What's the fastest way to create image of C partition?

Hi,

I just bought Paragon Hard Disk Manager 12 Suite (bargain, Christmas deal half price) and have made one image of C partition but it took almost an hour and a half. I'm guessing the following might speed things up next time:

Defrag partition before backup.

Disable internet connection so no other program will interfere by downloading updates.

Turn off anti-virus, anti-malware and security guards like WinPatrol.

Close all unecessary services.

Choose "No Compression".

Leave computer alone to do its thing.

Will doing the above help reduce the time taken? I know getting a SSD would speed things up but I'm not ready to do that yet.

Cheers,

 

Hi
Defrag - yes, 'no compression' - of course, speed up. Fastest, imho - perform a backup from bootable media (winPE)

 

What is the size of the partition? Of the image?

A good idea is to put the system and the data in separate partitions. Also, to clean up the partition before creating the image. You can also disable the "Control Archive Integrity" option, and use normal compression.

Time to backup my Win 7 X64 system partition, working from a WinPE boot medium and using an external USB 3.0 disk connected to a USB 3.0 port, is no more than 5-6 min.

 

C Partition size = 48.3 Gb
Image size = 19.8 Gb
Control Archive Integrity = disabled
Clean up partition = done
Data on separte partition = as much as possible
Compression = None (have plenty of free external drive space)
WinPE boot = will download
OS = XP SP3 (upgrade not on agenda, maybe wait for Windows 9)
USB = 2.0 (m/board is old and only has USB 2 ports)

I've made one image of C partition so far and it took 2.43 hrs.
I only have one internal HDD. I guess another internal HDD would be the cheapest option. Till I get that I'll just do incremental backups.

Thanks everyone