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In this video I show you how to backup and restore Windows 11 with a usb drive
Here I use a 64 GB USB hard drive
You plug it into the target computer and make sure Windows has detected it
By default Windows 11 doesn't let you back up the system to a USB drive so I use another tool, it's called Clonezilla
You go to the clonezilla homepage and download the latest version of this tool
You download the 64 bit version, the file extension is iso
The clonezilla download uses sourceforge with the right server for the highest download speed
And here is the file after it is downloaded, it has an iso extension and is almost 500 MB in size
Next you use software called Rufus to create a bootable USB drive with Clonezilla
You go to rufus.ie and download the latest version of this software
After you get the 2 files above, create a new bootable USB drive
You open Rufus software and select the USB drive
This is my USB drive, it's 64 GB
Next you browse to the clonezilla iso file downloaded in the previous step
You change the label to your liking, here edit to clonezilla
File system NTFS
After setting as above, press start to start creating clonezilla usb
Done, close the Rufus software and restart the computer
In this section, I introduce how to back up the entire Windows 11 system and data
You reboot the target computer and access UEFI BIOS
In the UEFI BIOS you set up the target computer to boot from the USB drive created in the previous step
Save your changes and restart your computer
Here is a list of clonezilla boot options, you choose to boot clonezilla from RAM
clonezilla will be copied to RAM and booted from RAM
So you can use a USB drive to store backup images
You set the language and keyboard when using clonezilla
Start clonezilla without using the command line
You create images for hard drives or partitions
Next you choose to work with local devices such as hard drives and USB drives
You use Ctrl C to update the list of partitions and drives
Here I have all 4 partitions, the hard drive has 3 partitions and the USB drive has 1 partition
You scroll down and select the USB drive as the Windows 11 system image store
In this case the USB drive is the partition named sda1
I will store the image on the top directory of the USB drive
You need to make sure your USB drive has enough free space to store the image file
You archive a Windows 11 system to an image
That means you store the entire hard drive into an image and that image is stored on the USB drive
Next you choose the source hard drive, on my computer there is only one hard drive
Then you choose the image file compression, I leave the default
You skip checking the image file after it's done, because it'll be faster
I don't encrypt the image file, so I leave it at the default
Again I leave the default and press Enter to continue
Press the y key to continue
In this part the image of the hard drive will be created
Clonezilla will create an image of the Windows 11 system and store it on a USB drive
Fast or slow is your data big or small
It took me about 20 to 25 minutes to finish creating the Windows 11 system image
Finished image I restart the target computer
I will check the results and check the image file, so I go to the UEFI BIOS and start the computer from the hard drive
And this is my Windows 11 computer
You check the files on the USB drive
You will see a new folder appear, its name contains the word img
This is the folder where your Windows 11 system images are stored
This image has been compressed compared to the actual usage of the Windows 11 system
My images folder is only about 10 GB in size
So I finished how to create a Windows 11 system backup and save it on a USB drive
So how to restore Windows 11 system from this image
First of all I delete some files, here I delete Rufus software and clonezilla tool iso file
In this section, I will show you how to restore Windows 11 system from an image stored on a USB drive
In the UEFI BIOS you set the computer to boot from the USB drive and save the changes
You choose to start clonezilla from RAM
Clonezilla is copied to RAM and booted from there, so the USB drive becomes a storage device
Just like last time you set the language and keyboard before starting clonezilla
You choose to work with drives, partitions and images
Next you choose to work with local devices such as hard drives, usb drives
List of your local drives, I have one hard drive and one USB drive
Next you choose where to store the system image
I scroll down and select the USB drive, in this case it's called sda1
I leave the default, skip checking and skip repairing system files
This is the list of folders on my USB drive, select Done and press Enter
Beginner mode
Different from the system backup, this time I choose to restore the hard drive from the image
Clonezilla will scan the images on your USB drive
If you back up multiple times there will be different versions
Because I only backed up once so there was only one option for me to restore
Then you choose the target drive, because on my computer there is only one drive so I choose it and restore
You can skip checking the image before restoring if you want it to be faster
You choose to check the image before restoring to ensure the safety of the system and avoid the image being corrupted for some reason
Press enter to continue
Press y key to continue
Time to system restore is significantly faster than system backup time
It took me about 25 minutes to back up the system, but to restore it took me about 10 minutes
Press enter to continue
System has been restored
I will check the results and wait for the files I deleted to be restored
Once again you go to the UEFI BIOS and set the boot order
This time you set up the target computer to boot from the hard drive after being restored
You save your changes and start Windows 11
Thank you for watching until now, don't forget to like and help me 600 thousand subscribers
As you can see, the files deleted in the previous step have been restored, just as I expected . Good luck with clonezilla