How do I manage multiple system images in Windows 7?

Question

I want to make multiple system images, taken at different times, using only Windows 7's built-in imaging utility.

I know that this can be done more conveniently with commercial utilities like Acronis or Norton Ghost. However, I'd prefer to use the built-in imaging for the following reasons:

• It's free and it's an "internal" solution.
• I've read that images taken with Acronis can be problematic, despite the company's claims.

I made two different images with the built-in imaging. Each one is on a separate external hard drive. I want to put both images onto a single hard drive.

I was thinking of copy pasting the image folder from one drive to another, but I'm not sure if this will work: The image folder appears to be a few KB, when I know that the disk space actually used is multiple GBs.

Is there any way I can do the copy-pasting? Are there other ways of managing multiple images with Windows 7's built-in imaging?

Answer 1

Copy-pasting system images produced by Windows does work - if you're willing to do some fiddling with permissions.

The reason that you can't see the size of the folder is because you don't have proper permissions for it. To get the necessary permissions, you'll have to recursively take ownership of the WindowsImageBackup folder.

1. Open the Advanced Security Settings dialog by right-clicking on the folder, selecting Properties, going to the Security tab, and clicking "Advanced":
   
2. Go to the Owner tab and click Edit:
   
3. The current owner will be SYSTEM. You want it to be your user account. Select your user account by single-clicking on it, check the "Replace owner on subcontainers and objects" box, and click OK:
   

You'll get the following message box, telling you to close and reopen the Properties box for this folder. You must do this before moving on. Click OK on every dialog box to close it.

Now, despite taking ownership of the WindowsImageBackup folder, you still have to give yourself permissions.

Double-click on the folder. Windows will present the following dialog box; click Continue to get permissions.

You're now able to access the entire folder, including all its subdirectories. When you right-click the folder, you can see all the disk space taken up by the image:

To put multiple images on one hard drive, rename each folder to something like WindowsImageBackup_2013-10-05. When you want to restore from one of the images, just rename that folder back to WindowsImageBackup.