Backups. Most have a backup drive and method to restore their system. This may be via a recovery partition or a bootable USB or DVD. If your main drive fails, the recovery partition may be useless, you may not be able to locate your bootable thumb drive. Wouldn't it be handy if your backup disk/SSD was bootable?

Tools Required.

  1. MiniTool Partition Wizard (free ver is ok).   Or other partition software. (this procedure uses Partition Wizard v12.6)
  2. Macrium Reflect file backup (free ver is ok). Or other software capable of creating a recovery partition. (this procedure uses Macrium Reflect Home v8)

Create the bootable backup drive.
Using an existing or new USB Disk/SSD drive.
This is not a step by step procedure, you should have some familiarity with the software.

  1. This procedure is is non-destructive, a wise person would backup up first.
  2. Use Partition Wizard to resize a partition to leave ~150mb of unallocated space.
    (If it is a large fragmented drive be patient it could take time).
  3. Make sure that your disk is MBR not GPT. If required use Partition Wizard to change.
  4. Close Partition Wizard.
  5. Use Macrium to "Create Rescue Media" look at advanced but probably ok
    (Macrium may d/l Windows PE)
  6. Use Partition Wizard to extend your data partition into the remaining unallocated space.
  7. If required/wanted use Windows Disk Management to assign or remove a drive letter.

Return to the Software Tab