New
#1
Restore Question regarding GPT vs MBR
Basically I'm looking for a good discussion of restores focusing on disk 'type'. Not necessarily here, but if there is an article someone can point to, I'd appreciate it. I have not found this situation in a google search.
I ran in to a problem restoring my system and while I resolved it, I don't understand what the issue is/was.
Basically,
the system is a play / sandbox machine running win7 x64. The disks are c:/system is a samsung SSD - MBR. The data disk is a regular Hitachi - GPT.
I backup to an external disk monthly prior to running the MS monthly update. That drive is a GPT.
Recently after installing a bunch of tools to do some disk wiping and other stuff, I decided it was time to do a restore. I like to do that once in awhile to make sure I have a 'good' backup. Plus a lot of time uninstalls leave a bunch of junk on your machine and the previously mentioned tools were temporary. I had also wanted to try running the recovery from a USB. So I created a recovery USB (detailed elsewhere in this forum).
That booted fine but when recovery went searching for the backup bmrui crashed with an 0XFF87B474. Did the same thing invoking it from a command prompt.
So I thought maybe this USB boot doesn't work so well.
I then booted from the original CD with the same result. After awhile of searching and seeing posts about MBR and GPT and BIOs vs UEFI restores, I changed my external backup back to an MBR. Put in the CD and it found the image. I didn't restore then but rebooted using the USB and it all went fine.
I've been backing up to this GPT disk for some time with no problem but it seems I can't restore from it.
So I'm looking to understand what's going on and how I should configure my machines & backups so things will go smoother in the future. I have another win7, a couple win8 & 10 machines that I do the same external backups with so I ought get everything working right.