A full system backup is one of the best and well regarded ways to protect your current applications and files from hardware failures, upgrade issues, malware attacks, file corruption and more. Without proper backups, you might risk losing files such as images and documents, as well as custom configurations that may have taken hours to set up.
While there are many third-party apps and cloud based backup solutions available out there they are nowhere near Windows 11‘s native backup and restore capabilities which also offers the option to create a system image backup, a type of full backup that consists of an identical copy of the Windows installation, plus your settings, apps, and, your files on a external drive. Once created, it can be used to roll back to a previous version if you see problems after upgrading to a new version of Windows or restoring the system after in case you are upgrading/replacing the hard drive due to a critical hardware or software failure.
That said, the process of creating a system image backup might become a headache if you don’t know what you’re doing. Seeing this we have created an in depth guide which explains how you too can create a system image backup with ease:
Creating a System Image Backup
- Open Start.
- Search for Control Panel and click the top result to open the app.
- Click on Backup and Restore (Windows 7)
- Inside Backup and Restore click on the Create a System Image option present in the upper left corner of the window
- In the new window that appears select the On a hard disk option.
- Now use the “On a hard disk” drop-down menu and select the Windows 11 full backup destination which would be your external backup drive.
- Once selected click the Next button.
- Now you will be asked to select any additional hard drives or Partitions that you want to back up along with the System Partitions,
- Once Selected click on the Next button.
- Now you can confirm the backup and click the Start Backup button
- This will start the backup process which might take around 30 minutes depending on the type of your drive.
- Once the process is over you can click on Close.
Quick note: You’ll also receive a prompt to create a system repair disc, but you can skip it. If you need to roll back to a previous installation, you can use a USB installation media to access the recovery settings which can be skipped
Additionally, we advise you to periodically back up your computer and have a fresh copy of it handy to revert to, in case something goes wrong due to a system or hardware failure, malware, ransomware, hacking attempts and so on.
Also Read: In-Depth Guide on How to Clear Massive Cache Files in Windows 11
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