Giveaway of the Day Forums

1. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   Just a quick(ish) note, as saw the familiar complaint that there's no bootable USB stick in the comments for Donemax Data Recovery...

   Booting from a USB stick nowadays is nothing if not IFFY. If you manage to set the device to look for boot files on a USB stick or drive [which itself isn't always that easy], it may or may not work to boot or start the device. Sure familiar brands like AOMEI & Easeus let you create bootable USB sticks in their apps, but those are no more assured to work than anything any other brand comes up with. In my experience Macrium is number one, with Paragon coming in 2nd. Or create a Microsoft WinPE USB stick, or Windows to Go drive, which most always works, but often only after you tweak it.

   At an rate, if an app lets you create a bootable USB stick/drive, great, but Do Test it to see if it works for you. You can create a WinPE USB stick/drive, tweaking it if needed, making sure it works everywhere you need it to, but only some apps will work with it, and usually you'll have to activate the app once you get it going [that of course usually won't work with a GOTD]. Or you can create a Windows to Go drive, add whatever apps to it, and since it obviously ran on your device [to add whatever apps], hope that nothing got installed [drivers etc.] that prevents it from running on some other device.

   So... best advice if you want to run file recovery software on a device, but don't want to write to the hard disk, boot from a Macrium Reflect USB stick and back everything up, *including free space*, then run the file recovery on the partition you restore that backup to. The downside is that that requires disk space, both to hold the backup & restored disk/partition. Want to do without that? Don't store anything you want on the Windows partition, and ideally backup that Windows partition where normally all your software and drivers are installed. If something you were working on is lost on the D: partition, running Windows won't write to it. If something goes wrong on the Windows partition, restore a backup, or reset / reinstall Windows, or reinstall software as needed. It may sound like a PITA, but it's Very likely quicker than trying to fix it using file recovery.

   Posted 3 years ago #
2. 

   ChrisS
   Administrator

   boot from a Macrium Reflect USB stick and back everything up, *including free space*, then run the file recovery on the partition you restore that backup to.

   Two things:
   1) Image software generally defaults to "intelligent sector copy" which just copies sectors that are in use to reduce the size of the backup files. You'll need to find the option for creating an "exact copy" which copies all sectors. The "lost files" are in sectors that are not in use by the system.

   2) Both Macrium and Aomei (and probably a lot of others now) will mount their image as a drive so you don't need to restore the image before running the file recovery software. If you can, you should always run file recovery software on an image to preserve the integrity of any "lost files".

   Posted 3 years ago #
3. 

   mikiem2
   Moderator

   You're right about making an exact copy Chris.

   In case it helps anyone... In Macrium Reflect [free or paid], once you select the disk or partition to backup, a dialog window pops up to set the location etc. On the lower left of that window you'll see Advanced Options. Click it & you'll see the choice to Make an exact copy.

   I haven't used AOMEI Backupper because their bootable USB stick wouldn't work on every one of our devices. I have experimented with running the WinPE versions of Backupper & Partition Assistant [in their x64 folder] after booting to a WinPE USB stick created with the ADK, and it seemed to work OK, but don't want to even think about the WinPE command line with my 8" tablet. My eyes just aren't That good anymore. :)

   Both Paragon & Macrium give you the choice to create your backup archives in their proprietary VHD format, or in the Microsoft .vhd format. I ***think*** [could be wrong] you have a *little* less overhead mounting a .vhd file in Windows vs. running Macrium or Paragon to mount the image. A few years back when I had to do file recovery several of the apps I tried were resource intensive -- with those apps running I really noticed the lag trying to use the PC normally with recovery running in the background.

   With our 2 desktop PCs I've got Win10 on SSDs, with a conventional hard disk for all the stuff that won't fit. Since the sweet spot price-wise for conventional hard disks is 2 or more TB, that means lots of extra space, so I added a 2nd, minimal copy of Win10 to each. The hassle of having a 2nd copy of Win10 to update is IMHO outweighed by the convenience of [almost] never having to use a bootable USB stick/drive, or having to boot to WinPE on disk, plus backup archives are a little bit smaller when the backup app's not running on the copy of Win10 you're backing up.

   Posted 3 years ago #

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