How to Restore Disk Backup Image with AOMEI Backupper?
When the hard drive corrupts or damages, we should think about the possibility of recovery disk backup image that contains the operating system, installed software, games, applications as well as personal files.
In general, we need to do disk restore in the following situations:
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Your system files have been damaged by a virus or malware and cannot boot normally.
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Your current hard drive has failed or is showing signs of failing and you want to replace it.
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Your current hard drive is too small and you want to change to a bigger one.
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Your data on the hard disk has been lost and you want to recover it.
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You want to replace hard drive with SSD and benefit from new technology.
All these situations are based on one thought: you don't want to reinstall everything. As long as you have a backup image of the hard drive, you can achieve this.
Now, let's start to understand how to restore a disk image. First, Download, install and launch this software.
How to Restore Disk with AOMEI Backupper in Windows 10 step by step
Prerequisites for disk restore
Before restoration, there are some things you need to know.
AOMEI Backupper disk restore is based on AOMEI Backupper disk backup. You should already have at least one disk image made by AOMEI Backupper (whatever the source disk is, the current crashed one or a disk on another computer). Even if you have several Windows backup points, it won't work. AOMEI Backupper does not recognize disk images made by Windows or other software.
If you haven't created a disk backup with AOMEI Backupper, you can create one based on another working disk. However, after restoration, the disk of the recovered computer will be a copy of the disk you just backed up, not the crashed one. You can choose this method if viable.
Nominally, users should recover using the disk Backup image created on their current failed disk. If the PC fails to boot or has crashed, you can create a WinPE bootable media using AOMEI Backupper or AOMEI PE Builder on another healthy computer and then boot the crashed PC from the WinPE bootable media to run the disk restore under WinPE.
We strongly recommend that users create a WinPE bootable media once they start to use AOMEI products. Such bootable media should be created and kept in a safe place in order to boot a failed computer. Otherwise, not having the required bootable media might result in not being able to recover your computer at all.
If you don't have these items, please download AOMEI Backupper and prepare what you need.
Detailed steps about how to restore a disk backup
Restore disks under Windows
1. Ensure the storage device containing the disk backup image is connected to the computer and detected. In the left tab, click Restore and Select the required task. If the image file is not detected, click Select Image File to manually navigate to the storage device containing the backup.
2. Select a backup image and click the Next button.
3. Select to restore entire disk or a partition and then click Next.
4. Select the destination disk or partition to restore the backup image to.
Tips: The destination partition will be overwritten. Please backup files in advance.
5. In the "Operation Summary" page, preview the operation that will be executed. Click Start Restore after confirmation.
Tips: You can learn more in "Edit Partitions" and "SSD Alignment".
For more details with screenshots, see: Disk Recovery with AOMEI Backupper.
Restore disks under WinPE
If the PC fails to boot or has been crashed, you need to create a WinPE bootable media with AOMEI Backupper and boot your PC into WinPE to run the disk restore.
Please follow the steps below:
( It is mainly used for current system disk backup image so you can boot your system after image restore.)
1. Please create a WinPE bootable media using AOMEI Backupper or AOMEI PE Builder on another healthy computer.
2. Then, insert the bootable media into the failed computer and boot from it. ( You may need to change the boot sequence and Boot Mode in the PC's BIOS (Also referred to as UEFI).
3. When the PC boots up successfully, AOMEI Backupper (already installed on the bootable device) will run automatically allowing you to start the disk recovery just as the the process under Windows.
4. Remove the bootable media and restart your PC after the disk restore is finished successfully. ( You may still need to change the boot sequence and Boot Mode in the PC's BIOS (Also referred to as UEFI).
Notes:
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If you backup the disk in incremental mode, please prepare the full backup and all related incremental images; If you backup the disk in differential mode, please prepare the full backup and the latest differential image; If you just backup the disk once, only the full backup image is required.
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If you regularly backup your disks, each backup will generate an image at a given time, so there may be multiple time points to choose from.
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The destination disk/partition will be totally overwritten. If the destination contains any important data, it should first be copied to another location.
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If any applications are running on the destination partition/disk, AOMEI Backupper will require you to restart the computer and execute the restore operation in "Restart Mode".
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When you restore the disk image from a GPT format disk with 5 (or more) partitions to an MBR format disk, it will prompt you that only 3 partitions can be restored because MBR disks only support 4 primary partitions, however, AOMEI Backupper can’t convert primary partitions to logical ones automatically. In this case, you can convert the target MBR disk to GPT with Windows Disk Management or AOMEI Partition Assistant and then restore.
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If you back up multiple disks to an image file, you can only select one disk to restore at a time.
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For Disk Backup, you can select a single partition from the disk image to restore.
- By the way, AOMEI Backupper Professional and higher versions support restore backup images to dissimilar hardwares. That is to say, you can restore the disk image taken from one computer to another computer with the help of this software. For detailed steps on dissimilar hardware restore, please turn to OS migration to dissimilar hardware. This software also allows you to restore system images, partition images and file images. Selective file restore can help restore particular files in the image instead of the entire image.
Conclusion
Disk Restore can help you recover data, restore systems, perform disaster recovery, simplify system migrations and upgrades, and save time and costs. It is an effective method of data recovery and system maintenance, providing you with the security to ensure the safety, reliability and continuity of your data and systems.
FAQs:
Q: Why there is no "Universal Restore" when restore a disk image?
A: Please check if the disk you backed up is a system disk, if not, "Universal Restore" is unavailable when do a restore.