Which faster? Restore image using Boot Disk or Windows(logged in)

front360 · 27 May 2018

I have to restore a system image, because when Win10 crashed, it wiped out my SSD and left it all unallocated. If you know what would cause that, I'd like for this to never happen again, so please let me know?

My real question is, would the Image Restore take less time to finish if I used a boot disk to restore, or if I just booted into Win Vista(I know tell me about it...old) using another computer and restore using the program inside Windows?

Would a restore from a networked computer definately be the slowest?
Thanks in advance,
Don

Bree · 28 May 2018

What did you use to make the image in the first place? Macrium? The built-in Windows System Imaging? I'm guessing it's a 3rd-party imaging solution like Macrium, otherwise you wouldn't be considering running it on another machine with Vista.

As far as the software is concerned, it makes no difference. Once booted from the boot disk the recovery environment should have been loaded as a RAM drive so everything runs from memory, the disk could be removed at this point.

One factor that will affect the speed of the restore would be the speed of the usb port you use for the (presumably) external HDD that holds the image and the speed of the external drive (most USB HDDs are USB3). The Vista machine is likely to be of a vintage that only had USB2 ports. If the machine that you want to restore to has USB3 ports then that should be the fastest way to restore the image.

The speed of a network restore would be limited by your network adapter speed. Ultimately the speed the data can be read from the drive is the key factor, and whether the drive is being shared to the network by a machine with USB2 or USB3 ports. So if the network is faster than that it wouldn't make a difference. It's the slowest link in the chain that determines the speed of reading the image.

front360 · 28 May 2018

Thanks Bree, I'm using Aomei Backupper this time because it has the newest backup, but I also have used Macrium, but that backup is older. I'm about to hook my Sata2 SSD to the extra Vista Sata2 port. The Vista desktop, Sata2 HDD has the backup, and I'll be restoring the system image(Win10) to my SSD.

The SSD when done will have Win10 and it'll be going back in my laptop.

In the past I used my Home Network, to backup from the laptop to the desktop, and then when needed, restore the Image from the desktop to my laptop(Boot Disk) via the said network.(But I think this may be the slowest though??)

My thought was, with Vista running, there are so many background services and programs also running, that it may slow the restore process down, so I figured using the USB2 Boot Disk(thumb drive) would be faster than using the restore program from within Windows Vista, correct?
Thanks in advance.

Bree · 28 May 2018

As I said, the speed or reading the data from the image is the key factor. The slowest link in the chain determines how long the restore takes. As the image HDD and the SSD you are restoring to are both on sata2 the data speed should not be a problem.

The limiting factor will probably be the speed the data can be read from the HDD. As it is a 'spinner' even working at 100% disk activity I suspect it will still supply data slower that the restore software could process it. Windows (even Vista) should prioritize the foreground program over the background services. I doubt if there would be a measurable difference booting from a thumb drive (with fewer background services).