usb flash drive not a valid backup location for system image

Thanks. That worked. Hopefully the recovery process also works. Can't understand why Microsoft makes this so difficult, now flash drives are so huge.

Yeah Brion Bell it works so far as creating system image, done a lengthy but useless backup that cannot be used to restore. I just tested it to see the fruits of my hard work waiting for backup sys image being created but Just a system backup that the windows does not find or recognise when you try to restore even if you give the correct path. I am gonna reformat the drive again after all as the image is of no use when it comes to restoring it unless you or someone can tell us how to restore from it and have they successfully done it? which is appreciated very much. ta

Ok /Claus, done a lengthy but useless backup that cannot be restored. Just a system backup that the windows does not find or recognise even if you give the correct path. I am gonna reformat the drive again after all as the image is of no use when it comes to restoring it unless you can tell us how which is appreciated very much. ta

TLDR: Using Brion's method to save the system image directly onto a usb flash drive - works.

It is the most elegant solution provided thus far.

Q: How do we now use the usb, to restore the clean image?  

(E.g machine got infected with malware, or harddrive had failed and was replaced).

Many thanks,

Kojac Singh

Here's your steps:

Put your USB device in the port, make sure that it is formatted with NTFS, (use disk manager in 'Computer Management' to accomplish this...)

Place a folder on your USB drive (It's probably the 'E:' drive after formatting it... just be sure you're using the right one).

Right-Click the folder and choose 'Share With...'

Select 'Everyone' and make sure 'Read/Write' will be the permissions.  

Click the 'Share' button and close all your windows, then....

Use the File History Applet/Utility from the Start Screen to open up the 'File History' control panel.  In the start screen, type "File History" and choose 'File History' not 'File History Settings'.

[  Note: Don't use File History from the standard Control Panel, it's not the same.]

At the very bottom-left  of that page, you will see, 'System Image Backup' (Click on that)  

Choose to backup "On a Network Location"  - (the bottom of three radio buttons in the window).

Then click on 'Select'

In the new window, click on 'Browse' to locate the folder you shared, and select it.

Place the account credentials in the field for an 'Administrative' account, then click 'OK'

This works exactly 100% of the time!

At your service...

Brion Bell

Dear Brion,

SETTING THE SCENE:

My hard drive physically breaks (e.g mechanical failure - outside of warranty), and I have to buy a brand new one from a local retailer and swap out the broken one for this new one.

Question:

If I had used your method as above, to successfully make a system image to a usb flash drive (literally just before the mechanical failure), would I be able to use it for a restore - so I am back to where I was, before the harddrive broke?

I think this is what most of us are hoping to be able to achieve with our system image to usb attempts.

Please explain the process, of restoring the image successfully to the new blank harddisk drive.

I guess many here just want to find a relatively straight forward way to do this natively within windows vs using some third party software instead

Kojac.