How to backup and restore Windows 11 for free?

Petet

Petet

Petet

Associate
Joined
17 Aug 2024
Posts
17
Location
UK
How to backup and restore Windows 11 for free?

I want to make a copy of the entire partition where I have Windows 11 installed

if it fails, I want to make a backup of all Windows with everything I had installed and all the settings

I want to use a free program

any recommendations ?

Thank you
 
I prefer Veeam. The reason being is that it will create you a bootable media and allow you to inject your network card drivers into them automatically. I store my images on a NAS (just in case the disk the image is on dies) and restore from that. It's free to.

www.veeam.com

Free Windows Backup Solution for PCs and Endpoints

Simple and free Windows backup for cloud and physical servers, desktops, endpoints and more. Protect Windows workloads with Veeam Agent for Windows!
www.veeam.com www.veeam.com



M.
 
Tried hasleo,veeam, acronis
Had issues with all of them
Still prefer macrium
The free version can still be found on Google
Just won't get support or upgrades

Windows itself can make vhd images
Not really messed around with those in years

Should say I have 5 x m2 and 4 x sata drives
So not typical user set up
Which may be why I had issues

Whatever manufacturer makes your drives
Even your motherboard
May provide a free cloning/image backup software
Got one with my m2 drives
And one with my asus motherboard too
 
If you recently got another drive some SSD's give you a backup program for you to use for example I did not use it but my Kingston SSD allows me to use Acronis True Image.
 
Last edited:
the built in backup is more than capable if you just want a simple backup of your OS drive, bonus points for being able to use any windows installation media to restore it. no 3rd party reliance and able to mount the vhd as a disk or easy enough boot it as a virtual machine.
 
spile said:
I recommend Veeam Free
Click to expand...

So Veeam can schedule a weekly/monthly backup of say your OS drive (C drive) or your entire machine (all drives)?

And then should you hit a problem, Veeam can then restore your backups to entire drives again? eg: Say machine X's drive fails, you can then use Veeam on machine Y to restore a backup of X onto a replacement HDD and put then put that HDD into X and voila? Working bootable machine again?
 
NeilF said:
So Veeam can schedule a weekly/monthly backup of say your OS drive (C drive) or your entire machine (all drives)?

And then should you hit a problem, Veeam can then restore your backups to entire drives again? eg: Say machine X's drive fails, you can then use Veeam on machine Y to restore a backup of X onto a replacement HDD and put then put that HDD into X and voila? Working bootable machine again?
Click to expand...
Yes but I haven’t gone into that degree of configuration. Download it and experiment to confirm it meets your requirements.
 
I friend of mine recommended Paragon Hard Disk Manager which is about $80 for a three machine perpetual license, which would suit me fine. So I might look in to that.

Certainly far cheaper than Macrium, which is more than that, and paid per year!
 
NeilF said:
I friend of mine recommended Paragon Hard Disk Manager which is about $80 for a three machine perpetual license, which would suit me fine. So I might look in to that.

Certainly far cheaper than Macrium, which is more than that, and paid per year!
Click to expand...
Yeah it's £74 for 4 pc for macrium a year
Or £37 for 1 pc a year
Sad they are using this payment scheme
The new reflect X is improved
And a lot faster too
But paying every year will put a lot
Of people off
Used paragon in the past
Remember it being decent software
But don't remember enough to make a comparison
To other paid products

Definitely check if there's a free option though
Either from hard drive/ssd/m2 manufacturer
Or even motherboard manufacturer
 
Petet said:
How to backup and restore Windows 11 for free?

I want to make a copy of the entire partition where I have Windows 11 installed

if it fails, I want to make a backup of all Windows with everything I had installed and all the settings

I want to use a free program

any recommendations ?

Thank you
Click to expand...

Capture your OS disk to a FFU image. This is like a WIM but includes all partitions. It's what I do on a brand new out of the box laptop to make a copy of the OEM image.

Boot using a Windows setup USB and open a CMD window

Code: 
Dism /capture-ffu /imagefile=%USB%:\WinOEM.ffu /capturedrive=\\.\PhysicalDrive0 /name:disk0 /description:"Windows OEM Image"

When you need to restore

Code: 
DISM /apply-ffu /ImageFile=%USB%:\WinOEM.ffu /ApplyDrive:\\.\PhysicalDrive0

If you want to make incremental backup, a WIM would be better, but you would need to create all the partitions before applying the WIM.
 
Mcnumpty2323 said:
Yeah it's £74 for 4 pc for macrium a year
Or £37 for 1 pc a year
Sad they are using this payment scheme
The new reflect X is improved
And a lot faster too
But paying every year will put a lot
Of people off
Used paragon in the past
Remember it being decent software
But don't remember enough to make a comparison
To other paid products

Definitely check if there's a free option though
Either from hard drive/ssd/m2 manufacturer
Or even motherboard manufacturer
Click to expand...
A single $80 payment for three machines (I only need two at the moment) with all the features Paragon seem to offer is fine for my personal cost/value scale.

And reviews seem to suggest it's feature rich enough and reliable enough + My friend has used it for years too.
 
Ffu is a valid free option certainly
Though its not ideal for the average pc user
There are some limitations with ffu too
But for people with a good technical knowledge
Yes it's one possibility
 
^^

Once you have your backup and restore commands sorted, copy to a text file and save on the USB. Open Notepad in WinPE and copy and paste.

If you're writing to a secondary internal drive NVMe or SSD, the backup and restore process takes seconds.
 
Sorry to hijack. I'm going to reintstall Windows shortly but I like to make an image of my drives before I do so that I know I have backups of the data. Last time I did this I used Macrium Reflect and I do still have the free version installed. I can make images using this but once Windoes is reinstalled, would I then be able to use the Macrium reflect free trial to then mount or restore those images if needed?

Alternatively, is there software that can create images that are easily mountable as a virtual drive?
 
The1nonly1 said:
Sorry to hijack. I'm going to reintstall Windows shortly but I like to make an image of my drives before I do so that I know I have backups of the data. Last time I did this I used Macrium Reflect and I do still have the free version installed. I can make images using this but once Windoes is reinstalled, would I then be able to use the Macrium reflect free trial to then mount or restore those images if needed?

Alternatively, is there software that can create images that are easily mountable as a virtual drive?
Click to expand...
As far as I know
You will still be able to make and restore images
With the free version macrium
You just won't get program updates/new versions

But again can only speak for personal experience
Macrium viboot will not work
So you wouldn't be able to mount images
Whether that can be sorted by totally blocking all
Macrium processes by firewall
Not sure
Or it may be viboot can tell the images are made by
Certain versions of macrium and still refuse
To mount images because of version
Regardless of firewall blocking
 
Sorry to keep mentioning WinPE, this can all be done with a few commands. Capture the partition to a WIM file and append as needed, where only the difference is added to the WIM as a new "Index". Mount the indexed version when needed to recover individual files or apply the WIM to a new disk.

Lots of resources on MS Learn or happy to put together a guide.

This was you're not tied to any software and stuck when it's no longer supported or free.
 
Last edited:
The1nonly1 said:
I'm going to reintstall Windows shortly
Click to expand...

Before you wipe the current OS, update and export your drivers.

Code: 
Export-WindowsDriver -online -destination %USB%:\Drivers

You can then added update each device manually in Device Manager or right-click the computer (top level) and "Add drivers". You get a cleaner install without the manufacturers installer bloat.

If you want to add the exported drivers to the Windows image.

Create 3 folders
- C:\WIM_Export
- C:\WIM_Mount
- C:\WIM_Source

Copy the WIM file from USB to the Source folder
- %USB%\Sources\install.wim to C:\WIM_Source\install.wim

Open a CMD window as Admin then
Code: 
#Get the index number for "Windows 11 Pro"
dism /Get-ImageInfo /Imagefile:C:\WIM_Source\install.wim

dism /Mount-Image /Imagefile:C:\WIM_Source\install.wim /index:6 /Mountdir:C:\WIM_Mount

dism /add-driver /Image:C:\WIM_Mount /driver:C:\Exported_Drivers /recurse

dism /Unmount-Image /MountDir:C:\WIM_Mount /commit

dism /export-image /sourceimagefile:C:\WIM_Source\install.wim /sourceindex:6 /destinationimagefile:C:\WIM_Export\install.wim

Copy the WM file to the USB
- C:\WIM_Export\install.wim to %USB%\Sources\install.wim
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom