There are a few Windows 10 backup options and they are a bit confusing. Some will work with a USB, while some will not.
Create a System Image: Windows 10 Image Backup
This option backs up your disk exactly as you have it. It takes the largest amount of space. I culled my Win 10 disk down to 51G and when I tried to create a system image it asked me for a disk no less than 72G! Also, this option will not let you use a USB key, so you’ll need a new disk. I had to format the USB key to NTFS, then used these instructions to create a network drive, on my Win 10 laptop, in order to trick it into accepting a USB key. In the end my 64G USB key was too small because Win 10 wanted 71G minimum.
While they sound great—and they mostly are—there are a few downsides to using an image backup. The backup process itself is a little slower, though still should happen easily overnight. Since you’re backing up everything, you will need a bigger drive on which to store the backups. And should you need to recover anything that you’ve backed up, you can’t reliably get individual folders or files from the backup. It’s more an all-or-none situation.
Also, image backups aren’t quite as necessary in Windows 8 and 10 as they used to be. You can get your computer’s operating system back to its initial state using the Reset your PC feature (which we’ll talk about later in this article). You then just need to reinstall apps and restore individual files. So, it’s really up to you to weigh the pros and cons and decide what works best for you.
Create a Recovery Drive
From the start button, type recovery. This brings up the recovery tool where you can create a recovery drive. This option should allow you to restore Windows to a new disk if your drive gets damaged. Windows said that I needed an 8G USB flash drive.
Supposedly you’ll lose all your data but be able to reinstall Windows 10 from the USB key. you can also create a recovery drive from DVDs. This option will probably go away very soon.
Create a Restore Point
From the start button, type recovery. This brings up the recovery tool where you can create a restore point.
Before you make any radical changes to your Win 7/10 system you can “freeze” the setting by creating a restore point. If you then make a change and something goes wrong you can go back and undo the changes to the last restore point. On Windows 7 restore points were automatically created for system updates, but I do not see this with Windows 10.
Maximum Volume from a USB Flash Drive:
I bought a Kingston DT50 64G flash drive. Little did I know that usable space is 57.7G. I was surprised. On the back of the package, on the first line of instructions it says “Actual available capacity for data storage is less than as listed on the products due to formatting and other functions.” I did not think it would take 11% of the disk. Read this from Kingston