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Does USB recovery drive option wipe out the entire hard disk or just Windows installation Drive C?

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4joey1

New Member
May 19, 2022
2
0
Hi!I run a dual boot Linux and Windows 10 Home 64 bit machine.

I am testing the various backup and recovery options of Windows 10 on a USB stick and so far I have seen the USB recovery option as the best for me.I have backed up my Windows using this option and now wanted to test recovery.

My machine hard drive is partitioned as follows.

1)Drive C - Its the partition where my Windows 10 is installed.

2)Drive D - An NTFS partition where all my data is stored and both my Windows and Linux can access it.

3)I have several Linux BTRFS partitions that host my Linux.

I want to simulate complete failure of my Windows 10 (even failure of hard disk forcing me to restore Windows on a new hard drive) such that even system restore cannot work and I cant boot Windows at all.I have seen from USB recovery when I boot from USB disk I can select "Recover from a drive" and there are 2 options within this i.e. "Just remove my files" and "Fully clean my drive".I wanted to understand the difference between these 2 options so if someone can clearly explain it to me please do.


Also,more importantly,I wanted to know if I utilized any of these 2 options above,will I still be able to retain data on my NTFS drive D and retain my Linux Partitions intact without losing any info on these partitions or will using either of these options fully clean my entire hard drive thus lose all data in Drive D and Linux forcing me to restore my linux and NTFS data partition from another backup?I dont mind losing all
data from Drive C where my Windows is installed since my important data is in Drive D thus kindly advice what happens when I use either of the 2 options above with regards to just clearing out Windows installation Drive C or wiping out my entire hard drive thus losing my data and linux also.

Thanks.
 
If I was in your shoes, I would invest <$50 in a forensic drive duplicator. You may be dealing with different file systems which is OK a long as they are isolated but when it comes to copying some solutions may become quite confused.
I bought a drive copier from Amazon a while back and it does a bit for bit copy, errors and all so you are better starting out with a newer clean drive, not one on it's last lap.
It's a simple foolproof method of a complete flawless copy regardless of mixed filesystems, whatever.
There are other solutions but this one will never let you down.
 
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