How to backup only a computers factory settings?

[UAHGorgix]

Hello!

So I just got a new 1TB installed and am in the process of creating the Recovery D: drive and backing up. The whole reason I got the 1TB is because I didn't have enough space to backup everything, it basically wants to make an image of my current computer, which would mean my Recovery D: would need to be just as large as the content in my C: drive.

How can I set windows to only have the factory settings backed up in the Recovery D: drive? That way the drive is only about 30GB or less. My current options are "All User Data Files" and "Image C:".

Any suggestions?

 

[office politics]

The last time i rebuilt my laptop, i created a disk image snapshot with clonezilla. This saves a point in time copy so i can restore back to when i first built the machine. Clonezilla images usually have a good compression ratio; smaller than actual size.

If you already have a ton of user data on the machine, i would look to move this to a external drive , nas, or another partition first. Clonezilla is also able to copy only one partition. I would save the image to the d drive and restire from it when needed.

 

[UAHGorgix]

I think what Ill do is get an external drive. Since it wants to backup ALL data I can just use that. I dont want a partition that is the size of my current C: usage.

Gateway has a built in factory restore which will revert my computer to the status it was when I received it. So using an external drive to backup is probably the best choice.

 

[Sheepykins]

Windows 7? windows backup allows you to select what you want to backup, just choose the system folder. done !