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Windows 10How to Backup Computer to External Hard Drive in Windows 10

How to Backup Computer to External Hard Drive in Windows 10

By Achilles Hill | Last Updated

There is no doubt that you will never be in panic if any error happens to the computer when you have a complete and accurate backup of your Windows 10 PC in your external hard drive. We don't know when and why the computer failing, system crashing and hard drive breaking occurs. But, we can prepare the solutions to cope with these issues at the expense of minimal damage. Here, you will learn the tutorial on how to completely and accurately backup Windows 10 computer to external hard drive in WinPE.

  1. Part 1: Create the Windows Bootable PE with iSunshare CloneGo
  2. Part 2: Backup Windows 10 Computer to External Hard Drive
how to backup windows 10 pc in winpe

Part 1: Create the Windows Bootable PE with iSunshare CloneGo

For the professionals, they know and grasp Windows PE well. Wikipedia notes that "Windows Preinstallation Environment (also known as Windows PE and WinPE) is a lightweight version of Windows used for the deployment of PCs, workstations and servers, or troubleshooting an operation system while it is offline." So, how can we create a Windows PE with CloneGo installed in it? You can view the specific steps below.

Step 1: Connect your USB drive to the computer and run iSunshare CloneGo. Then, click the Make Boot Disk button to make USB as the boot disk.

click make boot disk

Step 2: Here you will get two options to create a bootable WinPE: Create PE in current system environment and select WIM file to make PE.

Option 1: Create PE in current system environment

Generally, you can choose this option to create PE when you have PE file in your computer. It is selected by default. You just need to choose the Create PE in current system environment option and click OK button.

 click create PE in current system environment option

Option 2: Select WIM file to make PE

In which situation you need to select WIM file to make PE:

  • 1. There are no PE files on your computer so that the first option is unavailable.
  • 2. You want to create bootable USB for another windows computer in order to back up data without booting into windows.

When you choose WIM file to make PE with USB drive, you can apply this PE device to any Windows computer. So, how to make such PE? Firstly, choose Select WIM file to make PE option and click the Download option to download the WIM file. Then extract the Zip file and get winpe.wim file. After that, click the ADD button to add wim file into the software. At last, click the OK button to go ahead.

select wim file to make PE

Step 3: Select your USB device. If your USB drive is not displayed in the computer, you can click the Refresh button. After that, click the Make button.

select USB device

Step 4: It will pop up a window which tells you the operation will format USB drive and all the data in USB drive will be lost. To continue, click the Yes button and the WinPE will be burned automatically.

format USB drive

Part 2: Backup Windows 10 Computer to External Hard Drive

After you burn the WinPE with USB flash drive, you can turn off the computer. Then, connect your external hard drive with the computer in the right way. After that, you can boot the computer from USB. After the computer successfully boots up, you will see the iSunshare CloneGo using interface.

Notes:

  • 1. Enable at least one volume in the external hard drive.
  • 2. Keep a copy of you external hard drive data if it has the important data.
  • 3. Remember the total size of each partition of the internal hard drive and external hard drive. When you enter WinPE state, the drive letter may change. So sometimes you cannot recognize the partition just by the drive letter.

Steps to Backup Windows 10 PC via CloneGo Disk Clone Feature

With the external hard drive connected, you can directly clone the entire disk in your Windows 10 PC to the external hard drive in CloneGo – professional disk backup software. In this way, your Windows 10 computer can be completely and accurately backed up.

Step 1: Click "Disk Clone" in the left side and choose the original disk in your Windows 10 computer to be the source disk.

click disk clone and choose original disk

Step 2: Select the connected external hard drive as the target disk. You should be attention that this selected disk will be overwritten latter.

select external hard drive as target disk

Step 3: Click "Start" and make sure of the operation by clicking "Yes". If you want your computer to shutdown, restart or hibernate after CloneGo did its job, you can choose the related option of After Finished before starting the disk clone process.

start cloning disk

Then the clone process begins and you will get the identical Windows 10 OS and partition data in the external hard drive soon as the computer works faster in WinPE. If you boot the computer from the external hard drive, it works as the same as your original operating system.

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