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Disk image stored on a network share

Tags: Microsoft, Software, Windows

When reinstalling PC’s we occasionally experience the sad user missing something important from his/her old installation.

We would like to create a “fast snap” of the drive to a network share before reinstalling and hold on to it a couple weeks..

What would the best way be to do this?

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Reply To: Disk image stored on a network share

In reply to Disk image stored on a network share

I am certain you will get additional feedback, but I would suggest a system backup to either a USB stick with sufficient storage or an external HDD or SDD before updating the system. That’s what I did when I upgraded my older PC to my current one.

Re: disk image

In reply to Disk image stored on a network share

Any program that can make a disk image can store it somewhere. For example on a network drive the user who makes it has access to.

A common program is Acronis True Image, but there are many more.

Why a disk image?

In reply to Disk image stored on a network share

Make sure the IT policy is clear about such a backup. For example:
“Files outside the user’s home folder are never backed up or migrated.”

It would be fairly trivial and fast to store a copy of the user’s home directory but given the entire disk can be terabytes in size, that could take a day to copy out and swamp your network storage.

Solved

In reply to Disk image stored on a network share

Just received the latest version of User Profile Central (UPC) today!

UPC now simply has a built in feature to create a VHD backup of the C drive!
One tick in a box and along with a backup of the selected user profile(s) it also creates a VHD disk backup on the backup network share.

To limit space usage (to not kill our storage) the specific share now is set to delete all files more than 90 days old.

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