Unexpected result of partial disk restore

[Bob Coleman]

There has been a lot of discussion recently about restoring a system to new hardware. Someone was told, I think, to do a full disk backup and later, if necessary, do a full disk restore to a new disk.

This got me thinking. I don't typically do a full disk backup. I back up my BIBM partition, my Windows partition and an extended partition containing two data volumes. I specifically don't include a copy of the Windows partition or another currently unused large primary partition. The point here is that the partitions that are included are all explicitly specified as individual partitions.

I have always considered my backup to have two purposes: 1) Restoration of the Windows partition in the case of a botched update or bad software install or something and 2) backup of data which can be restored to new hardware or a new Windows install.

I've always expected that in case of disk failure, I'd have to re-install Windows and applications.

The above mentioned discussions made me decide to do a test without any expectation of getting the results I did.

I first made a whole disk backup which I expected to use to recover from my failed tests.

I then deleted all partitions except the Windows partition and converted the disk to GPT just to have something significantly different than the normal state of the disk. After verifying that this GPT disk booted, I used Partition Work to delete the Windows partition and noted that Partition Work still claimed to be listing GPT partitions even though there weren't any.

Then I restored my normal backup described above specifying full disk, whole disk or whatever it is noting that partial disk was indicated.

To my amazement, after the restore completed, Partition Work indicated that it was listing EMBR partitions and booting caused booting of BIBM and Windows 10.

Even though I explicitly backed up individual partitions, clearly(?) something other than those partitions was backed up and restored.

[Brian K]

Bob Coleman wrote:
>

> I've always expected that in case of disk failure, I'd have to re-install
> Windows and applications.
>

Bob, you don't have to reinstall Windows and applications. Just restore your image to the new disk. Easy.

[Bob Coleman]

Brian K wrote:
> Bob Coleman wrote:
> >
>
> > I've always expected that in case of disk failure, I'd have to re-install
> > Windows and applications.
> >
>
> Bob, you don't have to reinstall Windows and applications. Just restore your image to
> the new disk. Easy.

Yes, but I was really (pleasantly) surprised to discover that one can apparently do that even with a partial disk backup.

[TeraByte Support]

only the items you didn't backup won't be there.

restoring a partial (multiple partitions) to an empty drive will be treated
as full as far as the scaling and other items.

"Bob Coleman" wrote in message news:17300@public.image...

Brian K wrote:
> Bob Coleman wrote:
> >
>
> > I've always expected that in case of disk failure, I'd have to
> > re-install
> > Windows and applications.
> >
>
> Bob, you don't have to reinstall Windows and applications. Just restore
> your image to
> the new disk. Easy.

Yes, but I was really (pleasantly) surprised to discover that one can
apparently do that even with a partial disk backup.