Restore Windows system partition to USB drive fails

[crawfish]

I want to restore a Windows system partition to a USB drive for the purpose of copying files as TBIView is too slow for this purpose (many thousands of smallish files), and I keep getting an error immediately when I begin the restore. This happens in the TBWinRE environment as well as inside of Windows. In the past, I've used TBWinRE to restore system images without problem, but that was to the actual system drive in the target computer, not a USB drive. I'm using default options. Here's the IFW.LOG transcript from IFW 4.07 in Windows 11, but again, the same thing happens in TBWinRE (the Bitlockered volume was unlocked, and I've done this many times for system drives as explained earlier):

09/07/2025 04:13:17 PM] Restoring: Basic data partition Partition (03) 930.42 GiB NTFS
[09/07/2025 04:13:17 PM] To: Drive 7 (USB) (G:) Basic data partition Partition (02) 931.5 GiB Bitlocker
[09/07/2025 04:13:17 PM] Source File: Q:\Images\backup-w3-2025-09-04-125341-chg.TBI
[09/07/2025 04:13:18 PM] A hard drive error occurred when writing 920 sectors to LBA 337296.
[09/07/2025 04:13:18 PM] Do not abort if you want to ignore these errors.
[09/07/2025 04:13:18 PM]
[09/07/2025 04:13:18 PM] Do you want to abort the operation?
[09/07/2025 04:13:38 PM] Are you sure you want to cancel?
[09/07/2025 04:13:39 PM] The boot sector is being cleared due to partial completion.
[09/07/2025 04:13:42 PM] Elapsed 0:00:00:25
[09/07/2025 04:13:42 PM] Bad Sectors - Reading:0 Writing:185 (1)
[09/07/2025 04:13:42 PM] Operation Completed with Error Code 1 (Cancel)
[09/07/2025 04:13:42 PM] Stop

I verified the same thing happens with another image file for a different PC with a 250 GiB boot drive, but I was able to restore the WinRE partition, so there's something different about the system partition.

[TeraByte Support]

sounds like the target USB drive or cable (or port being used) is bad, or windows (or some utility) is blocking writes to it. Try a different USB device, port, cable.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

For copying out many files, you could try using TBIMOUNT or TBIHD to mount the image as a drive. Both of those generally handle copying lots of files much better than TBIView.

For the restore, BitLocker may also be blocking it. You could try removing BitLocker from the drive before restoring and see if that helps. If you want it encrypted, you could always encrypt it with BitLocker after the restore.

[crawfish]

Just tried it with a different drive, enclosure, cable, and port (back of the computer this time), and I got the same error. Again, restoring the Recovery partition worked. It's restoring the System partition that's failing. That said, after restoring the Recovery partition, I tried restoring the System partition to the newly freed space, and it appeared to proceed normally. That freed space was unallocated per Windows 11 Computer Management and of course wasn't Bitlockered.

For testing, I reformatted the drive and did not turn on Bitlocker. I tried restoring one of the System partitions, and it seemed to proceed normally. So, IFW isn't liking for the target partition on the USB drive to be Bitlockered (and unlocked) for restoring a System partition. It's fine for a Recovery partition, however. Well, that's no good. I need to restore to an unlocked Bitlockered partition like I have many times before as described in my OP, except I need to do it to a USB drive.

[TeraByte Support]

try enabling delete restore destination option in global settings. windows is protecting certain sectors on the existing partition.

[crawfish]

try enabling delete restore destination option in global settings. windows is protecting certain sectors on the existing partition.

It works, but unfortunately, it knocks out Bitlocker. What's the difference between USB and actual system drives, because it doesn't happen to the latter. I've restored to unlocked Bitlockered system drives many times without losing Bitlocker. Or could the difference be at a higher level, that is, between fixed and removable drives? Or maybe not. After all, I was able to restore a Recovery partition to the unlocked Bitlockered partition on the USB drive without losing Bitlocker.

[TeraByte Support(PP)]

I think the difference is whether or not you're restoring an image of that same particular unlocked partition. When you restore a different image to the unlocked partition, the "locked" areas are different and it causes problems. When you restore small partitions to a larger area it may allow it.

[crawfish]

I think you're right, and it's the size of the partition, not whether it's a system partition. I also backup a 1 TB data drive I use for VMs, databases, etc, and trying to restore it to a USB drive gave the same error as the system partitions I tried. These partitions were like 50% and 20% full. Oh well.