How in the Tech

Create Disk Images of your Windows Drives

By Adam Myers ⋅ October 13, 2008 ⋅ Tags: Backup, File Management

Do you backup your files? I’ll give you the benefit and assume that you backup your important documents and photos, at the very least. Personally, while better than nothing, backing up particular files is not enough – not when storage is so cheap. Instead, I recommend you backup your entire Windows installation because you never know when a pesky piece of spyware will sneak onto your system. While there are plenty of spyware removal tools available, I’m not comfortable with any tool being able to clean my infected system fully. A complete reinstall of Windows is the only way to be sure. This is where a program like Macrium Reflect Free is a life and time saver.

Macrium Reflect Free creates a disk image snapshot of any disk that can be used to bring your computer back to a previous state, or point in time. Imaging is not only good for system recovery, it can also save a boatload of time if you reinstall often. Taking an image of a fully patched, fresh install of Windows is a quick way to get back up and running if the need arises.

1. From within Macrium Reflect, right-click on the disk or partition you’d like to create an image of and select Create Image of ..

   

2. The Backup Wizard gives us a couple of options with respect to the destination for the stored image: a local folder, a DVD, or a networked location.



3. That’s really it! Of course there are some advanced options such as various compression levels as well as the ability to split the disk snapshot into predefined file size chunks – if you were going to span the image across a few DVDs for example.

With built-in scheduling, there little reason not to automate this for piece of mind. Macrium is a free download that works on XP and Vista. If you like what you see a full featured edition is also available.