Want to make a quick image with cmd

I have made a little video for someone on another forum who wanted to make a quick image and mount that image in order to retrieve some data. Don't ask me why he wanted to go that route. I made him a little video explaining the process and I want to share that with you. The video run for 7 minutes.

If you want to try it yourself, this is the command for imaging the C partition and all partitions needed for a proper operation (e.g. the system partition). This works from the iron or from virtual.

wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:X: -include:C: -AllCritical -quiet

Substitute 'X' with the drive letter of the partition where you want to place the image. If you want to image a data partition leave '-AllCritical' off and adjust the drive letters.

Note:If you mount the image, it comes without a drive letter but the mounted volume is present in Disk Management where you can assign a drive letter.

Good tutorial Wolfgang. A little long but very informative.

If I did this for my boot drive, could I then use the VHD in Oracle VirtualBox? Never done that, just curious.

Edit:This would be a good one to add to Kari's Video tutorial thread:

Good tutorial Wolfgang. A little long but very informative.

If I did this for my boot drive, could I then use the VHD in Oracle VirtualBox? Never done that, just curious.

Edit:This would be a good one to add to Kari's Video tutorial thread:

Not sure how that would work in vBox. I have not used vBox in so many years. I once tried to make a VHD work in VMware Player after converting it to .vmdk, but that somehow did not work. If you want to try it, I would at least copy the bootmgr to the Cpartition before you make the image. Then you have to deal with only 1 partition's image.

Just made an image of my 8.1 boot drive: wbadmin start backup -backupTarget:F: -include:C: -AllCritical -quiet
Took about 12 minutes which is not bad, about the same as Acronis TI takes.

When I look at the F: drive this is what I



On the last image, what do I mount? I tried all 3 vhdx files and all give the same error:

That is very strange. Although your files are .vhdx and not .vhd, they should mount in Windows 8.1. or W10. Are you trying to mount them in Windows 7. And what system did you image, was it virtual or on the iron.

I just created an image of a small test partition in Windows 10. There was absolutely no problem with the .vhdx.

Try it with your boot drive C: and use the -AllCriticalparameter. When I did this it imaged two partitions and now will not mount as I described. I'm wuilling to try any ideas you might have.

BTW: This is fun stuff!!!

OK, will do.

I had no problem mounting the image of C. I had to assign a drive letter to it though. It showed up without a drive letter in disk management.

Can you show the folder and full file names like I did in post #4? I'd like to see what, if anything, is different.