Hi Charles,

The last time I had to back up to an external hard drive I opted to clone my entire system rather than pick and choose files. This isn't so feasible with larger systems, but it worked for a smaller 250 GB laptop. I used Macrium Reflect to clone the entire C drive to an SSD, but the concept holds for SSDs or HDDs.

Sadly, Macrium Reflect no longer has a free tier, but there are other open-source solutions that you can do this with. One thing to keep in mind with cloning hard drives is that if you've got any sort of security encoding, like Bitwarden drive encryption, cloning will duplicate the security as well, so if that's relevant at all you need to be sure to have the needed access keys saved somewhere externally (ideally on a different piece of password-protected technology).

Sincerely,

Aurora Charlow

[Ohio University Logo]
Aurora Charlow, she/they
DIGITAL ARCHIVIST
UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
MAHN CENTER FOR ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, PRESERVATION & DIGITAL INITIATIVES
EMAIL
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
PHONE
740.593.0055

________________________________
From: Code for Libraries <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of charles meyer <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Monday, October 13, 2025 04:03 PM
To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: [External] [CODE4LIB] Windows 10 backup - System Image?

Use caution with links and attachments.

My esteemed listmates,

Reading quickly as October 15th is almost upon us.

a reddit post suggested for back up of W7 you do a System Image backup.

Is that how open backs up W10 in case W11 doesn't install well?

Posted was... Control Panel > backup and restore > system image backup and
it supposedly backs up W10 to your external hard drive?

If not, how have you backed up W10 to an ext hdd?

Thank you.

Charles.