Why is it so important to backup operating system?
As you know, any operating system in the market is not perfect. It is essential to backup OS on your computer for the following reasons.
- System crash
After using a computer for a long while properly or improperly, the system may not be as good as it should be, and sometimes it may even crash. You may be more careful to avoid system crashes, but you can never really prevent them since there are many reasons behind a system crash, such as virus attack, malware, unstable Windows update or upgrade, accidental system files deletion, etc.
- Windows upgrade problems
There are many users who upgraded to Windows 10 and then decided to revert back to Windows 7 or Windows 8.1, because Windows may not be compatible with some applications or games they love to use or it just does not work as well as they expected.
- Hardware failure
Besides the software problem, the computer hardware will fail sometime eventually, at least some parts of it, and it is just a matter of time. If your hard drive fails, everything on the hard drive is gone. Even if you can recover the data by sending the broken hard drive to a data recovery company, that will take time and cost you a lot.
When your system is in a serious problem, reinstalling Windows will most likely fix the problem, but it takes plenty of time and effort. Worst of all, you may lose some data. The best way to avoid such troubles is to create a system backup to external hard drive or other location. When the system crashes, you can easily restore your system to an earlier date.
Even if the computer hardware fails, you can also restore to a dissimilar hardware computer. In addition, if you use a backup software with high-level compression technology, it will not take much of your disk space. AOMEI Backupper Standard, a free backup and restore software, can do exactly that.
Where to save operating system backup image?
As many people do, one often divides their hard drive into different sections, which are known as partitions. If you have a problem with your operating system, it will not affect other partitions except the C drive. Therefore, you can backup operating system to one of the non-system partitions.
If you switch to a new computer, you can still restore system backup to dissimilar hardware or use this hard drive as your backup disk. Since the hard drive itself may fail to work for a long time use, you can also backup to removable devices.
AOMEI Backuppper allows you to backup to external hard drives, writable CDs and DVDs, and USB flash drives. If you create scheduled backups to a removable disk, be aware that the drive letter may change after you plug in and plug off. When the drive letter changes, the backup cannot locate the backup destination location resulting in scheduled backup failure.
Compared with removable storage devices, a non-system internal hard drive is more secure for saving backups, because a removable disk is more likely to get crashed or damaged while being moving around. If your PC is on a network, you can also create backups to a network shared folder or network drive.
How to backup operating system in Windows 11, 10, 8, 7
Prepare your backup disk and then you can follow the steps below to set up a system backup. AOMEI Backupper allows you to use File Explorer to select the backup location, so you can use the same steps whether you backup to external or internal hard drive.
1. Download and open AOMEI Backupper.
2. Within the main interface, click “Backup” and select “System Backup”, which will automatically include needed partitions for a full system restore in the backup.
3. In the next screen, you can see backup source has been selected, so you only need to specify a location path to receive the backup.
4. Click “Options” and “Schedule Backup” to see more options if needed, and then click "Start Backup" to get the backup started.
After the operating system backup is done, you can create a bootable media that allows you to perform offline system restore using a USB flash drive or writable CD when your computer fails to boot. If you are looking for more advanced features regarding backup and recovery, such as backup encryption and dissimilar hardware restore, then you can choose the paid editions of AOMEI Backupper.