USB Bootable factory restore

[ericnumnutz]

HI,

been doing system imaging (ghosting) using bootable floopies / CD's with the image stored on an external forever. I am looking for a way to create a system image on a USB drive, be able to plug the drive in and restore a crashed system from it with out needing an additional CB boot program. Looking for an all in one on a USB drive. will consider free or paid applications that can do this. Please let me know if anyone knows of a product that can do this, thanks

Eric

 

[Kaktussoft]

You can put the CD ISO or floppy image (for recovery) on the external disk. You can use YUMI boot manager to make the ISO bootable. YUMI ? Multiboot USB Creator | USB Pen Drive Linux

What's your favorite backup software you want to use?

 

[MilesAhead]

I would look for an imaging program that creates a rescue USB using NTFS. I have a WinPE rescue USB stick with plenty of room on it for one system image(it is a 32 GB stick) but for the FAT32 4 GB file size limit. It may be possible to split the image into sections. I've asked on the Windows 8 forum since my machine is W8.

 

[Kaktussoft]

I would look for an imaging program that creates a rescue USB using NTFS. I have a WinPE rescue USB stick with plenty of room on it for one system image(it is a 32 GB stick) but for the FAT32 4 GB file size limit. It may be possible to split the image into sections. I've asked on the Windows 8 forum since my machine is W8.

I use Macrium Reflect. You can copy the Recovery CD contents to USB flash drive and put a win7 volume boot sector on that partition.

 

[MilesAhead]

I just did it the other way. My USB stick was FAT32. I made the WinPE on it. Macrium did not delete data files I had on it. So I just did another backup with the USB stick as the target. Macrium automatically made multiple numbered image files. Nothing to it.

I tried copying on an existing image but since it was 18 GB in a single file, it would not copy to the stick.

 

[ericnumnutz]

Are you using the free version or paid? Are there step by step specific directions on how to do this?

 

[Kaktussoft]

I'm using the free version. What you can do:

1. Create recovery CD or get the macrium recover ISO :
   
   
   Note
   The production of the WinPE recovery CD (which is highly recommended) may take up to 3 hours because Macrium needs to download the 1.7GB WAIK (Windows Application Installation Kit). For your convenience I have uploaded a ready made .iso of the WinPE recovery disc. That can be downloaded in appr. 8 minutes which clearly beats the WAIK download. Once you downloaded and unzipped the folder, you can burn it directly to a CD with e.g. ImgBurn.
   
   Here is the link to my Skydrive site.
   
   Here is an alternate link from FileSwap (courtesy of Gary - Britton30)
   
   I draw your attention to the fact that this WinPE CD can also be used to make images. That may be convenient in case you do not want to install Macrium on your PC.
   
2. Copy the contents to the root of USB stick partition (NTFS)
   
3. Boot to win7 recovery environment http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/668-system-recovery-options.html select "command prompt"
   
4. Determine what the drive letter is of usb drive. DIR D:\ DIR E:\ etc untill you find it. Assume it's called K in this example
   
5. 
   

   bootsect /nt60 K:

6. 
   

   diskpart
   select volume K:
   ACTIVE
   exit

 

[ericnumnutz]

I will try this tonight, I see how this will get the program to boot on the USB but I am not sure if this will also get the image file on the same drive?

 

[Kaktussoft]

I will try this tonight, I see how this will get the program to boot on the USB but I am not sure if this will also get the image file on the same drive?

when you boot from that USB flash stick:

• Macrium reflect start automatically.
• You can start the backup, or start the restore.
• You can set all settings and select where to backup to and where to restore from.

All USB2.0 ports disks should work. Most usb3.0 ports should work.

 

[MilesAhead]

I just got Macrium recently. The WinPE USB stick creation wasn't bad. The download was aboit 371 MB. On WiFi it took a little over 10 minutes. Plus it made my stick bootable without erasing my files. A pleasant surprise.

 

[Kaktussoft]

I just got Macrium recently. The WinPE USB stick creation wasn't bad. The download was aboit 371 MB. On WiFi it took a little over 10 minutes. Plus it made my stick bootable without erasing my files. A pleasant surprise.

Can FREE version do that or only the paid version?

 

[MilesAhead]

I have free version. I had the paid 4.x but my quad desktop liked EaseUS better. Now my Laptop likes MR. When I messed with WinPE in 4.x it was because I had a funky fake raid disk controller. It was a pita because all I could see of the optical disk was the 1.44 MB boot image. The easiest way to load the disk driver was manually off a USB stick after booting the CD. So that soured me on WinPE for a time. But this was painless.

Edit: I should add if the USB stick happens to be NTFS I suspect it will just format as FAT32 and all files will be gone. But that's just my assumption.

 

[whs]

The WinPE can go on a Fat32 stick, but the Macrium images themselves require NTFS.

For the OP: Here is a Macrium tutorial that may come in handy. It also contains a link for the excellent tutorial that Keith made for the recovery procedure (in the first 'Information' block). The link to my Skydrive that Kaktussoft already posted is also in there.

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/73828-imaging-free-macrium.html?ltr=I

 

[ericnumnutz]

Sadly I am having problems. When I try to follow one persons directions and type bootsect command I get an error. Unrecognized command. When I try to use Yumi I get stuck. When I try to use an unlisted iso. If I do that the crest button is grayed out. When I try use unlisted iso via syslinux or grub. When I try to boot into the program on my flash I get error 15 missing file. I downloaded the macrium ISP to my desktop using someone's suggested skydive. What am I doing wrong?

 

[ericnumnutz]

I was able to get it to work easily with Rufus. thanks for all your help

 

[ericnumnutz]

lastly, are there switches that you can add to the boot usb so it will automatically start to restore the image file that's on the drive?

 

[whs]

lastly, are there switches that you can add to the boot usb so it will automatically start to restore the image file that's on the drive?

There is schedules imaging but I have never heard of scheduled restore.

 

[ericnumnutz]

no I mean when I run the PE usb boot drive I want it to automatically start the restore, should be able to do it if the program supports command line switches.

 

[whs]

Not sure it can be done. But even then - you would lose the ability to select the restore point that you want. I usually have a stack of 10 historic restore points and I do not always restore to the latest.

 

[ericnumnutz]

not sure it can be done either but, what I am trying to do is just make a one time USB factory restore recovery image. So you can just pop the USB drive in boot to it and have Macrium startup and restore the drive. Granted its just a few clicks anyway but I am trying to make it as quick and dummy proof as possible. thanks