Salvation by System Image

[jmccleary50]

Here's a short story extolling the virtues of system images. I got into trying to upgrade to an SSD on a Dell Inspiron. Tradgedy! The hard drive is under the keyboard. Literally gave the laptop away after discovering Dell Latitudes which have the drive under the backside with 4 screws. After purchase of extra hard drive caddies the new SSD's became plug and play items by leaving the screws out.
My earlier misfortunes with hard drives resulted from naïve abuse of Easy BCD and MiniTool Partition Analyzer. I found out the hard way do not tamper with MBR partitions or BCD settings.
But even with the new SSD's I managed to screw up a few partitions to a no boot condition. System Image to the rescue! Boot via previously prepared rescue disk and recover from previous System Image which must now be named WindowsImageBackup (note caps and no spaces).
And now the new drives are restored and all is well. I generally ignore constant notifications about backup but I am a firm believer in system images.

 

[WestFred]

Glad all is good and I find such experience as lessons learned ! Been there, done that. On my older PCs, Acronis had saved me numerous times . Windows image does work OK for Win 10.

 

[jmccleary50]

A little more on system images. While trying to run one I was greeted by a long red progress bar and the message backup failed. After more than an hour of floundering (I do that a lot) i finally stumbled upon go to device manager and determine if the computer detects the presence of an external drive. It did not so try another USB port was the solution. I later returned the external drive to the original port and it was functional. For whatever reason it simply had not made contact.
In windows disk management create new volume there is a point at which the default name New Volume appears. Highlight and delete this and type in WindowsImageBackup (note caps and no spaces). This avoids the message cannot find system image in this PC.
Why is this necessary? Don't ask-just do it.

 

[T_J]

I've used Windows 'Backup and Restore (Windows 7)' hard drive image software since 2012 on my 2012 Dell desktop; which got the free Windows 7 to 10 upgrade in Feb 2016. I've restored images several times over the last 7 years; never a problem. Most recent hard drive image made August 16, 2019. Restored a W 10 image on 2-26-19. Dell has W 10, 1903, 18362.295.

 

[jmccleary50]

Not to beat this to death but I've probably had every known system image problem. Another one is in services if windows backup and volume image are not running or set to automatic system image won't complete.