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I have an old laptop with windows 10 Pro installed and I want to make a .wim of the C: drive using DISM so I can append it to the system partition of my new laptop

I have never used DISM before. How do I retrieve the C: volume from my old laptop to a .wim?

Elisha Habinsky
  • 185

2 Answers2

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The command you are looking for is:

dism /capture-image /imagefile:"f:\example.wim" /capturedir:C:\ /name:"C-Drive" /compress:max /verify /EA

Be sure to replace "F:\Example.wim" with the name of the WIM file you wish to create. Also, the /compress, /verify, and /EA switches are optional. /compress makes the WIM file smaller, /verify double-checks to make sure the data was captured correctly, and /EA also captures some NTFS metadata that's not normally present on the drive (such as alternate data streams or POSIX ACLs -- stuff that you can't really see or edit) but that some weird programs might use. All three make the capture process take longer but ensures that it's accurate, contains absolutely everything, and is as small as possible.

Also, this is best done by booting from WinPE or Windows boot media and capturing offline. Be aware when you do this, however, that your Windows partition may no longer be the C: drive at that point.

Wes Sayeed
  • 14,102
-3

This is not possible at all using as output the Windows Imaging Format, described as:

The Windows Imaging Format (WIM) is a file-based disk image format.

WIM can capture files from one partition, but not multiple partitions.
Possibly you are looking for an imaging product for disk or partition backup.

See the article Best Free Drive Cloning Software for a list of such products with reviews.

harrymc
  • 498,455