How to create a Windows 10 and Windows 11 disk image ?
Why do we need to make a Windows 10/11 disk image ?
Have you ever considered creating a disk image of your Windows 10/11 system? While copying your files and folders may seem like enough, important data such as accounts, bookmarks, and preferences are often not saved in a file. In order to ensure a full and complete system backup, creating a disk image of your entire disk is necessary.
Not only is creating a disk image beneficial for backing up your entire operating system, but it’s also a wise decision if you have more than one operating system installed on your hard drive. By backing up your hard drive offsite, you can easily restore everything to the exact time it was backed up, in case your computer crashes.
But what about the cost of disk imaging software? The good news is, there are several free disk imaging software options available for Windows 10 users. In this article, we’ll explore some of the best free disk imaging software options for Windows 10/11, so you can make an informed decision about which software is right for your needs.
Free software to create a disk image
While Windows 10 and 11 have built-in tools for creating image files, they are unable to create a complete disk image. Fortunately, AOMEI Backupper Standard is a free disk imaging software that enables you to effortlessly create a complete disk image, including hidden partitions, in Windows 10.
With AOMEI Backupper Standard, you can create a disk image with ease and efficiency. This software supports a wide range of file systems, including NTFS, FAT32, FAT16, EXT2, and EXT3, as well as various storage devices such as external hard drives, solid state drives (SSDs), USB flash drives, USB sticks, network attached storage (NAS), RAID hardware, dynamic disks, and more.
Not only does AOMEI Backupper Standard allow you to create a Windows 10 disk image, but it also offers comprehensive backup options for files/folders, partitions, and even your operating system. Additionally, it allows you to restore a disk image to a GPT disk or MBR disk, and you can still restore it even if your system can’t boot with bootable media. With all these features and capabilities, AOMEI Backupper Standard is an excellent choice for free disk imaging software.
Create a disk image in Windows 10/11 with AOMEI Backupper
For the concise design of AOMEI Backupper, even a computer novice can create a hard drive image in Windows 10 without needing help. And it’s a guarantee for data security or when you want to upgrade Windows 10 to Windows 11 without losing any files. Let’s see how it works:
- Download this free software. Install it and run it, then select Disk Backup under the Backup tab.
- Click Add Disk to choose the disk you are going to backup, and then select a location to store the disk image.Although this software allows you to back up to a critical volume, it is better to back up to an external hard disk.
On this page, you can click Options to adjust backup settings such as image encryption, e-mail notification, compression level, etc., or click Schedule to set up an automatic backup according to your needs. - Finally, click Start to create a hard drive image for Windows 10. The process will not affect your work.
Tip:
- Click Schedule to run this daily, weekly, monthly, trigger event, USB plugged in backup. The last two functions are only available in the paid version, please upgrade to AOMEI Backupper Professional and other advanced versions.
- Click on Options to modify the disk image, such as split, compress, comment, set backup mode, enable email notification to be noticed when backup is complete.
Conclusion
You can see that it is quite easy to create a disk image in Windows 10/11 via AOMEI Backupper. With a disk image at hand, restoring the disk image can also be done in a few clicks. Moreover, you can also use Disk Cloning to create a copy of your hard drive without performing disk image creation in Windows 10.
If you want to protect an unlimited number of computers within your company, you can chooseAOMEI Backupper Technician. With the built-in AOMEI Image Deploy tool, you are also allowed to deploy/restore the system image file on one server-side computer to multiple client-side computers over the network. Why not try it now?
