Taking system image backups in Windows 8.1

Taking good backups from your production machines is an important job to do regularly. My personal strategy is three-fold: taking system-level image backups, taking file backups of important files and settings, and finally, keeping files that I'm just working on in OneDrive.

Recently, I wanted to take an image backup from one of my machines. Since I believe this command is mistakenly hidden beneath several clicks inside Control Panel, I wanted to blog about it.

The feature to take system-level image backups is called System Image Backup. But alas, you cannot start this command directly from the start menu, and even a start menu search reveals nothing. Instead, you have to start the feature either from the Control Panel (if you know where to look) or from the command-line using the wbadmin command.

To find the correct command, open Control Panel, and then click to System and Security, and then to File History. Now, in the lower-left corner of the File History screen, you can see the tiny link to the System Image Backup command. Click this link to get started.

Alternatively, you can use the wbadmin command from the command-line. Note that neither of these commands is available on Windows RT 8.1, so it only works on the desktop version.

Hope this helps!