Information covered
- Purpose
- Description
- Build WinRE recovery media for future use
- Build WinRE recovery media for immediate use: create a bootable ISO file / USB
- Troubleshooting: .wim file is not detected by the recovery builder
Purpose
Learn to build a WinRE recovery media for immediate or future use.
Note:
-
Due to Microsoft's license restrictions, IDrive BMR does not provide pre-built WinRE ISO. We do, however, provide a recovery media builder application to simplify the recovery media building process.
- It is recommended that you do this on priority when you get the IDrive BMR device, to enable seamless bare-metal recovery without any hassle.
Description
BMR Windows recovery media (or WinRE) is a recovery environment. IDrive BMR provides the BMR Recovery Builder for creating the recovery media. You can use the BMR WinRE recovery media to:
- Perform bare-metal restore of the physical machine backups in the IDrive BMR device.
- Repair Windows OS booting issues during bare-metal restore and virtualization, using the in-built Windows tools.
Note: The ISO recovery media is backward compatible. Therefore, it is recommended to use the latest Windows OS for creating the recovery media.
Build WinRE recovery media for future use
Given below are the steps to build and upload a WinRE recovery media to IDrive BMR device, for use when you want to perform a bare-metal restore or repair boot issues during virtualization:
- Navigate to Downloads > BMR Recovery Builder.
- Launch the setup.
- Select Future Use.
- Select the destination directory for the ISO image and click Next.
- The ISO creation progress will be displayed on the page.
- Once the ISO build is completed, you will receive a success message. Enter the IP address and click Next.
- You will be directed to the sign-in page. Enter your account credentials and click Next.
- The upload progress will be displayed.
- You will be notified once the upload is completed.
You can also navigate to Upload on the application header to upload the ISO file.
Build WinRE recovery media for immediate use: create a bootable ISO file / USB
Refer the steps given below to create a bootable CD or USB with the recovery media, for immediate use.
Create a bootable CD for immediate use
To create a bootable CD for immediate use,
- Launch the setup.
- Select Immediate Use.
- Choose Create a Bootable ISO file, browse and select the destination directory for the ISO image, and click Next.
Note: In case the machine that you need to restore is configured with the new UEFI firmware, choose the UEFI partition style to create the bootable USB. For legacy BIOS machines, select MBR.
- The recovery media creation progress will be displayed on the page.
- You will receive a success message once the ISO build is completed.
- Burn the ISO image to a CD to create a bootable CD.
Create a bootable USB for immediate use
Prerequisites:
A USB drive with a minimum of 4 GB storage
Note: All the data in the USB drive will be lost. Copy / backup data before you proceed.
To create a bootable USB for immediate use,
- Select Create a bootable USB. Then select the partition style and the USB device from the respective dropdowns to create the boot device and click Next.
- The USB creation progress will be displayed.
- You will be notified once the USB bootable device is successfully created, along with further instruction to use the bootable device.
Troubleshooting: .wim file is not detected by the recovery builder
The Recovery Media Builder uses certain components of the Windows OS to create the bootable media. However, these may not be present in certain custom-builds. When the BMR recovery Builder is not able to locate the recovery components, it will prompt you to download the ADK by Microsoft to build the recovery media.
Note: You will need an active Internet connection to download the ADK.
To proceed with the recovery-media building process,
- Click Download ADK.
- The new page that appears will ask the user to download ADK from the link given in the instruction. After the ADK setup is completed the next button will be enabled.
Note: The ADK will be downloaded from the Microsoft resources and may take several minutes.
- Click Next to proceed with the aforementioned options and build the ISO.