When I used the Linux based Acronis media from a USB stick, I used USB Image Tool and ImageUSB to double backup it, because the only way to create such a boot USB is from within Acronis program (Acronis Linux ISO is useless when try to make a bootable USB stick from it). So if the USB stick is dead and you want to create a new one, you'll have to re-install Acronis (if you don't keep it installed all the time on your computer). This is rather inconvenient so I make backups. Nowadays I use PE based USB boot media, which can be re-created from a few diskpart commands then copy the contents of the PE based ISO. Or, you can simply use Rufus and many other tools to do it for you. So I don't use these tools anymore.
To image a boot UFD is useful when you need to copy it and no ISO is available. I think any of the common imaging programs can do it. Also, in some cases, even if an ISO is available, is much faster to reimage the UFD than to create it with Rufus.
Robin, I was surprised as the following can't... Macrium Symantec SSR Ghost ShadowProtect These can, TeraByte Drive Snapshot EaseUS ToDo Any updates to this brief list?
Paragon HDM can do it, and can restore to a UFD smaller then the original (depending on the used space in the original).
Acronis TI can do it. Edit... I didn't wait long enough. It got half way through loading the WinPE and then rebooted. A failure.
Seems Aomei Backupper can not restore to a different but equal size flash disc. I did not try restoring back to the same disc.
I use only two UFDs for my many programs that create a bootable UFD. I also have images of OS media that can be restored to either UFD if needed. As we all know, most bootable restore UFDs are rarely, if ever used, so I prefer to restore UFD images rather than keep a multitude of UFDs.
Brian, please add ImageUSB (from Passmark) to the list, maybe one of the best...due to its forensic nature.
Hi Brian I recently had a situation where I had two boot UFD's created via EasyBCD. I was working on a tower, and only one of the UFD's would boot, the second was not seen as bootable although both worked fine on my laptop. Upon further investigating, I decided to image the UFD that was not booting with an image I took using IFL. That *should* have duplicated it to the one that was working, but it remained non booting. So I decided to try BOOTice and format the UFD that was not booting using BOOTice. There is an option to format as "USB-HDD". I chose that, and it went fine. After this, I then used IFL to run a COPY of the working UFD to the non booting UFD instead of trying to restore the IFL image as I did previously. The copy operation took a little over 7 minutes (usb 2.0 speed), and I then tried it out and the UFD that was not booting now boots fine. I can only imagine it was a format issue, but although it worked fine on my laptop, it would not boot on the tower. Now I have two exact same boot UFD's that have over 1.7GB of tools on them and both boot fine on the tower. perhaps if I had just tried the copy operation in IFL the second time it may have worked, but I wanted to mention this to you and for anyone who may have the issue I had which made little sense, other than perhaps a format the tower did not like? I remember doing a similar thing to the working UFD after i first got it over a year ago, and used BOOTice to format as USB-HDD, because I had issues with it. So I thought maybe that would work in this case and it did, along with running the copy operation within IFL which worked great and now both UFD's boot and operate fine. Both UFD's are Sandisk Cruzer, one being a 'switch' model 8GB, very thin dimensions and my main boot UFD, and the other being just a 'Cruzer', also 8GB in size. The Cruzer was the one that would not boot on the tower I just got setup. Also I wanted to mention in addition to the apps listed here that would image a UFD, Lazesoft Recovery Suite home appears to be able to make an image of UFD's. Many forget about this free recovery suite, but Lazesoft has a very useful free suite that has a nice feature list of utilities, one is drive imaging and the few times I have used it it is solid and fast, and I can choose the UFD in the drop down list within imaging and image it if desired. I am surprised that a few of the more well known imagers cannot do this, but I know IFL does it fine which is my main trusted imaging. That IFL copy function really worked nice in my case that I ran into, terabyte apps really amaze me with their capabilities, doing things many other imagers either do not offer or they fail in the attempt. Good thread, thanks Brian and all of you for your comments. Jim
