Image backups

[blockie]

I have made several image backups on an internal HHD.When I attempt to restore W7 cannot find them. What am I doing wrong?

 

[SIW2]

Did you make the images with the GUI, or with the command prompt?

If you used command to make the images, you may need to find them from command too.


Boot up 7 dvd/recovery disc/wim , whatever, go to command prompt, type:

diskpart

lis vol

( find the drive letter for the partition you stored the backup images on )

exi.

wbadmin get versions -backuptarget:<drivelleterwhereyoustoredtheimages>:

 

[blockie]

I made 2 of them from the GUI and one from the command line. Cannot find any of the three from either the Repair Disk or GUI and browse is not offered, I get a message that the backup device must be attached ( it is a hard wired internal Hdd) and do a RETRY. I haven't tried the command lines you suggested yet.
Just did the "Wbadmin get....." and the error was can't find the backup or not an authorized backup location.

 

[blockie]

Using the native W7 backup and restore has become too complicated. I reinstalled Acronis TI Home 2009. It makes an image and schedules easily. Next thing is to try Restore. If that works I'm home free.

 

[Night Hawk]

One thing I do here when creating system images is to add something like the date to the end of the folder the backup goes into to keep it separate from the next to come. That prevents it from being overwritten which may be what happened to you there seeing one replace another.

One way to find out just how many there besides one main folder would be to browse through drive/partiion where backups were directed to see if you find more then one "WindowsImageBackup" folder.

For restoration provided you are still able to boot into Windows you simply go back into the "Control Panel>Backup & Restore" section there to browse for the image you want to restore without a need to boot off of the 7 dvd. This will start up the main restoration tool and clean the drive off entirely in order to see the image unpacked onto the drive.

Note any data, files added since the image was created will be lost if not backed up first.

 

[SIW2]

That's the best idea Bill.

Whatever works for you.

Using the native W7 backup and restore has become too complicated. I reinstalled Acronis TI Home 2009. It makes an image and schedules easily. Next thing is to try Restore. If that works I'm home free.

 

[blockie]

Didn't work. When I browsed the image some folders were empty. Unsat. I'll look elsewhere.

 

[SIW2]

You're having a lot of issues making and restoring images. Is there something unusual about your system?

 

[Night Hawk]

If this was a recent install of 7 being seen you may have had a bad install and have to start over fresh. That would be explaination for not finding anything when performing a backup.

For a test now try renaming the existing backup folders and start a new one using the "create system image" option in the Backup & Restore section. Your specs show an 80gb and 500gb likely for storage. If 7 is on the 80gb select the 500gb as the destination selecting only the C and system partitions. Right off you should the size of the image being created.

Run the backup which shouldn't take more then about 25-30minutes total and then look inside the new "WindowsImageBackup folder on the 500gb drive after. You should be seeing a second sub folder with the name of your user admin account there. If no sub folder is found that points to a real problem with the present installation.

 

[gregrocker]

I always move the WindowsImageBackup file I want out of it's folder and into the root of the C drive of the external I've connected. If you're trying to reimage over the network, it gets really tricky with file path so having it in C root saves even more trouble.

It won't find it in a folder - has to be in the system root.

 

[Night Hawk]

That's for a network restoration however. When browsing for it while booted in Windows or when booting upto the repair tools command console you should be able to browse right into the WIB folder without a problem.

blockie is reporting not finding any image being created but strictly empty folders instead. That sounds like the backup is being canceled out for some reason right after the initial main folder is created before any actual data transfer takes place.

If it ends up requiring a clean install to solve this the next option would be using the Windows Easy Transfer tool to see if that will back things up before a need for manually backing your files up before seeing the fresh install go on. This would be a last resort however if the present one can't be repaired.

 

[blockie]

Nighthawk.
I did as you suggested. Made a backup and found a folder with "computer name" on it. So I guess Its doing OK.

Found out why the folder was empty.
The folder tree on my C; drive is C:\Users\William\MyDocuments\files. All images
show the tree as C:\Users\William\MyDocuments\no files and C:\Users\William\Documents\files It seems that when creating the image the bakup programs added the folder "Documents" and put the files that should have been in MyDocuments in it and left MyDocuments empty.
I have changed my C: drive folder name to "Documents" from "MyDocuments". That seems to take care of the empty folder problem. Have to change the default paths in several programs now. But that can wait until tomorrow. Thanks for all the help as I stumbled through this.

 

[Night Hawk]

Well I'm glad you saw a working image created and stored as well as uncovering a minor not major OS headache to deal with there.

On secondary drives in the desktop here I verify each image made by browsing to the latest "WindowsImageBackup" folder created by the tool to see if the user name sub folder is present since that's the actual archive contained in that.

The restoration is made simple as well even when the image is dislocated with a drive letter change or copied to a new location since the tool allows you to browse for any image rather then looking at specifics like time and date.

For the rest you may need to locate and modify some registry entries as well to make the small change on the folder name change there. For 7 you shouid see the defaults folders as "My Documents" in WE while images should be going to where you specify.

The WIB folder for you should be found inside the new "Documents" sub folder you created. The recommended place however would be on a separate drive or partition apart from C in case of any virus infection or other mishap for safekeeping. The restoration process itself when restoring any image will actually wipe the C primary as part of the process.

 

[SIW2]

Hi Bill,

Sounds like exactly the same issue you had with 3rd party backup apps.

Nighthawk.
I did as you suggested. Made a backup and found a folder with "computer name" on it. So I guess Its doing OK.

Found out why the folder was empty.
The folder tree on my C; drive is C:\Users\William\MyDocuments\files. All images
show the tree as C:\Users\William\MyDocuments\no files and C:\Users\William\Documents\files It seems that when creating the image the bakup programs added the folder "Documents" and put the files that should have been in MyDocuments in it and left MyDocuments empty.
I have changed my C: drive folder name to "Documents" from "MyDocuments". That seems to take care of the empty folder problem. Have to change the default paths in several programs now. But that can wait until tomorrow. Thanks for all the help as I stumbled through this.

 

[zigzag3143]

Using the native W7 backup and restore has become too complicated. I reinstalled Acronis TI Home 2009. It makes an image and schedules easily. Next thing is to try Restore. If that works I'm home free.

Acronis will work. Have restored every couple of months to clean state with zero problems


Ken

 

[SIW2]

ZIGZAG,

He already tried Acronis. Didn't work for him.

Same with macrium and Paragon.

It now seems that the issue he had with Paragon ( the "My Documents" folder was empty in the backup ) is exactly the same as he has now. Probabaly the files were there, but under "Documents" instead.

I don't know why that is happening. Macrium and Paragon both show files in "My Documents" for me.

 

[blockie]

Well, i finally got Acronis 2009 working.

From the installed program:
Created an image.
Restored individual files from that image.
Made a schedule.

From the Rescue disk:
Was able to restore image.
Can't restore files. I think this is default behavior.

Now for the native W7 image creator.
Was able to create an image.

Could nit find the image using the "repair disk". Noi option to browse.
The image is on a second internal HDD. Drive D:.

 

[blockie]

Finally got the command line working for W7 backup. Ran it NOT as administrator and it created a backup on my extra HHD.
NOTE: The backup name created from the program had "GUI" appended to it.
The backup from the command prompt did not.
However I received a warning that the "System Reserved partition must also be backed up if I wanted to recover the image. There is a 100mb partition so named but it does not have a drive letter. How do I include it in the image?
Here is the command I am using;

WBADMIN START BACKUP -BackupTarget: -include:c: -quiet

 

[SIW2]

The easiest way is to give it letter ( rt click it in Disk Management and give it letter S ).

Alternatively, make your win7 partition the system partition - makes backup and restore simpler.

 

[blockie]

The easiest way is to give it letter ( rt click it in Disk Management and give it letter S ).

Alternatively, make your win7 partition the system partition - makes backup and restore simpler.

How do I make it a single partition? Getting into something I am unfamiliar with.