Backing up Windows on a dual-boot computer using EaseUs ToDo Backup

[cday]

Simple question:

If I backup my Windows partition with EaseUS Todo Backup using the 'System Backup' option, can I be confident of later restoring Windows without affecting the Mint installation?

I assume that should work, but I had a bad experience once when after some research I expected a 'sector by sector' backup to restore the whole dual-boot drive: when I tested it the computer was bricked!

Second question:

Does anyone know if an EaseUS 'emergency recovery disk' created on one computer can also be used to restore a second similar computer? I have two dual-boot W10 + Mint laptops, similar but not identical models.


I know that there are many other backup tools which people recommend and prefer, but the immediate question concerns EaseUs with which I have some limited familiarity, I am not looking to use another tool at the moment if EaseUS does the job.

[decrepit]

I see Windows and Mac versions, but no Linux ones. Are you sure it will work with ext4 partitions, because windows can't see them?

[Moonstone Man]

... but the immediate question concerns EaseUs ...

https://www.easeus.com/support-center/index.php

And the immediate questions needing immediate answers are perhaps best asked there first.

[cday]

Thank you decrepit, but an EaseUs 'System Restore' backup created on Windows wouldn't need to read the Linux partition, unless I am seriously mistaken.

And thank you Kadaitcha Man, I am using EaseUs ToDo Backup Free and had read that there was no support available for the free version. But the link you provided may in fact be useful, and it looks as if I might also have access to the Chat facility, although my past experience of Chat is that it is unlikely to be helpful for anything out of the ordinary.

And when I referred to my 'immediate' need I meant that I was asking specifically about backup using EaseUs ToDo, so many threads on backup that I have read in the past have soon turned into a debate between experienced users on the relative merits of different backup software.

With so many Mint users, many with dual-boot systems, I was assuming that a number would be using EaseUs Backup software, and that someone might be able to confirm that a 'System Backup' could be used to restore Windows reliably if the need arises.

And my second question was simply whether anyone knew whether an EaseUS 'emergency recovery disk' created on one computer could also be used to restore a second similar computer.

[Peter Linu]

Hi cday,
Welcome to the forum.
There are many such utilities. The best one and also free is Foxclone which is developed by this forum's very own AndyMH.
https://foxclone.com

[cday]

There are many such utilities. The best one and also free is Foxclone which is developed by this forum's very own AndyMH.
https://foxclone.com

Thank you Peter Linu, I have heard about Foxclone and it might well be the best of several popular options regularly mentioned in threads on backup.

But I can't do everything at once, and my questions above are specifically about EaseUs Backup 'System Backup', with which I am familiar having used it in the past on a Windows computer, but not on a dual-boot Windows-Mint computer. There must be forum members dual-booting Windows and Mint who know the answer to my first question, at least.

[Pierre]

If you backup that Windows partition with EaseUS Todo Backup using the 'System Backup' option,
and the Restore is successful, then there is still the Boot Loader restore issue,
as if the EaseUS Todo Backup doesn't restore the Windows Boot method,

then you could need to Restore that Windows Boot Menu & it's Boot Loader,
and that alone will mess up your LinuxMint Boot Loader in the process.

that then, will also need to be Restored, as well.

[cday]

Thanks Pierre for your directly relevant post...

If you backup that Windows partition with EaseUS Todo Backup using the 'System Backup' option, and the Restore is successful...

I have been assuming that it would be, bar an unrelated glitch, although maybe I can't be certain...

then there is still the Boot Loader restore issue, as if the EaseUS Todo Backup doesn't restore the Windows Boot method, then you could need to Restore that Windows Boot Menu & it's Boot Loader, and that alone will mess up your LinuxMint Boot Loader in the process, that then will also need to be Restored.

That is the crux of the matter, and you are not sure whether there would actually be a problem?

In the absence of a post by a dual-boot user who has used EaseUS ToDo Backup successfully, I shall have to assume that a 'System Backup' can't be relied on to successfully restore a Windows partition on a Windows-Mint computer, for exactly the kind of technical reasons that concerned me. Maybe a simple partition backup could be relied on, while providing less comprehensive protection??

I do need to look sometime into the question of backing up both operating systems on a dual-boot computer, in Mint I have so far relied on Timeshift backups, and discovered through experience that copying a Timeshift backup to a usb memory doesn't seem a viable option.

Plenty of advice, and much discussion of the relative merits of different backup software tools, on the forum already!

[Peter Linu]

Experience has taught me better than to question your obstinate attitude in wanting to stick with EaseUS. However, Foxclone does everything you want and everything that Pierre advises WITH A MINIMUM OF FUSS. Once you overcome the difficult installation (which will be fixed within a cuppla months), it's so easy to use, you could easily do it every day if you like.
This has bin my last on this matter.

[rickNS]

There must be forum members dual-booting Windows and Mint who know the answer to my first question, at least.

Apparently not, or at least darn few. Got to remember many of us gave up windows completely, and of those that haven't, how many of them has used that software...in just the way you want. I can see the number get small.

OK, I am one who has actually used easeus todo backup software (successfully) a couple of times on a dual boot disk, but I cloned the entire disk, it booted and worked exactly like the original. I'd suggest you probably go that route, else you may end up as @Pierre suggests, without a way to boot your windows. That is of course up to you. And it seems you already had trouble doing it that way...if I read the first part of you OP correctly?

my questions above are specifically about EaseUs Backup 'System Backup', with which I am familiar having used it in the past on a Windows computer, but not on a dual-boot Windows-Mint computer.

If you boot the computer directly from the Easeus disk (you made on windows...did you make a boot disk?) it makes (or should make) no difference that your now on a dual boot system. Thing is you'd need a spare disk to fully test. You would also need a spare disk to make a complete clone, question is what is good backup (of your windows) worth to you?

[cday]

Thank you rickNS for your experience using EaseUS ToDo Backup, as you suggest there may not in fact be many forum members who do use it.

When you cloned your entire disk and restored it successfully, was that using a 'sector by sector' backup? That is what I tried, after reading what information I could find about the option, and as said when I later attempted a recovery the computer wouldn't boot. Needless to say it happened at the worst possible time, Christmas Eve, at the start of the longest business shutdown of the year! Yes, I do have an EaseUs Recovery Boot Disk.

I installed Mint 20.1 last week after finally getting the Windows 10 20H2 update to replace 1909. Before I installed Mint I thought I should make an EaseUS backup in case of a future problem with Windows 10, and used the 'system backup' option I had previously used periodically on my original Windows computer. Thinking about it now, a simple partition backup, which shouldn't present any restore issues, would probably have been a better option overall.

After installing Mint, I though it might be worth asking whether the backup would actually be likely to work, so I started this tread.

I do need to have a serious look at backup options in general, of which there is already plenty of information on the forum, in terms of backing up both Mint and Windows. But I just don't have the bandwidth to do it right now, with all the other things I have to do configuring two dual-boot laptops, together with many unrelated things that need my attention. Yes, maybe in time Foxclone!

[rickNS]

When you cloned your entire disk and restored it successfully, was that using a 'sector by sector' backup?

When I did it, there was no "restore", just clone, then swap in the new "cloned" disk. Yes it was sector by sector, which is the slow way, but the good way.

So when you did it, and had a failure, did you use the software from your "EaseUs Recovery Boot Disk" ? Because it is at least difficult to clone, or backup a disk or partition that is in use, so if you ran the software from within windows that would probably explain why it failed. Notice I said probably, as I said, I haven't used the software as you intend, but am pretty sure it is good and reliable software...if used correctly.

[cday]

When you cloned your entire disk and restored it successfully, was that using a 'sector by sector' backup?

When I did it, there was no "restore", just clone, then swap in the new "cloned" disk. Yes it was sector by sector, which is the slow way, but the good way.

So when you did it, and had a failure, did you use the software from your "EaseUs Recovery Boot Disk" ? Because it is at least difficult to clone, or backup a disk or partition that is in use, so if you ran the software from within windows that would probably explain why it failed. Notice I said probably, as I said, I haven't used the software as you intend, but am pretty sure it is good and reliable software...if used correctly.

I've realised since posting that the the 'clone' option you used is not, I'm almost certain, available in the EaseUS ToDo Backup Free version I used, so on that basis you didn't use the same 'sector by sector' option I used, even though your cloning would I imagine have been 'sector by sector'.

My failed restore was 18 months ago now so I can't be sure now whether I did use my recovery disk, maybe I didn't and that explains why it failed. I only ever used EaseUS once to repair my Windows 7 computer, and that was successful.

So we just don't know whether my backup will work, and I will move on to better restore options when I have more time.

[rickNS]

I've realised since posting that the the 'clone' option you used is not, I'm almost certain, available in the EaseUS ToDo Backup Free version I used, so on that basis you didn't use the same 'sector by sector' option I used, even though your cloning would I imagine have been 'sector by sector'.

I used the term "clone" but in the software it might well have been "disk copy" , whatever, I am sure the version I used was certainly older than what is available today. I will find the machine / disk it is on, fire it up just to see, and post back that info.

Meanwhile whatever software you decide to use, be it foxclone, clonezilla, or Easeus, the one thing in common to all of them is you want to run them from their own bootable medium, disk, or USB stick.

OK haha, just for the record, the versions I used were; Todo Backup 1.1, and Easeus disk copy 2.3
Here some screen shots, or more correctly pics. from a camera of another PC booting the media.

Todo backup 1.1, and Easeus disk copy 2.3

[cday]

Cloning the whole disk, giving an option if needed to clone the copy back later, should as far as I can see be a reliable backup strategy, but that option would require the EaseUS paid version, which I don't have. On a dual-boot system it would also restore the Mint partition to an earlier state which probably wouldn't be convenient.

I think from past experience the probability of actually needing to restore Windows is quite low, so I will wait until I have enough time to review the available backup strategies for Windows and Mint, which I imagine would in any case probably be best backed up separately.

[br1anstorm]

I dual boot Windows and Mint, but I have to start with a disclaimer, as I have not used EaseUs ToDo Backup.

I have used other programs and options for backing up data, backing up systems, and disk-imaging, simply as a precaution and as a matter of good practice. Thankfully I haven't needed to use them for rescue and restoration (yet), so I can't talk from real-world experience of actually carrying out a system restore.

A couple of thoughts occur to me. As Pierre noted, there may be an issue over bootloader recovery. This depends on how the dual boot is set up:

- if (as seems to be the practice of most users who dual boot) GRUB effectively replaces the Windows bootloader, then a Windows system-restore using Easeus or any similar software may not reinstate the booting arrangements, and access to Linux would then become a problem;

- if (as in my case) you use EasyBCD in Windows to manage the dual boot process, then (in theory!) the Windows bootloader remains in operation. EasyBCD configures it to link with Grub, which is installed not in the MBR but on the same partition as Linux Mint. So (again I say in theory) a system restore of Windows should preserve or reinstate Windows and its bootloader as configured by EasyBCD, does not interact with Grub at all, and so should not affect the Linux part of dual-booting;

- if you dual boot with Windows and Linux on two separate drives (as AndyMH of this forum does, and as I have just set up on a spare laptop) then the Windows installation retains its bootloader on its HDD/SSD, and Linux has its Grub on the other HDD/SSD (and can "see" and boot Windows if Linux is set in the Bios as the first drive to boot from). So you can backup and restore each OS separately without one interfering with the other.

In terms of the wider question of backup strategy, Easeus (or Macrium - which I use - or Aomei) are just part of the picture. They all offer similar options [for Windows]. For a Linux system, Timeshift (for the system) and BackInTime or similar (for data) provide your backup cover. In addition, but it's a separate kind of insurance, a disk-image will preserve and then reinstate the exact (cloned) image of your disk with whatever is on it - Windows, Linux or whatever. I use Clonezilla to create an image of the disk in each of my computers, simply as a fail-safe strategy.

[cday]

Thank you br1anstorm for your very relevant insights, it looks as if no-one is backing up their Windows partition using EaseUs in the way I though might provide a solution, and it could well fail.

Setting up a proper backup system has long been in my mind, and I have in the past read a number of threads on the subject. It's something I intend to do when I have time. I have been using TimeShift, but that can only be part of a overall strategy. One thing I noticed in the threads I have read is that they quickly morph into discussion of the relative merits of different software tools, rather than detailed backup strategies!

[br1anstorm]

You're very welcome, @cday. I think - whether we have dual-boot systems or not - we all grapple with the question of what to back up, and how. I, too, browsed a lot of forum posts in my efforts to work out what to do. It's not just the choice of software programs; it's also the confusion that can arise over the terms "back-up", "restore", "image", "clone" etc.

As my previous post implies, I ended up looking at three different strands to the strategy:

1) back up of data - personal files, documents, photos, whatever. All the material that is unique to you and perhaps irreplaceable. It helps to have a separate /home partition (in Linux) .... or as I have now introduced, a separate "Data" partition (see forum tutorial for how to set that up). This personal data can then be backed up -- either using BackInTime or similar, or by copying on to an external drive or cloud storage;

2) backup of system - this is what Timeshift does for me. Saves and enables restoration of the operating system and its settings in case an update or something else causes corruption or a crash.

3) disk image or clone - this is the fail-safe insurance policy. An image of the entire disk and everything on it, which can then be used to reinstate the system as-it-was-when-imaged. Not the sort of thing you would do every day or every week as a backing up routine: I use Clonezilla (and Foxclone is an alternative) to take an image usually of a 'clean' or newly installed setup, which I save to an external drive and keep as a precaution against catastrophe.

[AndyMH]

Timeshift only backs up the system and not your data, i.e. home, if you are using the defaults. It is a bad idea to change the defaults to include home, better to use a complementary utility like backintime to take care of /home. The default for backintime is to only backup /home. Both these utilities are front ends for the terminal utility rsync and work at the file level.

I use both of these, set up to automatically backup daily to an internal/removable HDD.

Periodically I use foxclone to take an image backup of the whole drive. There are alternatives, but I developed foxclone. Image backup utilities know nothing about files, all they do is copy used blocks in a partition to an image file, generally compressing the image file to improve speed and reduce the size of the image file. 'sector-by-sector' is only used when dealing with an unknown filesystem type, when unknown it has to copy the entire partition, so slower.

Why both? timeshift/backintime is quick, after the initial snapshot, they only copy what has changed and run within your running OS. For image backup you need to boot a separate OS, typically booting from a stick, and there is no incremental backup, you are backing up whole partitions = slower. If I completely bork my system or the drive dies, foxclone gets me a working system and data current at the time of the backup. timeshift/backintime then get me back to yesterday. All my PCs have a 2TB HDD used only for backup. To make life easier, I have a small partition on that drive with LM19.3 installed in it. I have foxclone installed in that copy of LM19.3. That way I don't have to mess around with separate boot sticks.

Image backup utilities have to boot from a separate OS because you have to guarantee that nothing changes in the partition you are backing up. If they were trying to backup a live system it is likely that something would change during the backup.

To correct some misconceptions - you should only use clone when you want to transfer your system to another drive, typically because you are changing a HDD for a SSD or moving from a smaller to a larger drive. Clone makes the destination drive an identical copy of the source drive. For backup you should be using 'backup' which will create image files on the destination drive and allow you to use the destination for other purposes as well.

I think from past experience the probability of actually needing to restore Windows is quite low, so I will wait until I have enough time to review the available backup strategies for Windows and Mint, which I imagine would in any case probably be best backed up separately.

NO! Take separate backups with different tools and you run a significant risk of ending up with an unbootable system if you restore one OS and not the other. The worst thing you could do is use a windows tool that doesn't understand linux, and I'm not convinced that easus does. I have used macrium reflect in the past, it does (but is very slow to boot from a stick because it is using win PE as the OS).

I suggest you download the user guide for foxclone and have a read. It handles win and linux partitions (most of the testing was done on dual boot systems) and automatically backs up and restores the partition table and grub. I designed it to be as newbie friendly as I could.

[Pjotr]

@AndyMH: am trying to download your foxclone iso, but without success: both the US and the UK server end up with download failure because of a network error.