System Image

Anon-fe04a256cf · Aug 15, 2020

I have Win10 Home and a 1. TB Hard Drive.

I make a Win10 Image on a 1. TB USB Hard Drive every now and then.

I wanted to know if I do not need the same size Hard Drive to make the Image on?

Say my System Hard Drive is only Filled to 500 GB can I just use a Hard Drive that is only 500 GB for the Image?

Or is this not how System Images work?

Earthling · Aug 15, 2020

System images compress the files, the degree of compression varying with which tool you are using, the choices you make when using it and the filetypes you are imaging. If you take a look at any of the images you have taken previously you will gain a good idea of how much disk space they need. Disk size doesn't come into it - any disk with sufficient unused space will do for holding your image.

Anon-fe04a256cf · Aug 15, 2020

I use Win10 Built in Backup And Restore Tool.
And I pick the Option to Backup my C: Drive.

I pick to make a System Image..

plodr · Aug 16, 2020

Have you looked at the actual size of the images previously made? If not, that is what you need to do to answer the question you asked.

I do this from time to time. I look at the hard drive space used by a particular computer then I look at the size of the image.
My desktop which has an 80 GB partition for Windows and uses about 66GB, created a 32 GB image in July 2020.
I also have numbers written down for the other 3 computers in the house. I rotate between 7 different portable drives and want to know if an image can fit on the remaining space on one of the drives.

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System Image

Anon-fe04a256cf Anonymized

Earthling Interplanetary Geek

Anon-fe04a256cf Anonymized

plodr MajorGeek Super Extraordinaire Moderator Staff Member