System Image Issues with builtin Windows BU and WinRE environment...

[KenEE]

Hi,

We use Windows BU to create a system image for use in Recovery. We have a single SSD with a boot C: and D: partitions.

The drive image is stored on a motherboard soldered emmc drive with a recovery partition for WinRE.

Anyway, this has been working fine for a long long time on many systems, but recently we have an issue where the drive image is including the (I think ) the emmc itself and so when you go to select it for recovery you get an error.
In the past if you select the recovery image it lists only the expected C: and D: drives/partitions. But now it's including a third drive \\?\Volume\{long GUID}

Anyone know how to remove this third drive from the image? Or what we might be (unintentionally) doing different during the creation of the image?

I've attached a picture of the three drives listed in the image file.

Thanks!
Ken

 

[SIW2]

1.

The drive image is stored on a motherboard soldered emmc drive

win7 doesnt normally recognize emmc disks. Does your win7 have a 3rd party driver that enables it to see emmc disks?

A lot of people would be interested in that.

Installing Windows 7 on Sandisk eMMC chip

you can export the drivers from your current win7 using dism++

https://github.com/Chuyu-Team/Dism-.../download/v10.1.1002.2/Dism++10.1.1002.1B.zip





- - - Updated - - -

2. If you are wondering about that disk mapping, you can find it with either diskgenius (free version) look for the GUID Path
DiskGenius: Data Recovery, Partition Manager, Backup & Disk Utilities





or by using siv SIV - System Information Viewer

3. In addititon, you could load the system image vhd file in diskgenius and look at what is in there:





4. It is also possible to restore any of the volumes from a system image using wbadmin commands.

 

[KenEE]

Hi - Thanks for all the info. It's Win10. I didn't know/think SevenForums literally meant only Win7. My bad!

In case Win10 is not a sin (it rhymes) the idea is to restore the image from the builtin Recovery Environment so that no 3rd party app or usb boot drive or anything like that is required. I will look into the tools you reference above to see if they offer any support for editing system bu images or creating them compatible with winRE.
It's nice when it works. Just tell the user to reboot into winRE and select the restore image. Just need to figure out what we did to break it!
Thanks

 

[SIW2]

editing or creating?

wbadmin commands can be used to select any individual volume from a system image and restore it.

diskgenius can load virtual disks ( including vhd or vhdx) and display the contents read only. Therefore you can find out what volumes are in the image and clone any of the volumes to any suitable disk and/or just copy out individual files.

you could also just run diskgenius and it will display all the disks and partitions on your system together with the symbolic link and Guid path to help identify what that guid path in your system image relates to.

 

[KenEE]

Very cool. I feel like what I need is to remove the emmc backup from the vhdx(s) WinRE complains that it's restoring a disk that is included in the image (the emmc disk). But I never wanted to backup that disk in the first place. It's just there to hold the bu image for C: and D:.

So If I could create the system backup image correctly (with DiskGenius?) with only C: and D: then I could put that on emmc drive and it would probably work. What do you think?
That's if I create a NEW bu image.
I was thinking another option would be to edit the existing BU Image and remove the unwanted emmc files and leave only the desired C: and D:

Let me know what you think. I'm going to ask the DiskGenius guys too.

 

[SIW2]

diskgenius does not create windows system backup images

[ diskgenius does have its own proprietary backup image format which can be useful in some circumstances, but there is no scheduling so is not intended as regular system image solution. ]

I am not aware of a way to "edit" a windows system image by removing one of the volumes.

wbadmin can list all the volumes in the image and let you restore only the volumes you choose.

wbadmin does not remove one of the volumes from the image. It remains in the image even if you chose to only restore the others.

 

[KenEE]

Well thanks for all the help. Saved me a ton of time and gave me a few ideas. Headin' home! Have a Great Weekend!

 

[SIW2]