Step by step setting up EaseUS Todo

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First I recommend buying the software – because it gives you additional options such as building automatic Windows PE and inserting boot options. You can also try each of these backup software out for 30 days to see if you like one versus the other.

After you purchase the software, and enter the activation key the first thing it will ask you to do is if you want to create a WinPE bootable disk

It will ask you if you want to make an ISO, or a flash drive or a cdrom drive. You can also make multiple copies.

Once you’ve built the rescue/WinPE it will ask you what sort of backup you want. I recommend full disk. I always purchase one (or more) Western Digital USB hard drives to make a full backup. You can also select a home NAS unit but these are typically more expensive.

In this example I’m using a virtual hard drive, but you’ll want to make a full backup of the C drive and copy it to an external drive.

While there, you can click on the menu, then on that wrench icon and click to Enable PreOS. This makes it easier to boot into a recovery session to restore your full computer.

When you reboot you’ll get the option to choose a recovery option.

If you choose to boot into the PE option you then get straight into the Recovery screen where you can click on Recovery and you can restore the entire hard drive.

 

 

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

3 users thanked author for this post.

nevereasy, doriel, lmacri

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Another nice feature is scheduling a weekly backup with a rotating number of backups (say 3) and activating the email feature to get a summary.

If you have a tower it’s worth installing a dedicated extra drive just for the backups, it’s faster than External USB and simplifies the scheduling.

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I far prefer my Western Digital backups to either of these promoted here. I tried both of them and thought they were horrible (confusing and not at all easy to use). I then tried the Western Digital software that came with my WD external drive and I like it. I have never, in 22 years of having computers, needed to restore one from backup so I can’t speak to how good/poor the WD restore is.

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Try restoring at least one file.

Susan Bradley Patch Lady/Prudent patcher

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Having a tower computer and a laptop, my backup methodology is different for each.  As a user of EaseUS Todo for at least 7-8 years, I can report it’s quick and easy to use on both computers.

On the tower, I have an SSD for C: and a 3TB WD drive for long term ‘bulk’ storage.  I have been using slide trays from the Win 98 and XP days, and went to trayless bays when I moved to Win 7 in an all new box.  All I need do is insert a backup SSD in one slot and HD in the other and away I go.

Perhaps one of the best options in Todo is the ability to move and adjust partitions on the target drive.  I did that last week as I had to expand the partition I use for downloaded videos and created a new partition for the rest of the stuff on that partition.  As I still had more than 200GB unused on the drive, I simply ‘grabbed’ and ‘slid’ the 6 partitions ‘to the right’ and then inserted a new partition for the ‘other stuff’ then let ‘er rip.  When it finished, I used the Windows ‘move’ command to move the ‘other stuff’ from the source drive to its new partition then deleted the corresponding files in the videos partition on the target drive.

Todo first wipes out all partitions on the target and then makes new ones as specified.  Although various drive partitioning products allow adjustments, doing so starts a ‘head pounding’ as it physically moves partitions from one location to the other.  Some of us will recall watching IBM 2311 and 2319 drives ‘walk the floor’ when that occurred.  I had one client that had 2 mainframes with all devices shared and the idiots put OS/MFT for each of them on the same physical drive!  The system programmers said they were told by the manager to do it that way!  Needless to say, the ‘wait’ light on both 370s was frequently lit.  To this day, I STILL do what I can for drive and channel separation.

For the laptop, I use a USB3/SATA(do NOT buy a USB, but USB3 or greater for speed) ‘docking bay’ I found on Amazon.  That saves a boatload of money as it avoids buying a whole ‘new box’ with hard drive as storage needs grow.  I use that drive as a manual ‘connection’ rather than bluetooth between my two computers any time there’s more than a couple GB to move.  I have several ‘backup only’ SSDs and a couple of <whatever> SSDs that I use as needed for both computers.

One ‘caveat emptor’ about TODO when cloning the C: drive from a 3rd computer to either an internal or external drive like I tried to do to move a friends slowpoke system to SSD.  I went nuts for a couple of days trying to figure out why the target drive wouldn’t boot in my friends computer.  EaseUS, in all their ‘wisdom’ decided that the target will only be bootable if the source C: is the currently running boot drive.  Fortunately, EaseUS allows a free installation which I did on my friends computer after putting the original drive back and using the docking bay for the new SSD.  Worked like a charm.  I wonder if competitors products behave similarly.

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Thanks, Susan,

This is a vote with a caveat for EaseUS software. I chose it because Macrium’s menus looked more fiddly than I would like for myself. Early this year I settled on trialing EaseUS ToDo Home as a daily disc image backup. Then I purchased the program.

The EaseUS tech (via live chat and e-mail) had to fiddle with the program’s settings for me to get it to properly, automatically trim its older files (it wasn’t), and to get the program to shut down the computer automatically after it’s done. Those processes with those two things took around three months time to where I trusted EaseUS ToDo. Now it runs a disc image for me once a day.

A few years ago I used one of the EaseUS disc cloning tools to swap out a spinning laptop drive for an SSD. Even with their tech (the same guy) helping me it took two transnational support chats (while I watched live what he was doing) to do his preferred config. The laptop SSD still has some unpartitioned space that I haven’t been inclined to change because it’s working.

The costs of their software, and that they have reliable tech support helped me decide on their software.

Human, who sports only naturally-occurring DNA ~ oneironaut ~ broadcaster

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So I’ve 2 questions.

The first is related to figuring out what EaseUS Todo (vs. AOMEI Backupper) shows as my system drives.

Below shows the internal hard drive (C: and a recovery partition as D:) hooked up to my laptop.  Drives F, G and H are external attached by USB.

This is what EaseUS shows as my “system” drives:

And this is what AOMEI Standard Backupper shows as my “system” drives:

It’s obvious to match the Windows (C:) drive and the partitioned recovery (D:) drive based on the drive sizes; at least in EaseUS; though the D: drive (partition) appears to be missing in AOMEI?  1) Why does D: appear to be missing in AOMEI?   2) What are all these extra drives showing up in EaseUS?  3) I looked at the properties of all the external drives and NONE of them are FAT32 formatted (2 NTFS and 1 exFAT).  I just don’t understand all these apparent extra drives and then why there is a difference between EaseUS and AOMEI.

Can anyone please explain this to me?

Finally, probably unrelated; but if not I thought best to include here.  At first I selected all 5 of the “system” drives shown in EaseUS and got this error stating, “Checking the partition found errors on 1 partition without drive letter (Unknown Partition). Click “OK” to create sector by sector backup or “Cancel” the backup.”

I then cancelled the task and went back and selected only the C: and D: drives (as shown as ticked in the 2nd image above) and got the same error, so I assume it is on the D: drive.  Regardless I went ahead and set up an incremental daily backup with this being a full as it is the first.

So, am I correct in assuming that by using size and checking the C: and D: drives and ignoring the other drives listed I will have a full backup?  And if so, why doesn’t the D: drive show up on AOMEI?

I have been using AOMEI for a couple of years now to do my monthly full backups and testing files and such it seemed fine but now am wondering if I’m missing something.  I just added EaseUS Todo again today for daily incremental backups for redundancy and to try it again after I ran into problems and had to abandon using it in the past.

Thank you in advance for any insights; and for everyone’s patience in fielding questions from a non-professional default personal IT person.  The things I’ve learned in the past couple of years following and supporting this site and the newsletters has been valuable!

Thanks,
Alex B.

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Few more thoughts to clarify:

I understand I have 2 internal (C and D) and 3 external drives (F, G, and H).

I assume the 5 “system” drives shown by EaseUS  Todo are those 5 drives.  I mean it seems they have to be.  Though I also don’t understand why one shows up as a FAT32 Format when the properties show all are NTFS and only one is an exFAT format.

Based on size indicated, I can easily match the internal drives C and D, and the C drive clearly states it’s the Windows drive.  However, the sizes don’t really match for the external drives (F, G, and H) in either EaseUS nor AOEMI.

File Explorer on my computer shows the sizes as:

C = 304 GB free of 908 GB
D = 2.45 GB free of 21.7 GB

F= 213 GB free of 465 GB
G= 5.08 MB free of 115 GB
H = 1.35 TB free of 1.81 TB

EaseUS shows the drives as:

C= 304.70 GB free of 908.51 GB
D = 0 Bytes free of 21.73 GB  (I assume this is the D: recovery drive as it’s a good match especially the total capacity)

But how do the remaining 3 EaseUS system drives match the 3 external drives?

190.15 MB free of 260 MB
0 bytes free of 128 MB
0 bytes free of 914 MB

Furthermore, why the difference with what AOMEI says are my “system” drives and why does it show only 3, with no apparent D drive and another missing drive?

C= 305.1 GB free of 908.51 GB

189.08 MB free of 260 MB
411.75 free of 914 MB

 

Does AOMEI not show D because of an apparent partition error EaseUS Todo flagged?  What about the other missing drive?

Does any of this really matter?

And perhaps the most important question of all, should I just select ALL the drives or only the C (or C and D) drives for a full backup?

Thanks again for any help.

Alex B.

 

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And finally FWIW and comparison purposes (since I needed to update it anyway), Macrium says:

3 C = 628.04 GB (presumably used) of 908.51 GB
5 D = 19.27 GB (presumably used) of 21.73 GB
At least Macrium CLEARLY LABELES C and D as such.

1 (FAT32) = 67 MB of 260 MB
2 Unformatted Primary = 128 MB of 128 MB
4 NTFS Primary = 507.5 MB of 914 MB

 

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Will the tutorial above create a USB Flash drive that can be used to boot a HP Win 10 PC and do a Restore from an External HD when you can not boot into Win 10?

I had to do a restore from an EaseUS Todo backup.  Thought I previously created the recovery flash drive fine but it would not boot from it.  Then in a chat session with an EaseUS Todo Rep (on another functioning PC) he said it was not valid.   He took control of my PC and created another boot USB Flash Drive.  BUT, when I used it, I was unable to browse to an external HD to do the restore.   I ended up having to take my laptop to a computer store where they were finally able to create a USB Boot drive that would do the restore; and charged me a hefty amount.    Once I had the correct USB boot flash drive, the restore worked perfectly.

From AJ

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All the 3rd party backup product I’ve looked at (including EaseUs) allow you to create a bootable USB.
The best machine to create the USB on is the machine where you want to create/restore the backup, because you will get additional drivers for the hardware, e.g. network and disk. Then you can see external / network disks.

As always, test by booting from the USB and attempting to view the backup on your external disk.

cheers, Paul

1 user thanked author for this post.

AJrubin

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When creating the emergency disk, I see the option for “Add Driver”, but then there is an “Add…” button that appears to want me to browse to where the driver is.    Can you provide any help on what folder in Win 10 I would find disk drivers in for External HD’s?  What are the extensions for files that contain drivers?

EaseUS Todo Backup – Create Emergency Disk   Please see attached screenshot.

Thank you.    AJ

 

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Any idea what Enable PreOS actually changes?  Does it create a recovery partition?  Or, does it just add an entry to the boot configuration which points off to a WinPE image somewhere in the C:\Programs (x86)\EaseUS\Todo Backup folder?

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I use this Enable PreOS feature.  Works well and comes up with a separate screen before booting up to Win 11 for me.  Screen asks me to boot to Windows or boot to EaseUS Todo WinPE.  If I do nothing, in 30 seconds, it will boot to Win 11 automatically.  I like it and the 30 extra seconds to boot up does not bother me.  Does it create another recovery partition, I am not sure?  When I go to Disk Management for my HP laptop, I do see a Recovery partition, but I have no idea if EaseUS Todo created this or HP did this.  Best bet is to send an email to support@todo-backup.com and ask this question.   They are pretty good at answering email, just may take a day since its answered from China in different time zone.

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Most likely it adds a boot config pointing to the existing C: partition. Anything else would require moving files / partitions and creating additional partitions, which takes a long time and cannot be done while Windows is running.

cheers, Paul

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Bruce

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I have read most of the replies on this topic. I just want to make sure that this backup software is compatible with Windows 11 Pro. Secondly, can you make backups of just your files and folders? Lastly, if files and folders isn’t an option to backup. How often is a good rule of thumb when making backups?

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You should image backup the entire system, at least monthly, to an external hard drive that you then unplug from the computer.  Do it before the monthly patches are applied, so for some people that means before Patch Tuesday, the second Tuesday.

User data should be backed up more often.  If you are willing to do cloud, you might be able to put your My Documents folder entirely into Onedrive as a way of rolling back from problems, undeleting files.  Make sure that ALL important photos, docs are put there.  The free Onedrive won’t have enough storage for most users, so to use it as backup you may need to be an Office Microsoft 365 customer ($100 per year for a few family computers and that price may go up).

If you don’t like cloud, consider a daily or weekly copying of all your important files (user files) to 2 external hard drives.  USB keys / flash drives are not reliable enough for backup.

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Rush2112 wrote:

How often is a good rule of thumb when making backups?

I backup my documents every day to a NAS.
I update my image every week to a NAS.
These tasks are automated by my backup software.

If you have to connect a disk to make a backup, the timing depends on how often you update your data and how important it is.
If you only use mail then backup less often because the mail server has a copy, unless you use POP3.
If you update your docs / spreadsheets daily then you need to consider a daily backup (often enough so you still have the data to redo after a crash.

I would make an image backup at least every 3 months and keep a couple of copies – just in case.

cheers, Paul

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Rush2112 wrote:

How often is a good rule of thumb when making backups?

I create Full image backup of my PC (all drives, all partitions) twice every month and daily incremental updates in between.

I use Acronis.

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I am not particular about one backup software or another. I just want one that is relatively easy to use. So that I can create image backups of my hard drive along with weekly backups of my files and folders. Like I currently am able to with my Windows 10 machine utilizing Paragon Backup & Restore. I am just an average user that periodically gets statements from Credit Cards in paperless form That I like to share with my laptop and desktop. My Laptop has Windows 11 Pro and my Desktop had Windows 10. I would like to have a NAS, but I don’t think between the two versions of Windows that they would be compatible.

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Rush, stick with Paragon if it works for you. Changing backup apps means keeping the old one to access the old backups.

A NAS will work with any version of Windows – mine does.
A single external USB disk is still easier.

cheers, Paul

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I thought that Paragon didn’t support Windows 11. After I reached out to them they said the version of their software was not supported by Windows 11. Or at least the version that I had been using. Am I wrong? Yes, I like using Paragon. I am waiting for a reply on a version that is supported by Windows 11. But I want to be sure if it is Windows 11 compatible and supported. When I did a search on my laptop a few months back for Windows 11 with Paragon. Their version 16 was available. Well I learned it isn’t supported by Windows 11.

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W11 is unlikely to be “so different” that your backup software won’t work. Why not try it and let us know?

cheers, Paul

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Paul,

It has been 2 weeks since I replied back to Paragon about whether or not there was a paid version or free version of their software for a Windows 11 version. I have heard nothing. So, I am going to have to start all over with something new. I thought that I would try EaseUS Todo for my laptop and keep Paragon Backup & Restore for my desktop. Sure, I know that it means learning a new software program. But, I don’t see any other options.

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I’m very surprised that I can’t configure EaseUs Todo to launch on startup -except through Task Scheduler, which means the program’s annoying splash screen appears when I start session.

Does anyone know if it is possible for this program to launch quietly on startup and just hide on the taskbar?  Having used MacOs for many years, I think that would make it much like Apple’s Time Machine, which is very convenient to have working in the background without

Alternatively, any possibility of getting rid of the splash screen and make the program run minimized?

Thanks

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Rush2112 wrote:

I don’t see any other options.

Use Paragon on the laptop is the easiest. If it doesn’t work you have lost nothing, if it works you have consistent software across machines.

cheers, Paul

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I was able to find a Paragon software that I could use. Now my laptop is backed up. I just wish I had found it sooner and save me the headache that the previous one caused me. I even made a new Recovery drive since I had upgraded to Win 11 Pro.

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Which software? Link?

cheers, Paul

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