Creating an image of Windows installation?

Hi

What's the best FREE way to create an image / backup of an exisiting Windows installation? For instance, on my 250gb SSD, I have originally created a partition just for a Windows installation, but noticed that Windows creates a hidden system partition, in addition to a 10gb RAW and recovery partitions.

There is currently unallocated space on the drive.

Rather than clone the entire drive, could only active Windows partitions be imaged (including the boot sector / MBR)?

I understand it's not possible with Clonezilla?

Thanks.

I while back I set up Ease US todo backup in a similar scheme. Not sure what the current version is like for that.

Macrium reflect free is very good.

Backup is built into Windows. You can restore it from booting off of a Windows disk as well.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Backup is built into Windows. You can restore it from booting off of a Windows disk as well.

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When I tried the windows backup it wouldn't let me create an image of just the windows install/boot partition, it insisted on an image containing numerous other partitions and ended up too large. Using a third party image backup worked fine, and I successfully restored from a failure using the image created so I don't know why Windows Backup works like that.

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Originally Posted by kalniel

When I tried the windows backup it wouldn't let me create an image of just the windows install/boot partition, it insisted on an image containing numerous other partitions and ended up too large. Using a third party image backup worked fine, and I successfully restored from a failure using the image created so I don't know why Windows Backup works like that.

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Every time I have seen that has been due to programs being installed on other drives. The backup appears to enumerate the location of installed programs and insists that all drives that are in that list are added to the backup.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Every time I have seen that has been due to programs being installed on other drives. The backup appears to enumerate the location of installed programs and insists that all drives that are in that list are added to the backup.

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Yeah, and I have programs installed on lots of other drives. File backup is good enough for any of them though (which I do separately), I just want an image of the boot partition so have to use third party.

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Originally Posted by GoNz0

Macrium reflect free is very good.

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+1, saved my "bacon" this week :) .

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Originally Posted by gupsterg

+1, saved my "bacon" this week :) .

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+1 saved me a few times too!

There seems to be a few different versions of Macrium Reflect (Professional, Technician, Workstation and Workstation Server), which version are people using?

Thanks.

I'm using free edition.