I just installed Backup & Recovery 12 Home on an Asus laptop and ran the first backup. I then tried testing the restore function using a USB Flash Drive startup medium. I restarted the laptop several times hitting the Del button as well as the F12 button to get into the BIOS until I found out that on this laptop I should use F2. Apparently there is no standard for this. After entering the BIOS I was offered a choice to boot from the fixed disk or from a CD/DVD. Nothing about a USB Flash Drive. After some Googling I found out that if I used Esc during the ASUS splash screen I could choose from additional boot options, among which was the USB Flash Drive. Had I not tested the procedure beforehand, I would have run into difficulties in a real case. By the way, I could access the backed-up data without any problem. Lou
As far as I know: Not every computer is able to boot from an USB stick. How to load the boot menu might be different from computer to computer (?) Also my Compaq-HP desktop with Win7 uses Esc to access the boot menu. And I must perform a cold boot (that is End the Win session and turn power on again, I cannot use the Windows Restart function. This has nothing to do with the Paragon product. I have successfully booted from an USB stick with both HDM12 and HDM14.
Another variable is how you build the boot USB stick. My normal procedure is to create an ISO file, save it, and then "burn" the USB stick using Rufus. Rufus has several options to create the boot USB for GPT or MBR disks in UEFI or BIOS computers.
You can also create a bootable Backup Capsule for storing backups on the internal HDD. Then it can be loaded in its shell (B&R12H) by pressing the your assigned key (default F1). But only if the internal disk is MBR (bootable capsule on GPT disk supports 14-series Paragon)
Just to chime in, I have a Gigabyte motherboard, and when you hit F12 to get boot options, it shows three or four kinds of USB drives you can pick, and none of them will work with a USB stick, so I have no idea what they're for. What you have to do is pick hard disk, and if you have a USB drive plugged in, you will see it listed there, along with your regular internal hard drives. Very unintuitive, but it boots.
