Detailed Win8/Win8.1 system backup and restore method

There has never been a habit of backing up the operating system
, and because of the needs of friends, I have explored this method. After several iterations of experiments, this approach has proven to be completely feasible. If you don't want to use any third-party tools, try the methods described in this article. In fact, one-click recovery of OEM brand machines is based on this principle. However, despite the simplicity of operation, you are required to have a little patience.

About the backup and restore of Win8, I have already written the relevant tutorial
, this time based on the feedback from netizens. Before the official start of the tutorial
, use this article to answer a few questions that users are more concerned about, and then briefly introduce the principle of the entire backup and restore process and the tools used, so that readers can use this series. > Tutorials
There is a general understanding. We will explain in detail in the following articles. If the following content seems to be difficult to understand, it doesn't matter, wait until you have read all the tutorials
I believe you will understand.

About this backup method

What is the principle of this backup restore method? What are the advantages?

This backup method uses Win8 and Win8.1's own "delete all content and reinstall the Windows
function", that is, the reset function. The final backup file has a high compression ratio and supports incremental backup —— that is, backing up again on the basis of the previous backup (the process is exactly the same), the incremental backup can automatically skip duplicate files, so the backup process is fast. And take up very little space. You can restore your system to the state of any backup.

Is this backup and restore method complicated?

No. The whole process focuses on the backup of the system and the configuration of the recovery image. This involves the simple use of three command-line tools, Diskpart, Reagent, and Dism. We will talk about their role later. Don't be intimidated by them. In fact, they are very simple operations. Just be careful not to enter the wrong path. Don't throw away the spaces that should be in the command.

The recovery process is very simple, just double-click the mouse, the recovery image will not affect the configuration of the recovery image. Once and for all.

Is the recovery process very slow?

This will be mentioned in a later tutorial. Just pay attention, when you recover, do you want to completely clean up your drive? & rdquo; This step should select “ delete only my files & rdquo;, instead of selecting <; completely clean the drive & rdquo;. The difference between the two is that the former is simply to clear the data in the partition, and the time is small; the latter is to repeatedly write the erased data to the partition, so that the files in the partition are difficult to be restored to achieve personal privacy protection. Purpose, this takes a long time, unless we want to transfer the computer
to others, otherwise it is not necessary to do so.

Recovery can only be entered into the system before recovery?

If the system can also start normally, the normal recovery method is to enter the system and then recover; if the system fails to start normally, after one or several failed startups, the system will automatically initiate failover and enter the recovery environment. . You can restore the system in a recovery environment, and the method of operation is exactly the same. In addition, you can copy the recovery environment and backup image to a USB device. Start the recovery environment from the USB device to restore the system. There will be a special article to explain this part.

Backup and backup principle and related tools

System backup and restore, nothing more than save all the files of the system, and then take them out to the original location when needed. Therefore, we have to solve three problems, which environment is the backup? Where is the backup? What tool is used to back up? How to recover?

About backup environment

Whether it is backup or recovery, we choose to do it in the recovery environment (Note: The recovery process actually enters the recovery environment automatically). The Windows recovery environment is a micro operating system environment that is automatically configured by the system after we install the (Vista/Win7/Win8/Win8.1) system, and contains a series of advanced recovery tools. It is essentially a PE system. Of course, you can also choose to operate in a PE made by a third party or another Windows operating system (if you have multiple operating systems installed). However, given the complexity of the entire process, we use an off-the-shelf recovery environment.

The Windows recovery environment and the operating system on the computer are two relatively independent environments, so the drive numbers on the hard disk (which we usually call the partition letter) are distributed in these two environments. There may be differences. Before we back up the system, the first thing we need to do is to confirm the correct path in the recovery environment for the folder or partition involved in the backup process. And because the recovery environment is a simplified micro-operating system, it is not equipped with a visual resource manager window, so we need to use the built-in Diskpart command line tool to view these paths. We will explain in more detail in the following articles.

Where is the backup? What tool is used to back up? How to recover?

This method will eventually be backed up to a file with the suffix Wim. The tool used for backup is DISM—— a command-line tool that can be used to manage wim files, which is included with the system.

After backing up the system, we also need to configure the recovery image to let the operating system know which file to restore from when we restore the system. This part of the work is done by the Reagent tool. Reagent is a command line tool for changing the configuration information of the Windows recovery environment.

The recovery system uses the initialization function that comes with the system. With just a few mouse clicks, the rest of the process is fully automated. After the recovery is complete, go directly to the start interface.