Replicore

A Windows desktop utility built with .NET 8 and WPF to back up full system images (Master) or perform raw drive-to-drive replication, ensuring your system can be restored easily from physical hardware failure or OS corruption.

Core Features & Architecture

Replicore is designed to provide both safe, high-level image backups and low-level raw drive replication:

1. Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) Image Backups: For backing up active partitions (including your live Windows system drive), Replicore wraps the native Windows wbadmin engine. This utilizes VSS snapshotting under the hood to capture hot-backups of files in use without risking OS corruption.
2. Direct Sector-by-Sector Cloning: For raw drive replication, Replicore uses P/Invoke Win32 API calls (CreateFile, ReadFile, WriteFile) to copy data directly from sector to sector between drives. This allows creating bootable duplicates of secondary or offline disks.
3. Task Scheduler Integration: Automate your backups directly from the interface. It registers weekly Task Scheduler tasks running under the local SYSTEM account to keep system images up-to-date in the background.
4. Smart Safety Guards:
   • Prevention of cloning onto the active source drive.
   • Warning prompts when writing to active system boot volumes.
   • S.M.A.R.T. health checks to detect failing disks before operations start.
   • Multi-stage confirm-wipe validation prompts for destructive operations.
5. Modern Design: Built with a custom, responsive light/dark zinc-colored UI theme inspired by modern design principles.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11:
  • Image Backup (VSS): Requires Pro, Enterprise, or Education edition (Microsoft limits full wbadmin capability on Windows Home).
  • Direct Sector Mirroring: Works on all Windows editions, including Windows Home.
• .NET 8 SDK (for building) — free from https://dotnet.microsoft.com/download
• Administrator Privileges: Low-level disk access and backup commands require admin rights. The app manifest forces elevation automatically on launch.

Building & Publishing

Build

dotnet restore
dotnet build -c Release

Publish - Self-Contained (~175MB)

Produces a single executable that runs on any PC without requiring any pre-installed .NET runtimes.

dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:PublishReadyToRun=true --self-contained true -o ./publish

Publish - Light Build (~550KB)

Produces a tiny single executable, but requires the host computer to have the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime installed.

dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 -p:PublishSingleFile=true --self-contained false -o ./publish_small

Project Structure

Replicore/
├── App.xaml / App.xaml.cs       - app entry point, loads the theme
├── app.manifest                  - forces admin elevation
├── Models/
│   ├── DiskInfo.cs                - represents one physical disk
│   └── CloneTaskProgress.cs       - tracks individual parallel cloning progress
├── Services/
│   ├── DiskEnumerationService.cs - lists physical disks via WMI
│   └── CloneService.cs           - wraps wbadmin and implements raw sector cloning
├── Views/
│   ├── MainWindow.xaml            - UI interface (pickers, progress indicators, schedules)
│   └── MainWindow.xaml.cs        - logic wiring, safety guards, Task Scheduler automation
└── Themes/
    └── ShadcnTheme.xaml          - shadcn-inspired zinc theme and control styles

Future Roadmap

• Restore Wizard UI: Provide a guided UI workflow to restore system images directly from the app (currently restoration is handled at the service layer and via WinRE/wbadmin).
• Home Edition Image Engine: Fallback to DISM (dism /capture-image) to allow native image backups on Windows Home edition.