Windows 10: Win10: How to set up external HDD to be used for system image backups

If your PC hard drive becomes unbootable you will need a recovery disc in order to boot your PC and restore one of your backup system images.

You can use Macrium Reflect to create this recovery disk on a DVD, USB or stick or the USB drive you have your backups on.

If you don't have the Microsoft PE downloaded from the original installation of Macrium Reflect it will download it when you make the recovery disk.

Creating a recovery disk is essential to cover a worst case scenario.

 

Agree WHYME and NUS. Will make recovery medium ASAP.

 

The Macrium Reflect people are telling me Microsoft does not allow a Win10 OS to boot from an external USB connected HDD. Other general sources on the web indicate just the opposite. Which is correct?

 

Microsoft doesn't make it easy to create a bootable external USB HDD, but it is possible (I've done it). You need to create a second small partition on the HDD, format it as Fat32 and mark it as Active (so it will boot on legacy BIOS machines). Then just copy all the files and folders from your bootable USB stick to the partition you have created.

The bootable USB I copied to mine was a standard Windows 10 recovery drive I had made previously, but I don't see why it wouldn't work equally well with a Macrium-created one.

 

It does work equally as well with Macrium Reflect rescue drive. And Kyhi's Recovery tools from this forum.

 

NavyLCDR. MACRIUM provides two options. Clone an HDD or image copy. How do I decide which is right for my situation? My situation as I see it: if my internal HDD becomes unusable, I want to use my rescue DVD to direct Win10 to boot from another USB connected HDD where I will have all my software and files stored in a folder. In the beginning, I only plan to store a single backup instance which I will replace once/week. In the event my original HDD can't be salvaged, I want to copy the single backup I have to the replacement internal HDD and return to normal operating mode. I assume you are a USN LCDR either active or retired or veteran. I am a veteran ABH3 ship's co USS Independence 65-68.

 

I don't know if the solution you want is necessarily even possible. I have not tried booting a partition that was copied from a normal internal HDD to an external USB HDD. At a minimum you would likely need a separate FAT32 partition on the USB HDD that contained the boot files needed to load the Windows partition.

The standard method that most people use for backup and restore is they save an image of the internal HDD to an external storage location. If the internal HDD goes bad, they replace it, and then restore the image saved from the external storage location back to the newly installed blank HDD.

I am an almost retired US Navy LCDR. My terminal leave started last Friday and my last active duty paycheck is Jan 1.