Reliable Backup and Restore How To

Precautions: Have a USB2 (not USB3) usb stick on hand and the recovery CD

Make a TrueImage 11 (TI11) Recovery CD.

Make a TrueImage backup of your drive (a .tib file)

When your computer crashes and the C drive needs to be restored,

(1) Put the TI11 backup file on an NTFS 32GB or less USB2.0 usbstick (ICIDU slider works fine). TI11 may not understand USB3 ports or devices because at that time USB3 did not exist.

(2) Boot from the TI11 Recover CD

(3) Select Restore and a GUI file chooser will be shown.

(4) TI11 will allow you to dynamically insert a USB stick and after 10 seconds, it will appear (usually as Removeable Drive (A:). You should pick the .tib backup file from the USB stick and select Proceed. On one screen it will ask for Logon information - this is only for network access which it does not need if you used a USB stick so you can just click on "Next"

(5) Because TI11 is running from the CD drive, it can directly access your C drive on your hard disk. The program should smoothly run and show the progress of restoring the C drive from the USB stick backup file.

(6) When TI11 is finished it will say "The data was successfully restored", reboot and everything should work.