Windows 10: How to fully backup Windows 10 hard drive without having to boot from?

Actually, the USB recovery thumb drive is supported by the BIOS and loads its own Windows PE environment from where you restore usually or you can also create image backup from that environment. So unless your BIOS is infected the recovery thumb drive is safe from the OS that is installed Personaly I don't trust CD or DVD for recovery media especially in this UEFI environment It can be difficult to get them to boot and data on them is easily damaged. That's just me though.

 

Backing up through USB/SATA is quite safe as long as it's not plugged in and turned on? I don't know how you make a backup if it's not plugged in and turned on. Your quote here doesn't counter my point about USB infiltration to an OS on a USB thumbdrive.

I was talking about USB *firmware*, which is before BIOS or Windows... it's in the actual USB port. I guess you've never read about USB firmware being write-only: Don’t Panic, But All USB Devices Have a Massive Security Problem

So, because I noticed the hard drive contains a severly-hacked Windows version with pre-installed software that auto-runs that I don't recognize, as well as some files that showed up in a security scan as a trojan, I wouldn't put it past the builder to have possibly installed USB port firmware as well to hack a thumbdrive with an OS on it that will be run...

I'm not so worried about a dummy USB backup drive that's only going to be used as a backup, because it's not going to run an OS.

Make sense?

Thanks for the recommendation link for Macrium Reflect Free.

 

Now that is interesting.



Not going to ask where you got the system from, but maybe the best is to replace the hard drive with a new one and re-install Windows ?







But you maybe right, the BIOS could be hacked !



If that is where the problem lies, I would recommend:

 

I'm not sure which post of mine you're saying is asking too much (quote would have been appropriate), but I don't think me asking for a recommended free safe full-drive backup utility to run from a CD or DVD is asking too much... that seems completely reasonable especially from a security perspective (maybe you've never dealt with messed-up hard drives especially from non-technical people).

Again, I never said nor implied I wanted to avoid running an OS; the concern was running an OS *FROM* a USB thumbdrive (not backing up *TO* a USB hard drive that will not run an OS, just store a backup).

Also, typically the expectation of a burned CD or DVD is that they are finalized and therefore not continuing to be writable... a CD-RW or DVD-RW would be rewritable by default, which is not what I was expecting nor needing to use nor asking about.

A write-protected USB thumbdrive is a good idea though, thank you for that suggestion, though it's a bit more inconvenient and more mistake-prone than a burned CD/DVD.

 

Did you not look at my suggestion in post #12?

It includes Aomei, Macrium and many other tools. You can burn it to a DVD, you know...

TenForums | Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk

 

I suggest Macrium Reflect Free. It will create a bootable CD or DVD you can restore the system from.