Windows 7 - is it possible to create a "system image" on a non-NTFS-drive (exFat)?

If your question is correctly understood the short answer is YES.

I do not know of any difference between FAT32 and "exFat" and assume that they are the same.

FAT32 can't handle files larger than 4 GB. That seems to be the only major difference between NTFS and FAT32.

I have managed to build a bootable Acronis 2019 rescue thumb drive using 651 MB of the thumb drive's available 1 GB. It is a non-NTFS-drive. It is FAT32.

That thumb drive works to make total partition and drive images to totally restore Windows systems (with all installed applications) to replacement drives and to clones.

Acronis total image backups are generally greater than 4 GB in length. The drives used here for Acronis total image backups have NTFS file systems.

Retired33176

Posted 2019-12-08T20:45:39.773

Reputation: 1

@grawity is right. FAT32 and exFat are completely different (and NTFS and FAT32 are also completely different). – d-b – 2019-12-10T00:08:16.723

I am not trying to make a bootable drive, I am trying to make an image of my current C that can be restored to a new harddrive. – d-b – 2019-12-10T00:09:21.300

Reformatting of a 1 GB thumb drive with W7 I was able to change its file system from NTFS to exFAT. Acronis 2019 was able to start normally producing its backup image of my 56.1 GB C drive to this exFAT. As expected it stopped with the errror message "Not enough space on the destination.". Acronis 2019 has frequently been used here to do exactly what you want: Making an image of one's C drive to restore to a new hard drive. That would work with a 32 GB thumb drive formated NTFS, not one formatted FAT32 (with its 4 GB file size limit). – Retired33176 – 2019-12-11T02:23:37.277

Windows 7 - is it possible to create a "system image" on a non-NTFS-drive (exFat)?

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