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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?

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  • Possible duplicate>>>superuser.com/questions/2056/clone-all-drive-partitions?rq=1
    – Moab
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 21:40
  • its a great idea and i'm glad you brought it up but being that i'm trying to build proficiency with DISM i would like to know how to create a .wim using DISM for a specific volume.
    – Elisha Habinsky
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 22:50
  • I edited your question significantly to make it more clear. I also removed references to the WINDRIVERS partition (since it's irrelevant to the question) and the bit about Macrium (since disk cloning and imaging are mutually exclusive of each other). I'm not sure what you're goal is with that, but since you want to learn about DISM you should probably just stick with that.
    – Wes Sayeed
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 0:38
  • The reason the WINDRIVERS partition is important to this scenario is because i was planning to capture the .wim of the C: partition by appending it to the WINDRIVERS partition. Thus achieving my goal, as stated, to replace C: without removing the partition necessary to the hardware. Does that make sense? I edited the question in this respect, to give help the reader see my goal.
    – Elisha Habinsky
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 10:39
  • The reason the WINDRIVERS partition is important to this scenario is because i was planning to capture the .wim of the C: partition by appending it to the WINDRIVERS partition. Thus achieving my goal, as stated, to replace C: without removing the partition necessary to the hardware. Does that make sense? I edited the question in this respect, to give help the reader see my goal. The imaging section of this link illustrates my intention>>> superuser.com/questions/1503059/windows-10-refuses-to-boot-after-ssd-upgrade-xps-9360/1503102#1503102
    – Elisha Habinsky
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 10:49

2 Answers 2

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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.

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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.

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  • Either i did not understand your answer or i was not clear. Let me try again. I DO NOT want to image more than one partition. I want to image volume C: ONLY. maybe have a look at the commentary here: superuser.com/questions/1503312/…
    – Elisha Habinsky
    Commented Nov 20, 2019 at 22:54
  • You do not understand : WIM is not for capturing a disk image. It is for capturing files from one partition. It does not capture for example the File Table (MFT). The word "Imaging* in the name does not stand for "disk image" as understood today, as this is an old format. Use instead a product from my link. I recommend AOMEI.
    – harrymc
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 6:13
  • The link above is just a way to package multiple WIM files that need to be applied one-by-one to each partition, where the partitions must first be allocated manually, and then the files copied to each partition one partition at a time. This isn't a disk backup at all, just a very awkward method for packaging files, not even as efficient as Zip.
    – harrymc
    Commented Nov 21, 2019 at 6:21

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