This is a hard one for me to write, so apologies in advance as necessary. What I want to say is that it can be enormously difficult getting something besides a regular Windows install to boot on current & semi current hardware. Why that matters to backing up & restoring your files, as well as to things like working with partitions, is that you often need to do that stuff after booting to something like a USB stick where Windows is not running.
You can backup a *copy* of the files Windows uses when it's running, but you cannot replace those *actual* files with it running. If you're going to restore a backup of a Windows partition you need to be running a different OS, e.g. a separate copy of Windows or *nix. If you need to restore a back up of the hidden files that an OS [or OSes] needs to start, you need to be running that different OS from another drive.
So what happens is people use backup software in Windows, assuming everything is cool & wonderful. Then disaster strikes & they try to restore that backup. That's when they find out something doesn't work right. I believe that they're the ones reporting that this or that backup software failed, or that it trashed their system, or something else equally dire. They'd have been better off *Not* depending on a backup to begin with, but rather storing their stuff in the cloud, reinstalling or restoring the OS [Windows] as necessary. Or like some, just replacing the hardware, because that way they have something working a few minutes after they open the box.
I want to explain a bit of the how & why booting to whatever device can be so difficult, & encourage anyone that does use backup software to test it out as possible before they need it badly. What brought this topic on was AOMEI's Backupper being offered on GOTD, so I'll add a bit about that software too.
Hardware [PCs, laptops, tablets, & cell phones] has changed & evolved, & a part of that is changing the way that it boots, how it starts the OS [Operating System], & that brings with it a fairly big challenge. The hardware [or devices] you work with may or may not be on the bleeding edge of technology, but software like an image backup app needs to change to meet these new challenges or risk falling by the wayside. Make sure what you have now works, & do not assume newer versions of the same software will.
The main circuit boards [motherboards] used in PCs, laptops, & Windows tablets use a programmed bios chip to act as the interface tying all the device's hardware together into a functioning, whole device rather than a collection of parts. The programming code the bios stores & uses has been moving to UEFI, which is a mini OS. One of the purposes of the move is to work with Secure Boot, a feature where the bios is supposed to authenticate the software it runs when you turn the device on.
There are a bunch of reasons this stuff can give you headaches. For one, Microsoft has laid down guidelines that it treats as gospel -- they are not. Microsoft would have you believe that EUFI booting absolutely means having disks in the GPT format [rather than MBR] -- that's false. Many people & companies will tell you that UEFI is only 64 bit -- that's false. Many will tell you that this or that partition or device has to be NTFS or FAT32 -- Maybe. Microsoft likes to put Windows boot files on a partition separate from the one where Windows lives -- it sticks them on the 1st partition if you're adding Windows to any partition other than the 1st partition -- if you install Windows to the 1st partition, by default it adds a small, hidden partition just for those boot files, then installs itself to a 2nd partition. You need that setup for things like Boot Locker, but may not need it otherwise -- boot files on the Windows partition are usually fine.
Marketing & accounting types want their company's products to have the widest audience, the biggest market possible. It's common sense, you'd rather have 1 million potential customers than 1 thousand -- you'd rather have one product to concentrate your efforts [& R&D $] on, rather than 3 filling more-or-less the same slot. In this case that means hardware, including the bios, is designed to work with the widest possible range of additional hardware. And so their engineers & designers treat specs more like guidelines than absolute rules.
What that means is that a PC, laptop, tablet, or cell that can run Windows, may have it's own requirements when it comes to what will or will not boot. It also may have more than one mode, e.g. it can go into one mode if it sees attached MBR storage, & another when it sees GPT. It might select its mode based on certain types of storage, e.g. hard drives, USB sticks, & optical drives. The bios can include mistakes &/or bugs, that also can prevent booting in some circumstances. Since the bios runs an OS it can be hacked or infected -- some companies are updating their bios code to plug some of those security holes, which can introduce other incompatibilities. Sometimes the Secure Boot end of things can be at fault -- sometimes secure boot can be turned off, sometimes not.
When Microsoft 1st came out with their methods/files to create a bootable UEFI win7 setup on a USB stick, there was quite the shadow community coming up with ways to make it actually work. It's not gotten that much better since then -- it's actually gotten worse as more types of hardware have hit the market. As a consumer & Windows user, when it comes to backup or partitioning software, if that software's boot discs/USB sticks do not work for you, you have two choices -- play with this stuff & hopefully get a boot disc/USB stick that will work, or move on to different software.
You can try something like rufus to set up your USB stick, you can try to set up a more universal WinPE USB stick, you can try different brands/models of USB sticks [some will rarely if every boot], you can try 32 bit or 64 bit, FAT32, NTFS, MBR, GPT, 1 vs. more partitions and so on. If you have win8/8.1 you can create a recovery USB stick, just to see what format it's in & if it will boot [if it won't could be badly coded bios or wrong brand/model USB stick -- I've seen both myself]. Note that to boot from something like a USB stick you may well have to completely turn a system off, which can itself be challenging with some hardware designed to just sleep or hibernate.
Portability is sometimes considered along with an app's boot discs/USB sticks, e.g. if you can boot into a copy of WinPE with a desktop, you can use a portable version of backup software, just like any other portable app. Normally a portable version of whatever app should work everywhere, but backup software has special needs -- if you want to use drivers they have to be installed. You need drivers if you want to mount a backup archive, or if you want to backup the currently running copy of Windows, & Backupper uses a driver/service for its scheduling.
How easy it is to come by a portable version varies. When you use a boot disc/USB stick, the system boots to a mini OS that provides the needed support for the actual software to run -- very often nowadays that mini OS is WinPE, a very limited copy of Windows. When you create bootable media often a minimal copy of the program gets tacked onto WinPE, & since WinPE IS Windows, that copy should run just as well in the mini or full version OS. The issue in that case is how you get your hands on the copy that gets tacked onto WinPE. Most of the time I think you can get the app from the .wim files on those boot discs/USB sticks [Google/Bing Dism].
[Backupper makes it easier, packaging that version of their app in a separate, appropriately named sub-folder. Note that it seems to need its own registration/activation, same as the regular program.]
Besides usually providing some sort of boot disc/USB stick creation, backup & partitioning software often sticks a similar minimal copy of the software on your hard drive. Then when/if need be when your system reboots, it starts that up without you having to insert a USB stick or anything. Perhaps the most important difference between the two is that the external media has all of it's own boot files -- the copy on your hard drive has to deal with the boot files that are already there -- so boot discs/USB sticks can be more reliable.
Boot discs/USB sticks have another advantage... Often backup software will offer to add that mini OS to the boot menu, or as a separate boot option or menu before Windows boot menu starts [think of that Windows boot menu as always being there, but if you only have one OS, one copy of Windows installed, it makes its own choice so quickly you'll never see it]. If it adds itself before Windows boot menu, you might never get rid of it. If it adds itself to Windows boot menu, EasyBCD will let you get rid of it, but it's easier not to have to.
In general there are two main ways that restoring a backup can fail -- either the software won't work with your hardware or existing software, or you have a problem with your stored data, the backup, which itself may be caused by a hardware or hardware compatibility problem. Backing up a disk/partition image is much like turning a Word Document or a bunch of pictures into a .zip file -- restoring that backup is much like expanding that .zip file back into the originals. There's nothing that complicated to make the process prone to failure.
Backup software works with your system as it is, or it doesn't. It either works with your external storage device or it doesn't. That external storage device works or doesn't, &/or works with your hardware [your PC, laptop, tablet, or cell] or it doesn't. It's really fairly clear cut, with the majority of problems I think coming as surprises only because no one ever bothered to test if the process worked or not on their system(s). When there's a video app on GOTD, sometimes someone will comment that its video won't play -- that's the 1st thing anyone does, try to play the video that app produced. Why would you Not test backup software the same way? Yes, testing is more involved, takes more effort, but if you took the time & effort to back up, arguably that back up is more important to you than a converted video clip.
If you want to see if the backup software's compatible with the software [including drivers] that you've installed, create a .vhd & mount it, copy whatever files onto it, & back it up. Now restore that backup to a 2nd .vhd & compare the two -- if nothing else Microsoft's Windiff will work -- then just delete the .vhd files when you unattach them in Admin. Tools -> Computer Management [where you created & mounted them]. Next you need to make sure you can boot into the backup restore program.
Research your hardware to find out how to boot to a disc &/or USB stick, create one or both, & try it. You don't have to actually restore anything, but if you have a non-critical, non-Windows partition you can give it a risk free try, backing up &/or restoring whatever non-Windows files. -- just make sure you select the right partition as your target, & Not the partition where Windows is installed. Why not use Windows files? Some backup software will change the boot menu when it sees you restore a backup that contains Windows. [EasyBCD should fix that, but it's easier & safer not to have to bother.]
In a home environment I'm a believer in storing backup archives on a separate internal hard drive. The why is simple -- in many cases you have to restore a backup because someone or some thing goofed, & the need to get things working properly again at least seems urgent. Having the backup there on that hard drive makes restoring it easier, faster with less to go wrong. If/when your backup is stored on an internal drive your hardware should work with it normally. If you use an external hard drive check how well that drive's electronic interface works, how it works with your system hardware, and try to make sure that when your external drive is a conventional hard drive [not a SSD], it doesn't get too hot & fail.
One way to do that is to copy a large amount of data to that external drive while in Windows -- e.g. doing a backup to that external drive, or copying a backup to that drive -- then boot to a disc/USB stick to a command prompt -- this is often an option with backup software boot discs/USB sticks -- and copy that large file or files back to your hard drive.
Backup software running in Windows can have a problem with some external drives, & your system hardware talks to that external drive when you boot to a command prompt -- it doesn't use Windows drivers. Copying files also works differently in the two environments. While the only proof is when you actually restore a backup stored on an external drive, if the integrity of the file(s) copied back to your hard drive is good, & you don't have any obvious problems like a drive failure, you've eliminated most potential problems -- you know the basics work.
[One would think, hope anyway that external storage devices like hard drives & USB sticks were designed to be used however you saw fit, however you wanted to use them. With streaming video more popular nowadays many have gotten better, but a great many storage devices still suffer if you ask them to deliver a continuous solid stream of data at high speed. They'll work fine for the occasional MP3 or YouTube video, or maybe a folder of pictures, but start to fail under high demands. A lot of external drives use conventional hard drives, without the conventional cooling they're designed for.]
