How to restore your PC from a Windows 10 system image

James Walker | February 24, 2021 February 15, 2019 | How-To

To restore your Windows 10 PC from a system image you created earlier:

1. Open the Settings app (you can use the Win+I keyboard shortcut).
2. Click the «Update & Security» tile.
3. In the list of pages on the left, click «Recovery.»
4. Click the «Restart now» button under «Advanced start-up.»
5. When your PC reboots, click the «Troubleshoot» button.
6. Click «Advanced options» and then «System Image Recovery.» Follow the wizard to recover your PC.

Applies to All Windows 10 Versions

Disaster recovery might not be the catchiest topic in computing, but it’s certainly something to stay abreast of. We recently showed you how to make a Windows system image, which contains an exact copy of everything on your hard drive. In this guide, we’ll walk you through using the image to recover your PC – even if it’s not starting, or has been encrypted by ransomware.

If you need help in creating a system image, please read through our dedicated tutorial first. This also describes what system images contain and how they differ from other forms of backup. In short, a system image is a like-for-like replica of your Windows installation. System images hold a copy of every file on your system disk at the time they were made, so you can recover your hard drive with Windows, your apps and your files intact.

We’ll assume you already have a system image handy on a USB stick, external hard drive or DVD. The first steps in the recovery process depend on whether your PC is still working. If you can boot Windows and get to your desktop, you can start the recovery from within Windows itself – see below. Otherwise, you’ll need to skip to the next section of this guide.

Recovering when Windows still starts

Start your PC and open the Settings app (you can use the Win+I keyboard shortcut). From the Settings homepage, click the «Update & Security» tile. Now, click the «Recovery» page in the left navigation menu.

On this page, press the «Restart now» button under the «Advanced start-up» heading. Windows will reboot and display its recovery screen, illustrated below.

Recovering when Windows does not start, or you can’t use your desktop

If Windows won’t start, turn off your PC. Next, restart your PC and repeatedly press the F9 keyboard key until the recovery screen, illustrated below, appears. Alternatively, or if F9 doesn’t work, you should see the recovery menu appear automatically after a few failed startup attempts.

Using the recovery screen

Once you’re at Windows’ startup recovery screen, click the «Troubleshoot» button. From here, choose «Advanced options» and then the «System Image Recovery» item.

At this point, your PC should restart. You’ll need to wait a few moments while Windows prepares the system image recovery environment. You’ll be deposited at a screen which allows you to choose your user account. Click your account name and enter your Windows password at the prompt.

Next, the System Image Recovery wizard will start. The first stage is to select the system image to recover from, so press the «Next >» button to begin. You can choose from system images saved on your PC and those on external media. Insert your system image DVD or USB drive now, or alternatively click the «Advanced…» button and follow the prompts to use an image on a network share.

Once you’ve selected your image, press the «Next >» button and follow the wizard’s guidance to restore the image. This may take a long time depending on the size of the image. Remember that existing data on your system disk will be overwritten. After the process completes, you should be able to reboot your PC and find Windows is exactly as you left it when the system image was made.

Flashing a system image when Windows isn’t installed

Finally, it’s worth noting you can deploy a system image even when Windows isn’t already installed on your PC, or you can’t reach the F9 recovery environment. To use this option, you’ll need Windows installation or recovery media – we’ll opt for the former, which you can acquire with this guide.

Burn the Windows installation image to a DVD or USB stick and boot your computer from your device – you may need to refer to your PC’s documentation to confirm how to do this.

Follow the first few steps in the Windows setup program until you reach the «Install Now» screen. Instead of installing, click the «Repair your computer» link in the bottom-left of the window. This will launch a recovery menu which includes the option to restore a system image.

Restore Windows 10 System Image to New Hard Drive | 2 Ways

Here you will learn how to restore Windows 10 system image to new hard drive with «Backup and Restore(Windows 7)» and AOMEI Backupper Standard. Select one per your needs.

By Ivy / Last Updated February 1, 2021

The need to backup and restore Windows 10 to new hard drive

Given that you have a laptop that can only hold one hard drive which is failing, how do you transfer Windows 10 to new hard drive without wasting time reinstalling the operating system and programs? In this case, you can backup Windows 10 to external hard drive or USB and then restore system image to new hard drive or SSD.

Although the final version of Windows 10 has been released for a long time, it still has many bugs reported by users. Therefore, it is essential to backup system image in Windows 10, so you can restore system from backup in the event of hard drive failure or any other unexpected error.

When it comes to migrating Windows 10 to new hard drive free, you could consider using Windows 10 backup utility, Backup and Restore (Windows 7) or AOMEI Backupper Standard. Both of them can help you create Windows 10 backup image as well as bootable USB to boot your computer, but the latter is simpler. Keep reading to get the two methods or the easier way directly.

Method 1. Restore Windows 10 system image to new hard drive with Backup and Restore(Windows 7)

Now, let’s start to restore system image from external hard drive in Windows 10 to new hard drive. You should prepare one external hard drive or USB flash drive to save the backup image. And one CD/DVD is required to create the system repair disc.

Part 1: Create Windows 10 full system backup with Backup and Restore (Windows 7)

Step 1. Go to Control Panel, click System and Security and Backup and Restore (Windows 7) in order.

Step 2. Click Create a system image in the left pane.

Note: There’s one option named “Set up backup” at the right side. You can also click it to create a system image. On this occasion, you can add other files or partitions that you want to backup besides the system.

Step 3. Choose the destination drive (external hard drive or USB flash drive) to save your backup.

Step 4. The drives that are required for Windows to run will be included by default and click Next to continue.

Step 5. Confirm the settings and click Start backup.

When the backup is done, you’ll be asked if you want to create a system repair disc (CD/DVD) to access the recovery options when your computer is unable to boot. If you do not have the CD-ROM device, you can choose to create Windows 10 recovery disk with your USB flash drive instead.

Part 2: Restore system image Windows 10 to new hard drive

In the following, we will use Windows 10 system image recovery to put Windows on a new hard drive, which is a recovery tool in Windows recovery environment to help users restore Windows 10 backup image and get computer back to a normal state.

Step 1. Shutdown the computer and switch hard drives in Windows 10.

Step 2. Connect the external hard drive containing Windows 10 backup image to your computer. Also, the system repair disc is required.

Step 3. Boot computer from the system repair disc. Change your system’s BIOS settings to make sure it can boot from the CD/DVD by hitting the specified key on the first screen.

Step 4. Click Next when you see the Windows Setup interface for the first time, then choose Repair your computer > Troubleshoot > System Image Recovery > Windows 10 subsequently.

Step 5. In the re-image your computer window, tick Use the latest available system image and then click Next.

Step 6. Choose Format and repartition disks option, then click Next > Finish > Yes to start the restoration.

Part 3: What to do after backup and restore Windows 10 image to new hard drive?

Is it over here? No, you still need to do something per your situation. Here are two main situation, please stay for a while and check it carefully, which can help you make full use of disk space on the new hard drive and avoid system restore failed error.

Situation 1: Restore Windows 10 backup to larger hard drive

If the new hard drive is larger than the old one, there will be an unallocated space at the end of new disk. Thus, you need to extend the partition size, otherwise you cannot use it to store data or do any operation. Here I’ll show you the simple steps to extend partition.

1. Press Win + R to open the run window and type diskmgmt.msc to open Disk Management in Windows 10.

2. Right-click the partition at the left side of unallocated space and select Extend Volume. Then, you will enter the Extend Volume Wizard, click Next to move on.

3. Select the disk you want to extend the partition and click Next. Usually, you can only use unallocated space on the same disk to extend volume.

4. Click Finish to start this operation.

This method works in most cases, but there is an except. If there is the 450MB recovery partition or other partition between the system partition and unallocated space, this method will become invalid. At this time, you need a professional partition resize feature, such as, «Edit Partitions» in AOMEI Backupper.

Situation 2: Restore Windows 10 image to smaller drive

Also, there are some users restore Windows 10 image to smaller drive, and most of them are out of luck. They will encounters the major problem of Windows backup and restore software: it does not support restoring to partition layouts that smaller than the original disk.

For example, if you restore a system image in Windows 10 created on 500GB hard drive to 250GB SSD, you will receive the system image restore failed error and indicated the disk is too small.

If you receive this error, the backup image is useless unless you replace the smaller hard drive with a larger one. Instead, you can use a third party tool like AOMEI Backupper to restore only used sectors on the old hard drive or consider only cloning Windows 10 to new hard drive.

Besides the system image restore error, Windows built-in backup tool still has backup errors, such as, system image backup failed because of shadow copy storage, not enough space, EFI or BIOS, no disk can be used, backup error 0x80070002, etc.

Method 2. Restore Windows 10 image to new hard drive with AOMEI Backupper Standard

AOMEI Backupper Standard is trust and reliable Windows backup and restore software to help you backup and restore Windows 10 from system image to new hard drive smoothly, even a smaller one, while your computer is running well. Also, it’s appliable to restore system image to new SSD. In addition, it allows you to create bootable media and boot the unbootable computerper.

More so, you can perform Windows 10 system image restore to different computer , even with different hardware. However, you need the help of Universal Restore feature and this feature is only available on the paid version, such as, AOMEI Backupper Professional. And this software can help you reuse unallocated space after restoration with its «Edit Partitions» feature. The premise is the restored hard drive does not have multiple partitions.

Step by step guide: Windows 10 system image restore to new hard drive

To restore Windows 10 to new hard drive using AOMEI Backupper, you need to do some preparations first.

Download and install AOMEI Backupper Standard on your computer.

Create system image backup in Windows 10 with AOMEI Backupper and save the image files to external hard drive, USB flash drive or other storage devices. Because it only restores the image created by itself.

Create bootable USB to boot your computer when it’s unbootable. If you don’t have USB drive or CD/DVD, you could consider adding an entry to this software by creating Windows recovery environment.

Then, let’s see how to restore from system image in Windows 10.

Step 1. Install new hard drive in Windows 10, and connect bootable media created by AOMEI Backupper as well as the external drive containing system image to your computer. Then, boot your computer from the bootable media.

Step 2. Under Restore tab, click Select Image File to find the image on your external drive and hit Next.

Step 3. Tick restore this system backup and Restore system to other location, then click Next to continue. If you set a scheduled full/incremental/differential backup task, there will be a few backup image that you can choose.

Step 4. Select a destination partition to restore t the image and click Next.

Tip: Please select the first partition on the target disk as destination, otherwise the system could not boot from the target disk.

Step 5. Click Start Restore to install OS on new hard drive.

Tips:
в—’ If you want to put Windows on a new hard drive in different computer, it’s suggested to tick «Universal Restore (supported by AOMEI Backupper Professional)». Because this feature can install all drivers required to boot Windows.
в—’ If you are restoring Windows 10 system image to new SSD, please tick «SSD Alignment«. Because this feature can accelerate writting and reading speed of SSDs with 4k alignment technology.
в—’ If your new hard drive is big enough to hold everything on the old disk, you could create a disk image in Windows 10. Then, restore Windows 10 disk image to new hard drive.

Conclusion

That’s all for how to restore Windows 10 image to new hard drive. You can make it with Windows built-in tool or AOMEI Backupper Standard. No matter what method you use, a bootable media is needed if your system crashes, Either optical drive or USB flash drive will be fine.

Besides system backup, you still can backup hard drive, partitions and files. Also, you can set custom schedule backup task to backup automatically, such as, daily/weekly/monthly backup, event trigger backup, USB plug in, differential backup etc. Trust me, it’s one of the most powerful software for you to secure your data and system. Just explore it by yourself now!