Create a system image copy in windows 10

What happens when Windows gets 'dirty' and runs very slow or directly won't start? The day always comes when you rethink and you must reinstall Windows 10 from 0, which is a system very prone to work slower and slower as the weeks go by.

Reinstalling Windows from 0 is an option but it has its disadvantages, we will have to reinstall all the applications that we use frequently and configure the system as it was before, this is a waste of time.

For these cases it is necessary to make a backup or a system image copy. The difference between the two is that the backup only copies our documents, photographs, spreadsheets, etc., while the disk image is a full copy of a drive or partition with all the files, therefore it already has all the programs installed and configuration as is.

What you need to know

Fortunately, no external application is necessary to make a copy of the system image, Windows 10 already has this option, although it is a bit 'hidden' inside the Control Panel.

The most recommendable thing to do a backup is to use an external hard drive but if you have a second partition or a secondary drive inside your computer with enough space, you can do the copy on it. In the example, we are going to use an external hard drive.

Creating a system image copy in Windows 10

1. We are going to go to the classic Control Panel (From Windows 10 you can access it by looking for it in the Start Menu). Within the Control Panel, we are going to click on the option Save file backups with File History, below System and security. In the lower left corner you will see the option Backup system image, click there. Then in the left part of the window, click on Create a system image. This will open a wizard to configure the backup. On the first page, tell the wizard that the copy will be made to the external hard drive. On the second page of the wizard, select the partition you want in this image backup. Or not; The default will probably be correct. On the next and final page of the wizard, verify that the configuration is correct, and then click Start Backup.

Restoring the system image copy

To start restoring the copy that we have made, we are going to have to start Windows 10 in safe mode, this is simple. We go to the Start Menu and hold down the SHIFT key while we click the Restart button.

After Windows shuts down, this screen will be displayed.

We are going to go to Solve problems.

Then we click on Advanced options - System image recovery. Just follow the simple wizard from there to start the process of restoring the disk image, which can take several minutes depending on the size of the drive that we have copied.

Final thoughts

It is highly recommended to use this option when the system drive or partition (where Windows is installed) is very small, say about 50GB or 100GB. It is advisable to have a small drive only for the system and applications, and another partition where we can save our documents, photos, games, videos, movies, etc.

In this way we only make an image of the system and not of an entire unit that can have 1TB or 2TB of data today, where all the information stored after the backup would be lost.

I hope it has been useful to you and see you next time.