Windows 10: Restore Windows 10 from a Windows Image Backup via USB

Good Afternoon Everyone!


I literally spent four days, trying to find a solution to restoring a Windows 10 System Image in an attempt to resurrect my Dell E5491 from a crash of the hard drive. After finding many posts on all types of sites I went old school and determined that I would just figure it out. Using diskpart, mountvol, and the numerous utilities available in command prompt I discovered a REAL solution to this problem. I hope that the below makes someone else's crusade to restore a backed up image of your PC in Windows 10.


* Restoring a system image via the Advanced Recovery tool launched from a USB via the Media Creation Tool.


No system image found while using a USB in the Restore System Image menu is a real pain. I went through a dozen different brands of drives including Kingston, PNY both 3.0 even using a USB 2.0 256MB drive from Kingston could not be found by Windows to restore my image. After a great many hours and bludgeoning my head against the desk I had nearly given up on the restore and would just rebuild the system from scratch. As I use this pc for business I have many files and settings that just do not get set back up in an hour. I am certain that many of you have had this similar situation. Hundred of web posts trying to sell me one brand of shadow software, and the numerous pages in the Microsoft Community and Microsoft Answers did me zero good.


* Solution

You will need a USB 2.0 to SATA cord / adapter. I used an ancient Apricorn adapter using USB 2.0. Once the 1TB 3.5 inch hard drive was connected to the pc I used windows disk management tool MY PC right click Manage to format NTFS and assign letter M to the drive. I do not think the drive letter matters. I copied the system image from my PNY 3.0 USB to the 1TB HDD. Once the data copy was complete I fired the pc back up and shut back down holding SHIFT while clicking on restart. Opened the Advanced recovery tool and by George there was my system image backup listed!! Upon choosing the image and date, Windows asked for my recovery CD/DVD. I have not seen a laptop come with a CD/DVD in years, so what to do? I restarted the pc with the Windows 10 start up USB, via the F12 one time startup menu. When Windows started I chose the repair option rather than a clean install. I launched Restore System Image from the Troubleshooting menu. Windows found the HDD again and this time there was no request to install my repair CD/DVD. I selected the image I had copied to the HDD and clicked on next. Miraculously the system began restoring. Two hours later the pc was fully restored and just the way it was last week!


* Side Note

I just cannot trust the Windows Utility for recovering my PC's anymore, and I believe Microsoft is going to kill it in the near future. It is a Windows 7 Utility after all. The process was a nightmare for me. Moving on to Acronis to back up and restore our Windows 10 machines moving forward. No this is not an endorsement or push for you to buy their software. I am also replacing the factory SSD Toshiba with a Crucial 2TB MX series drive. The Toshiba drive has been unreliable since I bought the PC directly from Dell in January of 2019. Both Dell hardware and Software technical support were pretty worthless for solving this issue, although they are some of the nicest people you will ever chat with. Microsoft wanted to charge me a minimum of $400.00 to provide support for Windows 10 so much for LTSC.

Anyway I hope that this information will make your restoring of a windows image much smoother than it was for me, at first! Good Luck Everyone!

:)

 

Restoring Windows 10 Image using Macrium Reflect


In addition to the above. Here's my suggestion in step by step.
I assume you have Macrium Installed in your current HD and already made a backup copy.

1. Connect your new HD via USB port and boot up.
2. Run Macrium, click on Restore tab then select the Backup Image that you made to restore
3. click on "select a different target disk" then select your new HD as destination
   
   
   
4. Proceed to restore then Shutdown and disconnect the old HD and replace with the new HD
5. Boot up with your new HD.

 

windows 10 worth the upgrade?

I just tested Windows image back up in windows 10. They put the system imaging back into Windows after taking it out in Windows 8. Last month after I did a clean install I made an Image.
Its a little hidden. After creating an image. To restore:
Settings/update and security/recovery/restart now/advance/use image

It literally took 10 minutes to restore my system

To make an Image just use Backup and restore in the control panel it says (Windows 7)

 

Windows 10 USB boot

Hi there, am not a windows 10 expert. I have a pc in the bedroom on windows 10, I messed up the bootloader trying to fix the xp on that system.

System wont boot, trying to repair via win 10 usb installer.

Downloaded the media creation tool to install windows 10 installer on usb stick. Not compatible with a host of usb sticks I have. Tried the usb sticks that others use, but I think they use rufus; as the media creation tool by win 10 does not detect the usb stick.

So quick question, the win10 machine i am trying to repair the bootloader is a win7 upgraded to win10.
If i were to use the usb win10 installer to "repair installation" does the version of the iso downloaded via the media creation tool matter?

There is three options:
Windows 10
Windows 10 Home
Windows 10 N

Also is there a step by step instead of using rufus as I want to try an alternative method of creating a usb win 10 installer. Preferably with more compatibility.

System is a asus sabertooth 990 (r2?) with AMD phenom X 6.

Also is there any other software I can load onto the usb that can repair the bootloader easily?
That would be the ideal alternative. Thanks