I have a necessity to format the drives on my laptop every month and make a fresh installation of Windows. Every time I do this, I have to set all my preferred settings and install all my needed software and set my preferred settings in those software too. It takes a full day of work.
So, let's say I make a fresh install of Win 11, install Visual Studio, VLC, Chrome, Spotify etc. (Just to make a sample case). Then I set all my settings both in Windows and in the various softwares.
At this point I would like to create an exact copy of the system so that the next time I format I can simply restore this "copy" and avoid all the time consuming process of tinkering with settings.
Now I'm fully aware of backups, but last time I made a backup (with the windows backup utility) it didn't restore an exact copy of the system, so I think what I need is a snapshot and not a backup. How can I do that? What's the best way to store this snapshot? How do I later use this snapshot to restore the system?
答案1
Do not use Windows Backup from the old Windows 7 - use a third-party product instead.
My favorite product is AOMEI Backupper Freeware. Use it to take an image of your entire disk. The backup will include only sectors that were used, so will be of reasonable size.
When the time comes, use AOMEI to restore the disk.
If required, you can use the AOMEI Bootable Media to boot from USB to restore the disk.
答案2
Windows' integrated backup works for this purpose as good as any other. If you have used it and your result was a different system after restore as compared to what you backed up, then I would like to know what differences you saw. Please note: for domain controllers (the most important PC in a windows network), this is the only supported way of backing them up, so it seems Microsoft has a lot of trust in the built-in method! We use it, no problems. If you want an alternative, I can recommend http://www.drivesnapshot.de/en/down.htm