Data Recovery and Disk Utilities Forum @R-TT

The Windows Operating system doesn't normally BOOT from USB drives without creating a special USB BOOT functionality.

Normally you can initially make your internal Hard Drive the "Primary" and "ACTIVE Bootable Partition" through Partitioning software like Partition Magic or the like, or you can have the Windows installer do this for you. But for USB drives they need special functionality attributes assigned to them which usually don't get created through normal Formatting and Partitioning of a USB drive. Windows doesn't normally have a USB Device Driver to BOOT Windowes Setup from. So attemots to Run Windows from a USB drive without an emulation program forcing the drive to appear like an IDE drive or a CD-Rom these attempts to boot from a USB drive will fail.
HP has a utility to create USB Thumb Drives to be bootable devices, but this erases the drive and creates the partitioning scheme in a special way. So unless you are doing something special to a Format your USB drive, then your attempts to use Imaging on your USB drive will not work.

Well, may be the problem with the Windows licensing? I will try to find that out.

Many thanks for the suggestion. It's not entirely successful but I'm wondering if this is a Windows issue regarding HDs. I do the Disk Copy as suggested but when I boot up on the USB disk it throws up some errors. It seems to load Windows successfully but then throws a blue screen error message temporarily and automatically reboots itself each time.

Perhaps Windows keeps information about the HD it's been loaded on and if it boots up and finds itself on something completely different, an external USB HD, then it throws a wobbley.

I don't know if anyone else has managed to do this successfully. Would be interested to know how.

If the size does not matter, I suggest the following:
You create a partition on your USB hard drive slightly larger than the hard drive of your laptop. Then make a Disk to disk copy of your laptop HDD to that partition on the USB hard drive. Select Do not connect in the Drive letter for the selected partition on the Restore/Copy Parameters panel. The rest of the USB drive is at your disposal. And then start your computer from this disk. As you have R-Drive Image installed, it will appear in the programs on the startup disk. Then copy data back from the USB drive to your laptop drive. And again, select Do not connect in the Drive letter for the selected partition on the Restore/Copy Parameters panel.
The size of the USB drive should be larger than that of the laptop drive. The rest does not matter. When you start from the USB drive, letters C: and D: will be reserved to the disks on the USB drive, the disks on the laptop drive will have different names. But when you restart your laptop, the disks will have their original letters, C: and D:.
Well, I recommend to test that scheme first.

I would like to have a complete backup of my laptop in case of HD failure. I have bought a USB hard disk that is considerably larger than the laptop hard disk. In case of failure I would simply like to go into the BIOS, change the boot disk to the USB hard disk and carry on from there until I can get the laptop hard disk replaced.

1. Is this possible with R-Drive Image 4.3?
2. Should I use "Create an Image" or "Copy Disk to Disk"?
3. Does it matter that laptop hard disk and the USB hard disk are different sizes?
4. When I boot up on the USB hard disk will it see my partitioned C: and D: drives and call them C: and D:?

Many thanks