How to Create a Recovery Partition – Windows 7

Creating a recovery partition is a two part process. The first process is to create a partition if you do not have an additional Hard Drive to install the system image which is the the second part of this tutorial.

Note: it is highly recommended to install the system image on an additional Hard Drive or on a partition in a different drive other than the operating system drive.

A system image is an exact copy of a drive. By default, a system image includes the drives required for Windows to run. It also includes Windows and your system settings, programs, and files. You can use a system image to restore the contents of your computer if your hard disk or computer ever stops working. When you restore your computer from a system image, it’s a complete restoration—you can’t choose individual items to restore, and all of your current programs, system settings, and files are replaced with the contents of the system image.

If you do not have and additional Hard Drive click here to create a partition. Once you have created a partition we need to create a system image.

To create an Image in Windows 7

1. Click on Start then search for Back up & Restore.

2. Then click on the Create a system image link.

3. Choose where you want to save the image. You can choose an additional drive, burn to multiple DVD’s (not recommended, you will burn too many discs), or store it on a network location. In this Video Tutorial I chose a partition.

4. If you have multiple drives you can include other drives if you want, but remember that will increase the size of the image.

5. At the confirmation screen you will be able to see the drives that you are backing up and the size of them. If something doesn’t look right you can still go back from this point to make adjustments.

6. A progress meter is displayed while the images is created. In this example the disk is about 20GB in size, took over 15 minutes to be backed up to a partition.

7. Once the image is created you will get the option to create a system repair disc, Create the repair disk and place it in a secure location. So when it comes time to restore from the image, you will be able to use the System Recovery disk to get the system back up and running.

Video Tutorial:

Miguel

I started this tech blog back in 2011 as a place to write down processes I took to fix my client systems and network. Now I write some tips and tricks to help others with the tech issues that one might encounter.

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