It’s easy and free.
I frequently recommend creating an image backup prior to major events like a Windows upgrade, hardware replacement, or anything that might put your machine at risk of something going wrong. A backup image is a great bit of insurance.
Of course, the question I get then is “Great. How do I do that?”
It’s not hard. Let’s download EaseUS Todo Free, install it, and use it to make a backup image.
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Creating an image backup
Creating a backup image is smart insurance before major changes (like upgrades or adding new hardware). Use EaseUS Todo Free to do this easily. Download it, install it with custom install option to avoid extras, and follow simple steps to select what to back up.
Downloading EaseUS Todo Free
Start by visiting https://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html.
Click on the Free Download button to download and run the installer.
You may get several offers to upgrade. You do not need to upgrade. Choose the completely free version at each step of the path.
Installing EaseUS Todo Free
After running the installer, you’ll be presented with an Install page.
I’ve highlighted the “Custom Install” item in the image above. Regardless of what you’re installing, always choose custom. While it’s never been an issue with EaseUS products, sometimes the custom install option exposes additional choices (or at worst, PUPs) that you can de-select. It’s an important habit you should get into.
Click on Install Now.
When the program has been installed, you’ll be given an option to Start Now.
Click on Start Now. (Again, decline, ignore, or bypass any offers to upgrade to a paid version.)
Creating a backup image
You’ll be greeted by a welcome screen.
Click on Create Backup.
You’ll be asked what you want to back up.
Click on Disk. An image backup is, by definition, the complete contents of a disk, including all partitions and overhead information.
You’ll be asked which disks to back up.
Click on the checkbox in front of the hard disk that contains your C: partition. This will cause the entire disk, including additional partitions such as EFI and recovery partitions, to be backed up. In my case, that’s “Hard disk 0”.
You may also click on any additional internal drives you have if you want to include them in the backup.
Do not click on the checkmarks in front of the disk (usually the external disk) where you plan to place the backup image.
Click OK.
You’ll be asked where you want the backup image to be saved.
In the example above, EaseUS Todo has “guessed” that “D:\My Backups” is where I want my backup images to be placed. If that’s not where you want your image, click on the icon above the location and select a different location. Typically that should be the drive letter of your external drive. You cannot save to the drive you’re backing up (C:); it must be a different disk drive entirely.
Click on Backup Now.
Your image backup
Once your backup is completed, you can examine the result. I visited “D:\My Backups” in Windows File Explorer.
Within that folder, I found “Disk 0”, a folder representing the disk I backed up, and within that folder, “Disk_0_20250210_Full_v1.pdb”, the EaseUS Todo file containing the image backup.
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Now what?
“Great, so what do I do with this backup image? And how do I use it when I need it?”
Those questions don’t need to be answered right now. Why? Because you have your safety net. Come the time you need something from the backup, you can look for and get the answers then, but you don’t have to worry about this now.
As long as you have the backup image, you’re protected.
However, when the time comes, AskLeo! has your back. Each of those articles also includes a video explaining the process as well.
- Creating an EaseUS Todo Emergency Disk explains how to create a recovery disk.
- Restoring an Image Using EaseUS Todo shows how to restore a backup image created by EaseUS Todo.
- Restoring a File from an EaseUS Todo Image Backup. EaseUS Todo makes restoring individual files and folders from an image backup easy.
Do this
Now you know how to create a backup image using EaseUS Todo. Go do it! In fact, do it before you need it so you’re familiar with the process. Then, next time you’re about to make a major change to your system, take a backup image right then and there.
Just in case.
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On all my computers except for one laptop, the system drive is drive 0. In my Lenovo laptop, there are 2 SSDs and the system drive is drive 1. The data drive d: is drive 0. Check to see which drive is the system drive. You can do this by checking the drive letter which corresponds to the c: drive which is the system drive.
I purchased the lifetime subscription several years ago after reading Leo’s article. I have plenty of space on all of my drives and make a weekly image of my C drive, and daily incrementals of my D; all scheduled to run automatically. I need to learn how to upload to AWS for disaster recovery. EaseUS says it will encrypt and upload to cloud storage. Maybe there’s a YouTube video.
I’ll admit that there are many philosophies about backup strategies and I hope your approach works in case of a disaster. I just wanted to point out your approach is three levels removed from your raw personal data (if you’re making an image backup to also save your personal files). When a real disaster happens, things tend not to work out as expected.
A system image backup is the best way to protect your personal files.
I will be replacing my non-upgradable Windows 10 desktop computer soon. Am I correct in understanding that my image backup can then be used to transfer everything to my new PC?
No. An image backup can be used to restore backed up data or restore an entire system to a new drive on the same computer or a computer with very similar hardware. If, by chance, the restore works, you would have Windows 10 on your new machine which defeats the purpose of getting a new machine.
Either stick using your older machine with Windows 10 or install all of your programs on your new machine from their original installation files and copy the data from your backup.
How Do I Transfer My Programs and Data to a New Machine?
What Happens at Windows 10 End of Support?
Yes and no.
You cannot rely on just restoring the image to a new / different machine. That’s not what images are for. More here: Is an Image Backup Useful if I Need to Restore to a Different Machine?
You can, of course, use it to restore specific files as needed.
I can’t find the answer to this question: is the backup somehow compressed, or does it take the same space as the original? I’d like to know what size external drive I need to do this.
It’s compressed (there are advanced options to adjust the compression level / time tradeoff). Unfortunately there’s no great way to estimate the size, since how compressed things will be depends not only on the compression level you choose, but how compress-able the original data is.
I always choose maximum compression. The time a backup takes is not important to me as most of the time it happens when I’m away from my computer and even if I’m using it, it happens in the background and I don’t even notice it’s backing up.