Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Create a virtual disk

In the Backup And Restore Control Panel, click Create A System Image in the left pane and follow the prompts to select a backup destination. The disk space requirements for an image-based backup can be substantial. Windows will warn you if the destination you choose doesn't have sufficient free disk space.

System images are stored in virtual hard drive (.vhd) format. Although the data is not compressed, it is compact because the image file does not include the hard drive's unused space and some other unnecessary files, such as hibernation files, page files, and restore points. Incremental system image backups on a local drive are not written to a separate folder. Instead, new and updated files (actually, the changed blocks in those files) are written to the same .vhd file. The older blocks are stored as shadow copies in the .vhd file, allowing you to restore any previous version.

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