Create Image of Fresh Install


Recommended Posts

At work, we use ImageX to deploy system images to our machines and I have become used to it over time.  This has gotten me to thinking that I should do something similar on my end.

 

Has anyone used ImageX or another tool to create an image of their 8.1 system for later restoration? 

 

I would prefer to clone to my NAS, but can bring a portable drive online and do it as well.

 

I just did a fresh install today and want to create an image for later restoration w/o having to boot back into Windows install, then Office Install, then other software installs etc..  While I know Windows has the refresh function, I want something more robust in case later down the road when I replace my HDD with a Solid State drive.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think I found a possible solution for this.  I ended up using Clonezilla to do the backup.

 

As my Laptop is UEFI based, I had to go into the UEFI settings and do the following:

 

Turn off Secure Boot

Change Boot mode from UEFI to CSM (Legacy in most models).

 

Then, I was able to boot into Clonezilla CD, do the backup of the entire drive to my NAS box. 

 

I haven't tested the restore yet, but in theory, it makes sense as if I'm correct, it was doing a sector by sector copy of the partitions and the restore should work.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello,

I think I found a possible solution for this.  I ended up using Clonezilla to do the backup.

 

As my Laptop is UEFI based, I had to go into the UEFI settings and do the following:

 

Turn off Secure Boot

Change Boot mode from UEFI to CSM (Legacy in most models).

 

Then, I was able to boot into Clonezilla CD, do the backup of the entire drive to my NAS box. 

 

I haven't tested the restore yet, but in theory, it makes sense as if I'm correct, it was doing a sector by sector copy of the partitions and the restore should work.

My first suggestion was going to be Norton Ghost but my second was going to be Clonezilla. Ive done it before and it is flawless when it comes to doing images and/or moving to a bigger disk without the hassle of reinstalling...
Link to comment
Share on other sites

If you have quite a few machines, you mike look at FOG as well.  I haven't tried it myself, but a lot of schools around here use it.  I have no idea if it works with Win 8.1, either.  Most schools are still on XP with a few on Win7. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I use Clonezilla to make hard drive images of machines I work on, that way if the end user borks something up that can't be fixed easily, all I have to do is back up their personal files and restore the image without worrying about re-installing the OS, reinstalling all the software, and the only updates they'll have are ones released since I made the image.

 

It lets you store and read images from an SSH server (SFTP), or from a local device such as a USB attached external hard drive.  You can also clone hard drives 1 to 1 instead of creating/reading an image file.

 

Best of all, it's free and open source.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just did a full restore a few minutes ago after writing my post and everything worked fine.  It threw some GPT errors, but I figured those were benign and I was right.  I booted into my system just now after the restore and can confirm it worked. 

 

I looked at Fog after I had some oddball Samba issues with Clonezilla and but after I solved that by using an SSHD connection, it went smooth as glass and for a complete backup/restore of my 500GB hard drive's data on the fresh install, took only 15 minutes or so to do the entire backup.  And same for restore once I started it. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clean install Windows 8.1 along with drivers and software. Adjust all the settings and configure windows  according to your liking.
 
Then paste the following in elevated Powershell or Command prompt
wbadmin start backup -backuptarget:x: -allcritical

Replace x with the drive letter you want.

 

To restore, simply boot into Windows 8.1 setup using bootable DVD or USB and click on repair. Then Troubleshooting -> Advanced options and select image restore.

 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I currently use ImageX / DISM for my Windows imaging, I've used other solutions in the past but lately I've been using a customized Windows PE environment for imaging, deployment and restoration; just today I created the reference image for the laptop I use.

 

In my experience I find it more useful to have an image with a bare minimum of things (OS, drivers, activation, updates, maybe Office, that sort of thing) over a full image, but it all depends on the frequency of restorations. A couple of months ago I had to restore a full image from mid-2012 in a machine and the time spent to get it up to date (Windows, programs, removing rarely used stuff and installing new programs, ...) was probably longer than the equivalent of just installing what the user uses at the time.

 

Full (or incremental/differential) images could be useful if restoring frequently or in data protection / disaster recovery scenarios though, for which ImageX / DISM may not be a suitable solution.

 

Currently for imaging I'm doing:

dism /capture-image /imagefile:"Destination.wim" /capturedir:"Path" /name:"Name" /description:"Description" /compress:max /checkintegrity /verify

And this to restore (with /index:i too when there's more than one image in the file):

dism /apply-image /imagefile:"Source.wim" /applydir:"Path" /checkintegrity /verify

I store images locally on an external drive, but it should be possible to copy the image over to a networked machine or backup directly to it mounting the resource via "net use" for example.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No need to even do any of that. Just open an admin command prompt. type recimg /createimage x:\folderwhereimage goes

Then go make a sandwich or coffee. I did this with my home system. My image is about 120gb due to all the games I have installed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

No need to even do any of that. Just open an admin command prompt. type recimg /createimage x:\folderwhereimage goes

Then go make a sandwich or coffee. I did this with my home system. My image is about 120gb due to all the games I have installed.

 

Problem is - I want to be able to do an offline restore.  In other words, if the hard drive fails, or I move to an ssd, I can restore w/o having to go through all the hassle of re-installing Windows, then restoring the image. 

 

EaseUS Todo Backup works great for this and has a USB/CD PE Restore env.

 

Thanks!  I will look into that later on.  Right now, Clonezilla seems to fit the bill for me.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.