Lost recovery disk

Rich · April 2023

Have Backupper installed on Win 11 PC. Hard drive failure. Have recent backup saved to external disk. But lost my orignal recovery disk. Only other computer available also has Aomei Backupper installed but is different OS (windows 10) I tried using a WinPE Aomei Backup USB recovery USB made with the win 10 PC but when I try to use it with the win 11 PC the drivers aren't correct or something is causing the disk assignments to be not correct. Can't find the external disk with my win 11 back files. Is is possible to make a "generic recovery disk" that I can use with either my win 10 or 11 PC to restore an image? I think this is further complicated because the Windows 10 PC has a registered lifetime PRO Backupper installed but the Win 11 PC has the Standard Free version. So the saved image on the external "data drive" has a full system file backp that was made with it's Win 11 system. Is there any way to recover that Window 11 system saved to the external drive when I've lost the orginal Bootable recovery disk?

aiArtisan · April 2023

Hello Rich, do I understand this correctly:

"Have Backupper installed on Win 11 PC" PC 1

"Have recent backup saved to external disk" Disk A

"But lost my orignal recovery disk" Disk B

"Only other computer available....Win10" PC 2

You say you need drivers for your PC 1 Win11, please describe why you believe that. When you use PC 2 Win10 to create Backupper WinPE USB, and use that on PC 1 Win11, is the hard drive missing? If so, then you probably need NVMe drivers in the BackUpper (BU) USB creation. Regardless of which drivers you need, you could go to the PC 1 Win11 manfacturer's website, enter the model or SKU, download drivers, and use them in the BU USB creation. If the manfucterer only provides .exe driver files, you could use 7zip to extract the .exe files into a folder with the .INF driver files.

You say your PC 1 Win11 hard drive has failed, and you only have a backup on Disk A. Please copy the .ADI backup file onto another PC or disk, out of caution, before you attempt to restore this file.

How do you know the PC 1 hard drive has failed? Please be specific.

BU & Partition Assistant (PA) WinPE USB can include your additional drivers, however the PE Builder 2.0 USB tool cannot include additional drivers, so do not use that for PC 1.

If you try all of the above, and nothing works, you could try Hirens as a last resort, as that has an old version of BU, PA, and it does not have the screen resolution issue that BU USB sometimes has.

Backupper WinPE USB:
Add custom drivers, such as NVMe, if necessary. Does not work with some monitors.

Partition Assistant WinPE USB:
Add custom drivers, such as NVMe, if necessary. Does not work with some monitors.

Free tools not from Aomei:

Hirens Boot PE - live USB tool suite
To add custom drivers, such as NVMe, simply put them into the “CustomDrivers” folder. Hirens is not recommended in combination with Ventoy USB.

Ventoy - bootable USB Creator

Rich · April 2023

Thanks for the detailed reply. Here is additional info. PC1 (HTPC) internal C: drive (M2 SSD) is defective. Confirmed. I have many utilities available and am a retired computer repair shop owner. Been repairing and building PCs since the 1970's. Sold the business about 12 years ago when I retired. Although been out of the PC Repair business for a long time and things have changed a lot in the last couple decades but I still have a pretty good background regarding PCs in general. The HTPC Drive is deffinatly bad. I've since replaced it with a new compatible M2 drive which IS recognised and intinalized. As you can imagine I have a "few" computers in my home. Most are AMD Althon based PCs running Windows 10. The PC in question with the formerly bad drive is the only Intel based PC I have. Most of the Win 10 PCs have same driver sets as to the main board BIOS, I/O etc. but the HTPC (with the fiailed drive) is the only one with an Intel system. So the drivers for that one PC are much different from any of my other systems. I have since contacted the manufacturer of the HTPC PC with the failed drive looking for drivers and they told me the PC was still under warranty and are sending me a NEW SSD with windows 11 already installed. I would RATHER get the driver set and attempt to create a new backup/recovery boot disk with one of the other win 10 pcs and use those supplied drivers. Mostly because the new drive I just bought is a bigger and faster drive and has a 3 year warranty. But they have already begun the drive replacement under warranty process and siaid I will be getting the replacement drive soon. I don't know how long that will take ?? So I'm going to try to get a "driver set" from the manufacturer and use that with one of the wndows 10 other pcs to make a recovery disk using those OEM drivers for the windows 11 PC. The problem is the HTPC is the ONLY PC I own that was commericially bought new. All my other PCs are home made custum built and all were set up with regular windows 10 Pro 64 bit Op. Systems. The one with the failed drive was bought commercially and has an Intel system and Win 11 pre-installed AND did not come with any kind of system restore or info about the win 11 OS. It's only about 8 months old. I'm thinking of actually purchasing my own Windows 11 OS license for the HTPC. Mostly likely will get a "retail version" of 11 Pro, 64-bit. All my pcs are using retail versions of OSs so I don't have problems with hardware changes and updates etc. The newly purchased PC with the dead drive had an OEM version of Win11 installed. So that's the whole story. IF they can't get me the replacement drive soon, I'll try to get them to get me a "driver set" for their PC Model in question. Thanks for listening .. I think I got all the info I need. IF I can get just the needed drivers I will try making an Aomei recovery disk using those drivers with one of the Win10 PCs. I WILL also make a backup of the old HTPC Win11 Image made before the PC SSD Failed. Then will try to restore my saved orignal image (which was a full disk backup) to the newly purchased and installed SSD in the HTPC. That's the current plan. ONE last thing though .. I do have life tme versions of Aomei Backupper Pro and Partition Assistant manger but the license is only for 2 PCs. The other PCs all have the "standard" Free versions of Aomei ins talled . I think I'll be contacting support to see about possibly increasing my licenses from 2 pcs to 5 Pcs Thanks for your support ..

aiArtisan · April 2023

That is a very long message.

SIW2 · May 2023

If your intel pc is an oem with 11th 12th or 13th gen cpu, any winpe boot media will probably need the irst drivers included.

you can borrow this boot media

Rich · May 2023

Thanks for the link and info SIW2 Just what I needed. Now have a bootable recovery disk that works. Was able to recover system and as soon as I got everything back to normal made a new disk of my own. Many thanks.

aiArtisan · May 2023

Post on 4/26:

“You probably need NVMe drivers in the BackUpper (BU) USB creation. Regardless of which drivers you need, you could go to the PC 1 Win11 manfacturer's website, enter the model or SKU, download drivers, and use them in the BU USB creation. If the manfucterer only provides .exe driver files, you could use 7zip to extract the .exe files into a folder with the .INF driver files."

SIW2 · May 2023

You are welcome Rich

Lost recovery disk

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