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I am not sure what would be best.
This is for a friends new HP laptop. I think I would like the HP to be able to boot from the USB drive. Then use tools there to be able fix the HP boot process on the internal drive or reload a drive image.
Thanks is a HP 15-au123cl.
I pulled the slow HD out, and migrated the OS to a SSD, including the 3 hidden partitions that go with the OS. There seems to be no way to migrate the OS and the HP recovery partition. The HP drive is in GPT, so there is little compatible software out there. But that is not important now.
The system is in the condition I want to be able to go back too if some thing goes bad in the future. My friend is not know too much about computers. I want to provide an easy method of recovery, if the laptop can't boot, or win10 becomes corrupted. So I would like one USB stick what will boot to win10 recovery mode, and also have the drive image available.
NavyLCDR's solution would work fine, but may be too complex for your friend. You would need to discuss that with him, the pros and cons. I suggest you get more info from Navy as I'm not that familiar with his setup.
If you're looking for a simplified, more or less plug-n-play approach, consider the following.
1 8-16GB USB flash for a Windows Recovery bootable. Could also be used instead to contain a bootable Recovery Environment with many common programs using a tool developed by one of our members. Windows 10 Recovery Tools - Bootable Rescue Disk This ISO from Kyhi would be put on the thumb drive using a utility called Rufus Rufus - Create bootable USB drives the easy way or copied manually after formatting the thumb.
Macrium Reflect (free) for image backup to an external USB HDD of 1TB.
Macrium Reflect Free | Macrium Software
1 2-4GB USB flash for a bootable Macrium Rescue to be used to restore images from the external, along with built-in tools for fixing boot problems.
You should read the info in the links for more insight. Very similar setups are used by many on Tenforums, but the choice is yours, and your friend's.
TC
Very good info.
But I keep seeing that I have to use the whole USB drive for one thing or another.
Is it possible to treat it as a HD. Make 2 partitions. One bootable partition that will have your PEtools, or Win10 recovery tools, and a second data partition that I could store a disk image.
I did a bit of research on USB drives. You can have many partitions on them as you want. But Win will only see the first one. There is a bit somewhere in the first sector that defines a USB drive as 'removable'. So Win will only see partition 1. It can be changed but with a lot of work, that I am not in the mood for now. I will have to go with a 2 USB stick solution for my friend.
But I am going to use the PE tools mentioned above for my own personal use. It has come a long way since I lasted used it about 10+ years ago.
Thanks everyone, a very educational thread.