New
#11
After replacing mother board, Windows cannot find WindowsImageBackup
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New #13
Windows image backup always includes boot partition and system partition. Since you have only one vhd.... boot and system partition were the same.
Windows image restore will see it's another disk that has a different disk signature and/or partition layout. It will destroy everything on disk and restore boot/system partition only. So recovery partition is gone afterwards!
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New #14
Well, what a champ you are Kaktussoft! I moved my external HDD from USB 3.0 to 2.0 and there it is. Windows Restore sees the SystemImage. Thank you.
But this seems rather odd--why would Windows not look at the 3.0? Any thought I had of making the restore faster by using 3.0 (which my external drive supports) has vanished. It is true that I used 2.0 when I made the image, but Windows has to find it first before it could say "I don't see that because it's on the wrong USB.)."
But now you are worrying me. I have two partitions on disk-0
[25 GB Primary Partition]
[OS C: 571GB NTFS System, Boot, Page File, Active, Crash, Primary]
The first has no drive letter--I suppose that is my recovery partition. I used to have a D: partition but I merged that with C: because I never used it and when I got my laptop back from ASUS they had made the C: partition too small to hold the system image.
Are you saying that a system image restore will wipe out the 25GB partition? I think I need that in case I have to restore windows again. That would be rude. It was there when I created the system image.
- I thought maybe I only got an image of C:
- Maybe I should restore D: so I don't confuse poor Microsoft, but I don't know what the exact size was when I made the image.
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New #15
If you restore a windows image backup, you're doing that from WINPE (a mini windows). That winpe doesn't have the usb3.0 drivers! But you can load them on the fly from CD or USB stick for example. start windows image restore, browse for image, advanced (something like that). There's is an option to load the drivers. Sure you wanna restore using usb3.0?
usb2.0 works without issues and is much easier.
Step 1: Goto c:\windows\inf
Post OEM*.INF
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New #16
When restore the image backup the partition layout will be exactly the same as it was at the moment you made the backup! But only partitions you did backup are restored. So you end up with 25GB unallocated space afterwards.
So you want to keep it.
Image your system with free Macrium
Imaging with free Macrium
Use the winpe rescue listed there so https://skydrive.live.com/?cid=475a0...A6D4035%211812
It supports lots of usb3.0 chipsets! so backup that 25GB partition and restore it later using macrium.
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If all has been succesful and you are happy....
In the future use macrium reflect instead of windows image backup. It supports usb3.0 , can backup any partition(s) you want. And it can restore 1 or more partitions from the backup image. Even to another spot on disk (darg and drop). Even to a smaller partition. It's very user friendly.
You can browse the files inside the image as well. How to browse an Image or 'File and Folder' Backup in Windows Explorer
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New #17
Hot Potatoes!
I used Macrium to back up my Recovery partition, like you suggested, and I restored the SystemImage using 2.0 port, like you suggested. Now my repaired laptop is back in business. I could not have done it without you. Thank you, thank you.
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Now about Microsoft
There's no way that a backup followed by an immediate restore should lose data--except I suppose by MS. When I made the image backup I was -not- given an opportunity or told to backup other partitions on the same disk (tho I see it reported like that). Nor did it give me any warning that actually -using- the image I was making would be risky. There are plenty of warnings when I started to restore ("you should back up any other partitions you don't want erased"). But there is no way I could do that using MS tools only because the Recovery-Part has no drive letter. What's more the restore says it will format all drives except the one I am restoring from--unless I use the [exclude] button. (An opt-out situation). But that could be overlooked by the user. Maybe MS will only format drives which are in the SystemImage, but it does not say that. In this case a unsuspecting user could make a simple backup of C: and when restored find out that his second HDD and two external drives were formatted. This is just plain EVIL EVIL EVIL. Of course MS can't format the drive I am restoring from, but why doesn't it just go ahead and reformat that drive too when it has finished, because I didn't tell it not to!!!.
(End of Rant)
Thanks again Kaktussoft.
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New #18
Windows image backup backups:
- OS and BOOT partition (partition that's active).
- It asks you to include more partitions!! But only if they are NTFS and have a drive letter assigned!
- Checks if same disk is still attached to system (determined by disk signature)
- Checks if it still has EXACTLY same partition layout.
- Only then you can restore and all other partitions are not touched (not deleted)
- It cleans the destination physical drive
- Restores the partitions to exactly same spot and same size.
- As a result you can only restore if destination disk is same size or larger. The size that should be available= original drive size minus "unallocated space at the end".
- After restore you have an EXACT clone
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New #20
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