that's more than a year old and use the latest PE version your PE image will *already* have basic drivers to enable support.

 

If you don't understand this concept than I'm sorry, but there's little more I can say to explain it to you. Hardware doesn't just *magically work*, it needs drivers to work. For example, on my Z170 motherboard, if I try to boot a Windows PE image based on 1607 or older, I do not get out of thee box networking. It simply doesn't have drivers for the i-219 network adapter. If I tried to restore my machine last year without *integrating the driver manually*, I would be unable to restore the image from a network share within the PE environment. That's why this functionality is important, and - as you seem to have done - often completely overlooked.

 

Do you understand? That's why I explicitly mentioned Ryzen and Threadripper as an example, since 1709 PE images do not have built-in chipset drivers for these systems, and cannot access hard disks without integrating them.

You are the one who isn't getting it. You create the rescue media from the system that it is going to use it so it will have any drivers you need that aren't in the OS itself.

[Tabs]

6 minutes ago, Lady Fitzgerald said:

You are the one who isn't getting it. You create the rescue media from the system that it is going to use it so it will have any drivers you need that aren't in the OS itself.

This... is exactly the functionality we have been discussing. It's literally the first thing I said in my post from 2 hours ago. It is a feature of good backup programs like Macrium Reflect and AOMEI that you can add any driver arbitrarily so you can build an image on ANY system, even with different hardware, and integrate custom drivers for any hardware you need. This is not a feature you can assume a program will have, and so it's good that these do.

 

I'm so glad you eventually got there. Why it took 5 hours is beyond me.

[tinpanalley]

On 5/24/2018 at 7:21 PM, Tabs said:

 it's important that you have networking drivers in the iso too. Lots of little things most folk don't initially consider when dealing with backups.

I don't use network share, but this was something I had to deal with when reinstalling Windows just last week because I didn't realise, or rather remember, that Windows doesn't automatically get my network adapter drivers. Luckily I had my laptop to go get them with but that was a little jarring. I've done the C drive with Macrium Free. Super seamless and I made a permanent USB recovery boot drive to load up my C image should I ever need it.