Getting started

Stillwater needs Windows 11 and another drive to put the image on, not the drive you are backing up.

1. Open Stillwater. If the sidebar says you are not an administrator, press Restart as administrator. Some disks stay hidden until you do.
2. Press Back up this PC. Pick the drive, pick where the image goes, read the plan, and start it. Stillwater copies used space only and checks the image when it finishes.
3. Press Make a boot USB and use a USB stick of 8 GB or more. That stick is only how you start a PC that will not boot, so Stillwater can reach the hard drive from outside Windows. It is not a Windows installer.
4. To put an image back, boot the stick and open Restore, or restore a disk that is not the one Windows is running from.

Nothing is written until you have seen the plan. A step that erases a disk asks you to type ERASE.

Related

• Back up this PC
• Make a boot USB
• Restore