a system image backup is a complete copy of your hard drive including all the
drivers and files needed to run windows on your computer backing up just your
data is essential but it won't include your Windows operating system or drivers
with a full system image backup you can recover everything including your
Windows operating system all the drivers all those important settings and the
files needed to run your computer windows 10 makes it easy to create a
system image backup without having to buy expensive software and best practice
is to back up your system regularly in this example I'm going to be backing up
to an external hard drive physically attached to my laptop using the USB port
but you'll see that Windows gives you some other options in just a moment if I
open up this PC you can see that although my local disk c or c drive is
capable of storing 444 gigabytes it's only currently using 122 so provided i
have an external drive with that much free space i can create my system image
backup there and you'll see that both my external drives E and F meet that
criteria the e drive has the most free space so I'm going to use that one to
create my system image backup to create a system image backup open the control
panel go to system and security
and select file history
on the bottom left hand corner of the file history screen you'll see a link
called system image backup it's easy to miss click on this and you'll get to the
screen to create the screen image you'll see that on my laptop windows can't find
any backups so it's a good thing that I'm doing this right now next click on
create a system image on the top left of the screen windows next asks you where
you want to create the system image and i choose to back up to the e drive
I've also got the option of saving to a DVD or to a network location and we'll
look at this option in a later video then select the drive that you've chosen
for your backup and click Next windows helpfully tells you what it's going to
backup and all you need to do now is to click start back up but be warned this
can take some time depending on the size of the back up once the backups
completed windows will prompt you to create a repair disk a repair disk will
enable you to boot a fresh hard drive and restore your computer from the
system image backup however you can also restore a hard drive using any
up-to-date Windows 10 disc and this is the better option because you'll get all
the latest drivers and files so I'm going to skip this option but if you're
unsure by all means create a rescue disk the final step is to check on your
backup image I open up the backup drive E and there it is job done eTop
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