Recovering a computer system starts by booting into the System Recovery Environment (SRE). The SRE must be saved to bootable media prior to a system recovery. Save the SRE using the Save System Recovery Environment dialog launched either at the end of creating a Computer System protection plan or from the Save System Recovery Environment action on the Archive Manager folder of the console.


Note: It is not necessary to save the SRE each time you create a Computer System protection plan.


You can save the SRE to different types of media: USB, ISO formatted file, or CD/DVD.


Two separate recovery environments are provided by the software. One is for BIOS boot systems and uses a 32-bit Windows 7 Pre-installation Environment (Windows PE). The other is for newer UEFI boot systems and uses a 64-bit version of Windows PE. The Save System Recovery Environment dialog has a checkbox in the lower left corner to save the SRE for systems that boot using UEFI.


You should verify that you can boot the recovery environment by booting a system with the saved SRE media attached.


Copy to USB


Selecting Copy to a USB drive allows you to copy the image file to one of the USB drives connected to the system. Only the first partition on a USB drive can be used. IMPORTANT: The partition should be set to active using Windows Disk Management or the DISKPART utility. This enables the USB drive to boot the SRE.


Note: When copying to a USB drive, existing data is preserved - the drive is not formatted.


Click Copy when you are ready to copy the information to the target drive. When the copy completes click Cancel to close the dialog.


Copy SRE .iso file


Selecting Copy SRE .iso file presents a Browse For Folder chooser dialog allowing you to specify a location to save the SRE .iso file. You can choose a folder on a local or mapped drive. Once you choose a folder and click OK the copy starts with a progress bar.


The SRE .iso file is an ISO formatted file that can be used for booting virtual machines. Most virtual machine hypervisors allow a user to configure a virtual machine to boot from CD/DVD devices or ISO formatted files.


Burn to CD or DVD


Selecting Burn to CD or DVD presents the Windows Disc Image Burner dialog box allowing you to burn a bootable CD or DVD using one of the installed CD or DVD burners on your computer. This option is only available if the program Windows Disc Image Burner (isoburn.exe) is installed on your computer. Isoburn.exe is installed by default on Windows 7 and newer desktop systems and on Windows Server 2008 R2 and newer server systems that have the Desktop Experience feature installed.


See Restoring a Computer System to learn about restoring from a Computer System protection plan.