What is windows system image ?
System Image is an exact copy of your drive which includes all your files, programs, drivers and system settings. It is useful in situations like when your PC ran into problems. System Image is a complete restoration of your operating system where all the present existing data is replaced by the system image data.
How can I create my Windows 8 System Image ?
You can create system image of your windows 8 copy by accessing “WIndows 7 File Recovery” control settings item from control panel. Follow the steps to create your windows system image
Step 1 : Type Command “Control” on the run box and it will bring up the control panel of your windows.
2. Change the View by to “Small Icons” and look for “windows 7 file recovery” control item, control items are sorted by name so it should be at the bootom.
This is same as the “Back Up and Restore” option on your windows 7 operating system.
3. As you click on windows 7 file recovery it will bring up the settings menu where you have options to create a system image,create a system repair disk, set up back up.
To know the differences between each of the options read this post.
4. Now let us create a system image for our installation by selecting “create a system image“, Once you select to create a system image it will ask you for the path to store the system image and it also shows up the previous copy of the system image.
You will be having different options on where to save your system image as shown in above screen shot , where you can store your system image in external hard disk or you can write it to a DVD drive or you can store it on a network location.
Only windows 8 enterprise and pro editions will have an option to store in network location and it is not preferred to save the copy of system image on the same hard disk where the windows was installed, if the hard drive crashes you will lose both the installation and as well as system image.
5. Once you proceed selecting the option where you want to put the system image the next step is to select the drives included in the system back up. In general it is enough to back up the system reserved 100 MB partition along with the windows installation drive but if you wish to back up some other drive in the system image back up you can select that in this step.
6. Once you continue with this step it will ask you to confirm the back up options that you have selected and following is the screen shot of it.
7. Proceed to the next step by clicking on the start back up and windows will start creating System Image .
8. It will create a folder with name “WindowsImageBackup” after successfully creating the back up and also it will ask you to create the “System Repair Disk“, which will be very helpful at the times of restoring windows using the System Image copy. If you have DVD at the moment you can create the disk right away and even you can create the same disk from other Windows System. So , It is not of that importance for you as of now but keep your system image copy safe.
So that is all about Creating a System Image , If you have any queries or comments on this please feel free to comment under the below comment section.
