IFD/IFW - Restoring from a multiple partition backup

[rustleg]

If I make a backup of 2 partitions to one backup file (which I prefer for Windows 10 with its System Reserved partition) I want to make sure I can control where each partition restores to. I've read the manual for IFD regarding restoring and it doesn't mention selecting one of the backed up partitions when specifying the source file. I would have expected it to say you need to select one of the partitions before going on to specify where you want to restore to, otherwise it implies you have to restore to exactly where the original partitions were.

Can someone clarify this. Also do I get an option to resize when restoring?

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

If you're using Simple Operations mode you'd need to disable it to have control over individual partitions.

If you create a backup of the entire disk then you can do an entire disk restore, which is usually the simplest in your scenario. However, you can still restore individual partitions from the backup. For example, if your Windows drive consists of just the Windows related partitions (System Reserved, WinRE, Windows), then doing a backup of the entire drive makes sense. However, if you also have a large data partition on the disk you may not want to include it. In that case, you could just back up all the partitions except the Data partition. Keep in mind that restoring individual Windows partitions when a separate boot partition is involved usually requires using the "Update Boot Partition" option (this is normally handled automatically for entire disk image restores).

Resizing of individual partitions is supported when restoring single partitions. When restoring entire disk images you'd have to use one of the scale options (e.g. Scale to Fit) or restore individually to resize.

[rustleg]

Thanks for the reply. I haven't used Simple Operations, so I guess I can restore individual partitions from the single file backup.

However your mention of the various Windows partitions and updating the boot partiton made me think perhaps I should remove the System Reserved partition as per your knowledge base guide. This is Windows 10 Pro but it won't use BitLocker. Then I only have one partition to image. It is a machine I'm setting up for my nephew and want to make it fairly easy to image and restore. I don't want to do a complete drive image as I store the images on another partition on the same drive - the only drive in the laptop.

However I am a bit confused about the location of the boot files. I have set up BIBM on this machine with a couple of Linuxes on it also (and plan that he will use the IFD within BIBM, although IFW may be used for Windows backups). The boot edit set up has the main Windows partition as the boot partition, not the System Reserved partition. But your guide to removing the System Reserved partition implies that the boot files reside here not in the main partition. It boots ok so does this mean the boot files are already in the main partition or is BIBM somehow being clever here?

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

In BIBM Partition Work, does "BCD Edit" work on the Windows partition? That would indicate if the BCD store is on the partition. You can also look in Disk Management in Windows and see which partition is tagged as "System, Active".

Some systems are configured with the booting files in multiple places. I would still recommend including the System Reserved partition when creating the backup -- if it's still exists and Windows sees it. You could take it out of the boot item so only the Windows partition is visible to Windows and see if it still boots okay. Once you've verified booting doesn't need the System Reserved partition you could go ahead and delete it (or just ignore it).

Note that the System Reserved partition may be being used (or previously used) for WinRE.

[mjnelson99]

Is it possible that a Win 10 update could restore the boot partition?
Mary

On 10/6/2016 3:34 PM, rustleg wrote:
> Thanks for the reply. I haven't used Simple Operations, so I guess I can restore individual partitions from the single file backup.
>
> However your mention of the various Windows partitions and updating the boot partiton made me think perhaps I should remove the System Reserved partition as per your knowledge base guide. This is Windows 10 Pro but it won't use BitLocker. Then I only have one partition to image. It is a machine I'm setting up for my nephew and want to make it fairly easy to image and restore. I don't want to do a complete drive image as I store the images on another partition on the same drive - the only drive in the laptop.
>
> However I am a bit confused about the location of the boot files. I have set up BIBM on this machine with a couple of Linuxes on it also (and plan that he will use the IFD within BIBM, although IFW may be used for Windows backups). The boot edit set up has the main Windows partition as the boot partition, not the System Reserved partition. But your guide to removing the System Reserved partition implies that the boot files reside here not in the main partition. It boots ok so does this mean the boot files are already in the main partition or is BIBM somehow being clever here?
>
>

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

mjnelson99 wrote:
> Is it possible that a Win 10 update could restore the boot partition?

I haven't tried that particular scenario myself, but it's worth considering the possibility.

My advice is to always have a backup of the disk (or, at least, everything important) before doing major updates since they do make partitioning changes and some of those don't always come out as expected. Of course, depending on your version of Windows you may not have much control over when/if updates get applied, so just make sure to have current backups.

[rustleg]

TeraByte Support(PP) wrote:

> ...You could take it
> out of the boot item so only the Windows partition is visible to Windows
> and see if it still boots okay. Once you've verified booting doesn't need
> the System Reserved partition you could go ahead and delete it (or just
> ignore it).
>
> Note that the System Reserved partition may be being used (or previously
> used) for WinRE.

Good idea. I took the System Reserved partition out of the boot item and it booted fine. So I deleted it and slid the main partition down 500MB. Also took the opportunity to shrink it a little. Then I made sure I had 4 partitions defined so it won't try to re-create one. Runs without problem. I'm not interested in WinRE since I use IFD from within BIBM for restores.

Thanks for the help.