Practical guide
Disk Imaging: Create and Restore a Drive Image
A disk image stores the contents of selected disks or partitions in a backup file. Restoring a system image can recover the operating system, applications and data captured at the backup date.
Understand the backup methods
| Method | Contains | Recovery dependency |
|---|---|---|
| Full | All selected data for that backup | The full backup itself |
| Incremental | Changes since a previous backup in the chain | The full backup and required incremental files |
| Differential | Changes since the full backup | The full backup and the selected differential |
Keep backup chains together and use the application to manage retention. Deleting individual files in a chain can make later recovery points unusable.
Create an image you can recover
- Choose the disk or partitions to protect. For system recovery include the boot-related partitions required by the application.
- Select a destination on a separate physical device or a supported network location.
- Choose retention, scheduling and encryption. Keep the recovery password somewhere accessible without the protected computer.
- Run the backup and its validation option, if available.
- Create recovery media and boot it far enough to confirm access to both the backup location and the disks. Exit without restoring.
- Restore a sample file to another folder. For critical systems, test complete recovery on a spare disk or suitable test machine.
Restore carefully
Start the recovery environment, select the correct recovery date and inspect the target disk before confirming. A whole-disk restoration can overwrite the target. If you only need one document, use file extraction or image mounting when supported rather than restoring the whole system.
Catalog options
Explore O&O DiskImage 23 and Paragon Hard Disk Manager 17. Confirm image-format compatibility and recovery-media support for the edition that created your backup.
Related products
Explore catalog tools for disk-image backups and system recovery.
O&O DiskImage
Create system images and file backups with scheduled chains and recovery tools.
Ashampoo Backup Pro
Create automatic file and partition backups to local, network, or cloud storage.