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Full system backup (SSD cloning)

Introduction

A complete image of the system SSD is a good way to retain a clean and fully set up system and to save it as a backup without having to rely on Windows-internal mechanisms ("System Restore", "Reset"). On the one hand, this can serve as a backup, but it can also make it easier to quickly set up several identical systems in a small-to-medium business environment.

This is also referred to as creating an "image". This means that not only logical files and pointers from the NTFS file system of a single SSD partition are copied, but the content of the SSD as a whole, including all partitions on it (such as the "boot" partition). This means that a complete image of the mass storage device is created, including any empty spaces, metadata, partition tables etc. - this method is fully agnostic as to what kind of data is stored on the SSD. Even multi-boot systems (with Linux and Windows running in parallel) can be cloned and restored in one fell swoop.

Interfaces and programs

There are many programs that offer this service. As a rule, such a program is booted within its own mini-operating system (usually WinPE) directly from a USB thumb drive, so that it has unrestricted access to the now dormant system SSD.

With UEFI replacing BIOS, GPT replacing MBR, NVMe replacing SATA and the dominance of PCIe connected SSDs, many classic interfaces in the PC have changed over the years, but the principle of cloning mass storage has remained the same at its core. Even today, any reasonably up-to-date program should be able to boot on a UEFI system from an external disk and pull an image from the system drive or SSD. This does not require "Legacy boot" or MS-DOS. Good programs are also able to compress the resulting image file sensibly and without loss, so that empty capacities of the SSD do not unnecessarily inflate the image file with lots of zeroes. Hence, the less space is used on the SSD, the smaller the resulting image file will be, despite the fact that the SSD is cloned in its entirety.

To ensure that the backup is a success and to avoid unwanted stumbling blocks and side effects, we would like to provide the following tips.

Consider partition sizes during a new Windows installation.

If you want to clone your system onto other machines, but the source system has a larger SSD than the target system, then you may want to limit the size of the system partition to a reasonable size when you first set up Windows on the source system. The remaining space on the SSD can be left "unallocated" for the time being. For example, if the source system has a 1TB SSD, but the target system has only 500GB, then we would recommend limiting the Windows partition on the source system to something like 240GB. The remaining 260GB on the target system can then be set up as a second partition (D:) after rolling out the image. This discrepancy between the source and target SSDs can also be eliminated with programs that are capable of enlarging and shrinking partitions. But there is a certain elegance in avoiding this additional work step (and the associated uncertainty as to whether it really works reliably) - moreover, such partition management programs are usually in the somewhat higher-priced segment.

Install all drivers and complete Windows updates.

You should perhaps not pull the image when Windows has a few updates in the queue that will be installed the next time you restart. The best thing to do is to click on "Check for Updates" again and run through the updates including reboots. Updates declared as "optional" or "preview", on the other hand, do not have to be installed.

Clean up before cloning.

Before pulling the image, you should clean up the SSD again. Empty the recycle bin, possibly clean up the download folder, possibly empty the browser cache. If all Windows updates have already run through, you may also empty the system folder "C:WindowsSoftwareDistribution". Other places with large space consumption can be found very quickly and easily with the software TreeSize.

Get an external SSD.

SSD images are large, but USB thumb drives and magnet-disc hard drives are slow. A large and reliable external SSD is highly recommended - preferably with USB-C Gen2 (10 Gbit/s) interface. For advanced users, we recommend an easy-to-maintain external SSD enclosure that can accommodate standard M.2-2280 SSDs (with PCIe/NVMe support). Recommended example:

With such a standardised solution, you are more flexible in the long term than with a proprietary mini-SSD from the usual brand manufacturers. For example, such an enclosure can also be used to conveniently rescue data from a non-bootable system SSD by removing such an SSD from its host PC or laptop.

Use NTFS on the external disk, not FAT32, not exFAT.

FAT32 can only store files with a maximum size of 4GB. exFAT removes this limit, but due to the lack of resilience-enhancing features such as journaling, it is not necessarily recommended for long-term use on large external drives. So make sure your external drive is formatted in NTFS before you start using it for such heavy tasks.

Reboot; don't shut down. (avoid Hybrid Shutdown)

If you are now ready to boot the backup program from the USB stick, you should specifically restart the laptop/PC, i.e. not simply shut it down and then cold start it. Reason: when "shutting down", Windows puts the operating system kernel into a "hibernate" state - i.e. not all services are completely switched off and the connected storage drives are not ejected (unmounted). Although this Hybrid Shutdown system would still power down (Hibernate, S4), cloning such a half-asleep system can have weird side effect when booting it for the first time on another machine.

If, on the other hand, you perform a "restart" in Windows, everything is actually terminated, ejected and shut down. You should then boot the USB data carrier directly within this reboot, i.e. you should get your finger ready on F2 (BIOS Setup) or F7 (Boot Media Select) during reboot.

Recommended programs

Recommended and successfully tested by us are the following programs for cloning:

The following programs are suitable for adjusting partition sizes afterwards:

What all these programs have in common is that they can be used independently of the operating system installed on the PC or laptop - they thus bring their own runtime environment with them. Furthermore, these programs are compatible with all current PC interfaces (UEFI, GPT, NVMe, etc.) and all modern mass storage devices (SSDs).