Learn How to Deploy Windows 10 Image via WinPE USB Disks

Why deploy Windows 10 image via USB?

People back Windows up for disaster recovery. One can restore Windows system image backup to get the computer back to normal status when bad things happen. Surely the backed up Windows image could be deployed to another computer. USB drives are common removable storages that easier to obtain for PC users, even the USB drive with large capacity won’t cost too much. Therefore, it is very convenient to deploy Windows 10 image to another computer using USB disk.

In another case, the target computer you want to deploy may not have CD/DVD Drive, which excludes the possibility of deploy Windows 10 from CD/DVD. In addition, you are unlikely to perform Windows 10 deployment over network when the target PC is not in the same LAN as the source computer in (If it does, please click to learn deploy Windows 10 to multiple computers over network using Windows 10 deployment tool). All in all, you’re just under the circumstance that you have to do it with USB drives.

How to deploy Windows 10 via WinPE USB disk?

To perform deployment with only USB drives, there are several preparations you need to do.

• Two USB drives larger than 16GB size, the bigger the better. One for system image and the other used as WinPE bootable device.

• Backup Windows 10 to USB drive, and mark it as USB A in this tutorial. This cannot be done with Windows built-in backup utility because it will treat USB drive as “not valid backup location” for system.

• Professional backup & restore solution AOMEI Backupper Professional. It will assist you make the USB drive bootable and deploy the Windows 10 image even to different computer within clicks.

After all preparations done, you need to download AOMEI Backupper on one regular work computer. Install and launch it.

Then make the rest USB drive as the bootable device. Using Create Bootable Media feature in AOMEI Backupper to create WinPE ISO file there. Let’s mark it as USB B in following context. Now learn how to deploy Windows 10 using USB drive.

Deploy Windows 10 with USB via AOMEI Backupper

Step 1. Insert in USB B (bootable device) to boot target PC. The embedded AOMEI Backupper will come into your sight right after successful boot.

Step 2. Insert the USB A now into the target computer. Make sure it can be detected. Double click the AOMEI Backupper Professional icon on the desktop. Click Restore. Normally it will auto detects backup images. However, if the Windows 10 image does not show up, click Select Image File to navigate manually.

Step 3. Click Yes in the mini pop-up window to confirm.

Step 4. Choose right backup point here and click Next. And then select a destination path.

Step 5. Check out the operation summary. Remember to tick Universal Restore box if the target PC has dissimilar hardware. Click Start Restore.

It is quite easy to solve the issue of how to deploy Windows 10 via WinPE USB disks with the help of AOMEI Backupper, isn’t it? So don’t go crazy when there is no LAN or CD drive on the computer. Nevertheless, if you do, this software is also helpful since it supports restore Windows backup image over network, such as NAS and shared network. 

In other cases, if you need to deploy Windows 10 (Enterprise) image to computers on a large scale, you might as well check out specialized image deploy software AOMEI Image Deploy, even the free version supports deploy to 20 client PCs simultaneously.

Bonus tip: Deploy Windows 10 image without USB

Actually, using a WinPE USB disk isn’t the only way to deploy Windows 10 image to another computer. You can also deploy Windows 10 image from one computer to another over network. The best enterprise backup software - AOMEI Cyber Backup can help you with Windows 10 deployment.

• It enables you to create a system image, disk image or partition image for client Windows PCs.
• The created backup image can be restored to the original location or a new location.
• For regular backup, you can enable schedule to backup changed data automatically.
• It supports full/incremental/differential backup method.

Download this powerful enterprise backup software now to have a try!

Let’s say you have already created a Windows 10 system image with AOMEI Cyber Backup. Follow the steps below to deploy Windows 10 to the target computer.

Step 1. Run and log in AOMEI Cyber Backup.

Step 2. Click Source Device > Windows > Add Windows Device to add the computer that you want to deploy Windows 10 image to. You need to enter the IP address, username and password of it.

Note: You need to turn on the target computer before you add it.

Step 3. Start Windows 10 deployment.

• Click Backup Task on the left menu bar and click the three dots icon on the system backup task you created before. Then select Restore.

• Select the restore content, including the restore version and restore method. Here I choose the latest version and Restore the entire system.

• Select the target location. Choose Restore to new location and select the target device and target disk.

• Check the Universal Restore option to ensure a secure boot after recovery.
• Click Start Restore to launch the system recovery process.

To sum up

This article tells you  how to deploy Windows 10 via WinPE USB disk easily with AOMEI Backpper. With its help, you can also migrate your data or OS to the new hard drives when you want to upgrade hard drives on your computer. It ensures data integrity and secure boot after cloning. Come and try this wonderful software!