No Reserve Partition Gets Created On SSD and Backup Images No Work

[miketurn1234]

I recently tried installing a fresh copy of Windows 7 (64Bit) to a new SSD drive and noticed that it did not create the "System Reserved" partition that it always created when installing Windows 7 to a Hard Drive.

After I installed Windows 7 to this SSD I went to try and load a Windows Backup Image that I had created for my Hard Drive based setup that contained drivers / settings / programs / etc. and it allowed me to get to the point where I can load the image but when the backup image tries to load a gray dialog box pops up saying there is an error and the image cannot be loaded.

QUESTIONS
1.) Should I be concerned that this SSD that contains my Windows 7 OS does not contain this System Reserve partition?

2.) Is it normal for SSD drives to not need this System Reserve partition?

3.) Does this System Reserve partition have anything to do with Windows Backup Image loading?

4.) Wonder if because the Windows Backup Image I made was created on a Hard Drive that had a System Reserve partition that when it tries to load this on an SSD that does not, maybe that is what causes this error upon trying to load an image?

Thank You for any help that can be provided

 

[Megahertz07]

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs.

- OEM computers like Dell, HP, Lenovo etc has a System Reserved partition that has not only the boot loader but also the program to do a Factory Recover.

If you do a clean install with a MS Win 7 installation disk, deleting all partitions and then creating new it will create the following partitions:
- Legacy - MBR
120M - RAW - MS Reserved
Remaining space as NTFS

- UEFI - GPT
100M - Fat32 - UEFI
120M - RAW - MS Reserved
Remaining space as NTFS

If you have a Legacy - MBR, didn't deleted all partitions, your SSD had a partition that was already formatted as NTFS and you choose d to install on that partition, it installs without creating the 120M - RAW - MS Reserved.
Unless you have Win 7 ultimate and use bit locker, you don't need MS Reserved partition.

PS.: 120M - RAW - MS Reserved partition isn't shown on disk management, so it may be there and you don't see it.

Answers:
1) Don't worry about system Reserve partition or MS Reserved partition. With a clean install, you don't need them.
2) Operating System (OS) installs on SSD drives the same way they do on HDD. They see them as disks, so they create the same partitions.
3) System Reserved partition is used on OEM computers (see above).
4) If you made a HDD image you can't restore it on a HDD or SSD with smaller capacity, unless your disk had less data than the new HDD or SSD capacity, AND the program to restore is able to "shrink" and then restore.

Install https://www.partitionwizard.com/download/pw10-free.exe.
Post an image of the partitions here as an attachment.

 

[samuria]

It can be set in the windows install not to create system reserve. The main perplex is if you use bitlocker it can load it before it loads c:

 

[miketurn1234]

samuria
Thank You for your response, in the research that I did before creating this thread that is what I had heard, that the only reason for having this system reserve partition is for Bitlocker, which I don't know what this is and restrained myself from looking up another thing. I just wanted to make sure that the system reserve partition didn't have anything to do with my Windows Backup Image restore process not working.
I did not know that there was an option to not have Windows 7 create this partition, that is good to know as well.
Thank You
Megahertz07
Thank You for your response, a lot of great information you supplied, very helpful.
I will mess around with stuff a bit more, I admit I jumped the gun a bit quick after running into these issues, but man I am just getting so tired of thinking that my projects are going to just work and be quickly accomplished, everything I have been working on seems to lead to more and more projects / questions.
I think I understand most of what you mention, but may need a little clarification (if you have a minute) on the following because this sounds like it really might be the reason for my error (just glad to know it has nothing to do with the system reserve partition).

4) If you made a HDD image you can't restore it on a HDD or SSD with smaller capacity, unless your disk had less data than the new HDD or SSD capacity, AND the program to restore is able to "shrink" and then restore.

So lets say you create an image from a 1TB hard drive using the built in Image creator in Windows 7
Say the backup image created is 30GB in size
Say you take a 120GB SSD and partition it into two 60GB partitions
You can't take this 30GB image and restore it to the first 60GB partition of this 120GB SSD?

Thank You again for your initial post and continuing to help me out with this issue, I really appreciate this.


Also if anyone else has anymore information / experiences to share please do so.

 

[Megahertz07]

Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs.

Install https://www.partitionwizard.com/download/pw10-free.exe.
Post an image of the partitions here as an attachment.

 

[Megahertz07]

A disk image has all partitions on it. You can't restore a disk image to a partition. You must restore it to a disk (and it will erase all the target disk and load it with the image you are restoring).
I have never used Image creator in Windows 7, so I can't say much about it.
Use Macrium Software | Your image is everything.
What you want to do with the disk image you created with Win 7 Image creator?

 

[miketurn1234]

@Megahertz07
Thank You for your reply, but if you are not using this specific built in Windows Backup Image Creator then it will be tough to help, but it appears to work differently than other 3rd party products.
For instance, you mention that it does a backup of all the partitions, but in Windows one it allows you to select partitions to backup, so the images I made were just of the C:\ Drive so I would think it should allow me to just load my image to just the C:\ Drive no matter what other partitions exist, but it doesn't.

@ To anyonehttps://www.sevenforums.com/members/anyone.html
The backup images I created are not very important and can be recreated, but I am just trying to understand how everything works so I can be sure everything will work in the future.
I have been running some tests....

TEST 1
I created an image of the C:\ Drive on an SSD that has two partitions on it C:\ and D:\ (with no System Reserve partition) and I was able to load this image back onto the SSD without getting an error, so that verifies that the "System Reserve Partition" has nothing to do with my error.

TEST 2
I removed both partitions from the SSD and made one full capacity partition.
When I go to reload the backup image mentioned in TEST 1, I get the same error I stated in my original post.
So even though the SSD has more space to work with in this test, it cannot load the image.
Which is still strange to me.

I will have to do some more research about the backup creator and do some more testing.
If anyone has anything they can share, please do so.

Thank You

 

[Megahertz07]

Mike, Please edit your profile with ALL your hardware specs.

You're have to understand the difference between disk image and partition image.
As I mentioned, a disk image has all partitions and also the MBR. Also you cant restore a disk image to a partition.
Yes, you can do a partition image. If you restore partition image to a clean disk it won't boot as it will have no MBR.
Normally you can extract a partition image from a disk image and restore to a partition on a disk. The disk will boot if it had a MBR.

Forget Windows image creator. Use Macrium Software | Your image is everything
It's powerful and can be that it extract the partition from Windows image, resize and recover.