Full partition back up / restore

More information is available on this Dell support page. And make note of this sentence as Dell is now advising users of this change.

"Systems that ship with Windows 10 installed from the factory use the Windows 10 native Backup and Restore. Windows Backup and Restore can be found by Clicking Start, Settings, Update & Security then Backup."

Personally I use Macrium Reflect Free and have never had a problem. It has a very friendly UI and great support.

Thank you!

Regards!

@jphughanThank you for your answer.

" I don't remember ever seeing a system that offered a system image capability built into its BIOS"

Well, I'm noob, so it was surely my wrong description. Perhabs it wasn't BIOS, but some kind of preinstalled(?) back up/restore program in Samsung laptops. When pressin a function key while starting system it opened and allow to make/restore an image.

I was looking for such tool in Dell laptop, but with no success.

"Windows still does have a built-in system image backup capability"

Yes, I've never used it, but now I do.

The new Dell laptop didn't have internet connection, so I download the newest version of Macrium Reflect (I have always been using it, earlier Norton Ghost) on another PC, created Rescue Media USB, but after plugging in Dell laptop, after looong "thinking" an error appears each time (maybe it has something to do with the fact that USB was created on another PC??). That's why I decided to use win 10 image tool.

I made partitions, installed programs, did personalization and made the image. Made some changes again and I restored the image. Everything seemed to work properly - it came back to previous state.

I'm not the owner of Dell laptop, I just helped a person who is even more noob than I am... Now it turnes out the system partition is too big and I need to reduce its size. I'm warry, after that the image will not work...

All the best!

@pbbb  Creating Rescue Media on another PC sometimes works, but sometimes it doesn't.  It depends on whether the PC you're trying to use it with requires additional drivers.  If it does, then Rescue Media created from another PC might not work properly.  And depending on the WinPE/RE version you used for your Rescue Media, there are other potential factors.  The bottom line is that it's typically recommended to create Rescue Media on the PC you'll actually be using it with for the minimum likelihood of hassle and additional manual effort.  Of course that isn't always feasible, and in those cases there are ways to add drivers and things to Rescue Media after the fact, but that's of course more work.  You could always just download the Reflect installer from some other PC and then install it on the PC you'd be using it with.

The Windows image capability will typically work if you'll always be restoring the entire disk onto the exact same disk it came from.  But that won't always be the case.

If you shrink a partition and then restore an image captured before that partition was shrunk, the restore process will bring back the original system partition map, i.e. same sizes and data content as existed when the image was made.  But if you capture a new image after shrinking that partition, you should be fine.  (But this is an example of how inflexible the Windows tool is.  With Reflect you'd be able to restore data while maintaining the existing partition sizes, for example.)

@jphughan 

"if you capture a new image after shrinking that partition, you should be fine"

This was my "secret" plan

Thank you very much for your concern and help!!

Well yes, but with MR you can adjust partition size to fit a smaller (as long as the data will fit). or larger as in a new larger SSD/Hard drive