Copy a Windows Backup Drive Image

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I want to move a drive image from one external drive to another to make room on the first drive for a new drive image.

Copying the drive image folder happens so fast (virtually instantaneously) that I’m convinced it’s not really copying the drive image.

What’s the secret to doing this?

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You need to find the files that contain the image backup. The backup should be about the same size as your current hard disk usage.
Try Treesize free to show what directories contain large files.

cheers, Paul

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Thanks, Paul,

I can find the folders alright … there’s a folder in the root called WindowsImageBackup. It contains a single folder with the name of my computer, and that folder contains three folders plus a MediaID file.

Everything tells me that the WindowsImageBackup folder is only 16 bytes,. and I know it’s lots (LOTS!) bigger than that.

Yet when I try to copy that folder to another USB drive, it “copies” instantaneously. Clearly the actual drive image hasn’t been copied. Windows is playing some tricks to keep people from messing up their drive image. When I look into those suibdirectories on the original drive, I see plenty of files, amounting to about 33 GB, but after copying, the target drive sub-folders don’t contain those files.

The question is how do I ACTUALLY COPY this stuff?

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What are you using to perform the copy?
Can you copy individual files?

cheers, Paul

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Thanks, Paul. I found that when I copy a folder, only the folder copied, but not its contents. It seems I was able to open the folder and copy the individual files into the empty folder on the target drive. Took a bit of trial and error to get that working. I used Total Commander for this. (Tried in Windows Explorer too, and they seemed to work identically.)

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Ensure that Windows explorer is able to display hidden files and folders.

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Thanks, Clint., Yes, I always have Windows set that way.

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Thanks! I’ll BET that’s exactly what was happening. It looked like nothing was happening so I closed the dialog. It looked for all the world as though the process had hung.

This is great to know … thanks again!
Bill

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