Backup/Restore Apps on USB WinPE boot

There are quite a few backup/restore programmes around now. Macrium 8 (freeware version still available), Aomei and Hasleo freewares seem quite well known.

If we use more than one of these (belt and braces strategy), restoring from an external disk on a USB WinPE external boot presents the issue of needing to maintain individual USB boots for each programme of the stored backup sets. To try and reduce this clutter I've been searching for portable versions of these programmes that can be copied onto a single USB WinPE external boot.

For both Macrium 8.0 and Hasleo 3.4.2, I have found stand-alone free portable versions. For Aomei, a portable version can be generated from a purchased Technician version. These two freewares are now copied on my USB WinPE recovery boot and find/restore the relevant backup sets without difficulty. Basically, I'm strategising two different incremental backup sets to try and insure against one set becoming corrupted. Redundancy rules ?

Of course you can create usb boot drives for each app but there's no need. Doing so leaves a lot of unused space on the drive. What I do when making my recovery media for any given backup app is to choose the iso option. Then I use Ventoy to make a multiboot usb drive. When you choose to boot from the usb drive you are presented with a menu where you can select what app's iso you want to boot from. I have about 10 bootable tools on one flash drive.
I have a separate usb drive created with Ventoy that contains all my OS isos, including Linux.
With Ventoy you can remove and add isos to the drive at will. There is a portable version of Ventoy.
To boot from a Ventoy drive you may have to disable secure boot temporarily.

For a portable version of Macrium one has to use the technicians version of Macrium. As far as making an image, you do not need a portable version of the backup app.You can boot from your recovery media and make a backup image outside of windows if you wish, which a lot of people prefer to do. Personally I do not. I install the software and image my drive in a live environment. Having it installed makes mounting an image only a click of the mouse.

glasskuter said:

Of course you can create usb boot drives for each app but there's no need. Doing so leaves a lot of unused space on the drive. What I do when making my recovery media for any given backup app is to choose the iso option. Then I use Ventoy to make a multiboot usb drive. When you choose to boot from the usb drive you are presented with a menu where you can select what app's iso you want to boot from. I have about 10 bootable tools on one flash drive.
I have a separate usb drive created with Ventoy that contains all my OS isos, including Linux.
With Ventoy you can remove and add isos to the drive at will.
To use Ventoy you may have to disable secure boot temporarily.

Click to expand...

More than one way to skin a cat (although I have never tried to skin a cat admittedly lol).

You can simply copy boot files for each app into a separate fat32 partition.

I have a usb drive with 4 partitions, Reflect, Easeus, Aomei, Veeam.

I just select which one I want from bios.

I also copy files to partitions on my second drive and create boot entries using easybcd (Veeam and Reflect only). I then remove drive letters to hide partitions but the boot entries are not affectedm

Another way is to use @KYHI's winpe tool - you can add all sorts of stuff.

However, in the end, separate drives for each app is technically more reliable as the odds of all failing simultaneously is virtually non existent.

I always have at least 2 copies of Reflect usb sticks as insurance.

cereberus said:

I always have at least 2 copies of Reflect usb sticks as insurance.

Click to expand...

You bet. I do as well. My Ventoy drive is my working drive, but I have Macrium on its own usb stick as well. I've also kept every iso I've ever created or downloaded of any kind on an external drive, all the way back to the old official Hiren's BCD from Windows 7 days. I really need to clean that old stuff off, but haven't bothered since I don't need the disk space. Guess I keep that stuff around for sentimental reasons.

Another possibility -- make a Win2Go drive -- add some vhdx files if you want other boots e.g winpe itself or even stand alone Macrium.

The decent thing with a Windows installation is that you can add applications and also as many ISO's as you want. The standard Windows blue boot screen will give you a menu for the various OS'es including GRUB if you also have a Linux system on it.

A decent external (really cheap these days) 256GB or even a 512GB or a 1 TB SSD attached to computer via SATA->USB3/USBC adapter is IMO a really great way to do this -- and an SSD usually works better than a USB thumb drive. You can even get NVMe ->USB connectors if you prefer using those as external drives.

So I have W11 (std "RTM") version, WinPE, Macrium, W10, W22 Server (180 day FreeTrial edition) and Fedora Live on an external SSD plus loads of ISO's from UUPDUMP so more than enough kit in the tool box for any sort of recovery that I'd need.

There's loads of ways to "collect and aggregate" suficient tools in one place. -- Hobbling a "Technician's Macrium isn't possible for a lot of people who don't have access to that type of software and these days creating a Win2Go is dead simple -- and for this type of purpose you don't need to install the latest Windows builds on a recovery type disk -- the simpler the better. Creating this type of disk also requires no non Windows 3rd party software apart from the "OS" e.g Macrium or the Linux system.

You aren't expected to run this type of device as your "Every day OS either".

Cheers
jimbo

Thanks for interesting replies - some relevant to my point.

As I've developed this redundancy, I have included two separate external disks to store the incremental images. These two disks are automatically synchronised (using SynBackLite v8 at the moment) and were cheap enough - cost efficiency is an important consideration for me. That gives 2 sets of incremental images mirrored on both disks with very little fortnightly effort on my part. Probably enough ...

The USB WinPE boot with its' (now) multiple restore programmes has also been duplicated in anticipation of one failing. Again, probably enough.

Also add that I have a long-purchased copy of Total Commander (one of the file explorer greats, in my view) for which I have also generated a portable version and copied it onto the USB WinPE boot together with the Restore programmes. This allows exploration if something seems off.

Has any of this ever been needed ? Four times over the years I was within a matchstick width of total loss while on a report deadline. One remembers episodes like that; Win11 is not as stable as Win7 in my experience.

[Not really needed to be said, I guess, but some of the replies above seem to think I was booting externally to generate the incremental image backups. Of course not. When I write these comments I do try for clarity but unsuccessfully sometimes, it seems. As we know, external boot is used in this situation for Restore].

ian50 said:

Win11 is not as stable as Win7 in my experience.

Click to expand...

I had far more crashes in days of Windows 7. Task manager was completely rebuilt in Windows 8 - you often got some crash and you could not kill an app reliably in W7

Also the print manager used to be a pain. You would try and delete a failed print but it would not get released, and a Word document would hang.

Thing is when W7 worked well, it worked well but when it didn't it was a nightmare.

Funny how people forget its bad points - particularly driver management LOL.

Absolutely no doubt Windows 10 onwards is more stable.

This comment is a short addition to the crux of the thread in that I've also added a further freeware programme to the USB WinPE recovery disk.

Needing to recover a "lost" partition happens to most people at some stage. There are obviously a few programmes to try this - Aomei, MiniTool, EaseUS and so on. None of those with that particular working option are freeware to my knowledge, although I'm quite open to more accurate information.

The freeware programme I use as "go to" is Test Disk, easily found with a few seconds search. I became aware of this programme from a thread on SevenForums. It appears to me to be very comprehensive in its' capabilities. I've used it successfully quite a number of times on partitions "lost" from external disks, with the losses mostly caused by my own impatience. Instant recognition of a silly mistake to avoid overwriting anything before recovery is a prime requisite.

I have not used it from a WinPE external boot recovery on a lost C:\ drive partition - I've used the full recovery option from either Macrium or Hasleo. Using Test Disk for this will be very much faster ... if it works. I expect it should, but has anyone experienced this save ?

None of those with that particular working option are freeware

Click to expand...

I know a couple, but your winpe needs to have 32 bit support.


In addition, when I get time I will have a look in case I have x64 aomei part assist v7 free version in 64 bit.

EDIT: yes there is, you could copy that onto your usb stick



and adjust install.bat for win10-11

for example one way is to add the bolded bits

:OTHER4
ver|findstr "6.1" >NUL&&GOTO :Win7 || goto :OTHER5
:Win7
if "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%%PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432%" == "x86" goto :Win732 else goto :Win764
:Win764
copy /Y native\wlh\amd64\fre\ampa.exe %SYSTEMROOT%
copy /Y native\wlh\amd64\fre\ampa.sys %SYSTEMROOT%\system32
copy /Y native\wlh\amd64\fre\ampa.sys %SYSTEMROOT%\SysWOW64
goto :END

:Win732
copy /Y native\wlh\x86\fre\ampa.exe %SYSTEMROOT%
copy /Y native\wlh\x86\fre\ampa.sys %SYSTEMROOT%\system32
goto :END

:OTHER5
if "%PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE%%PROCESSOR_ARCHITEW6432%" == "x86" goto :Win1032
:Win10-1164
copy /Y native\wlh\amd64\fre\ampa.exe %SYSTEMROOT%
copy /Y native\wlh\amd64\fre\ampa.sys %SYSTEMROOT%\system32
goto :END

:Win1032
copy /Y native\wlh\x86\fre\ampa.exe %SYSTEMROOT%
copy /Y native\wlh\x86\fre\ampa.sys %SYSTEMROOT%\system32

:END

Thanks for that, SIW2. My earliest retained version of Aomei Partition was 7.5 - and partition recovery not available there. As my full quote above said:" ... although I'm quite open to more accurate information", which you've kindly supplied. Version 7 in use now as well as Test Disk. Should be enough.

I've persisted with this recovery redundancy development (unassuming as it is) because it seems to work as well and efficiently as other methods and I already have most of the components. Making the WinPE ISO was based on tutorials from both here and MS sites.

Other people have a different view, but I do find Win11 less stable than Win7 so this redundancy thing has some criticality for me. (For Cererbus: no, I haven't forgotten the initial hassles with Win7 but I've found Win11 more flaky, despite its' obvious improvements in speed and power).

v7 works fine. I had the 32 bit running well in my win10 pe ( which supports 64 and 32 ).

I will just check I have set it up to run in win11 x64 pe without wow support

yes. here it is in my win11 pe ( no added wow support)

I recommend to avoid EaseUS. It doesn't install completely for starters. I still use an older version of Acronis but it's quite limited in regards to maintenance and booting into a Windows Linux environment. I'm looking for something lightweight similar to the old Windows Startup floppy disk but with a GUI.

cereberus said:

I had far more crashes in days of Windows 7. Task manager was completely rebuilt in Windows 8 - you often got some crash and you could not kill an app reliably in W7

Also the print manager used to be a pain. You would try and delete a failed print but it would not get released, and a Word document would hang.

Thing is when W7 worked well, it worked well but when it didn't it was a nightmare.

Funny how people forget its bad points - particularly driver management LOL.

Absolutely no doubt Windows 10 onwards is more stable.

Click to expand...

I typically only had Explorer errors/freezes with Windows 7.

I think a lot of instability issues or detection remain unnoticed with W11 until you visit your Reliability history.