Restore Question regarding GPT vs MBR

[spokey]

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.

 

[samuria]

You don't say what you are using to do the backup as that is part of the problem? Windows backup has always been flakey most people create disk images with third party software

 

[Paul Black]

Hi spokey,

You don't say what you are using to do the backup as that is part of the problem? Windows backup has always been flakey most people create disk images with third party software.

I agree with samuria, Windows backup is far from reliable for something as important as backing up your data!

There are two imaging programs which are very popular among members here, the first is AOMEI Backupper Standard [FREE], and the second is Macrium Reflect [FREE]. This way, if things go wrong in the future, you will be able to restore your OS back to the exact same state that it is now in a very short time.

I hope this helps!

 

[spokey]

yes, it is the standard windows backup.

I know I've seen people denigrate it over the years, but in the I guess 2 decades of using it now (I think since win2K, but certainly xp), this is the first issue I've had.

The backup / restore worked as noted above. Just that I had to switch the backup drive back to an MBR drive. I'm looking to understand what's going on there better.

Haven't tried the two above, but I do have acronis on that machine and don't like it (though I can't remember exactly why).

 

[samuria]

Win 7 has always a bit patchy with gpt disk as it was written before gpt disk were popular