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Version 5 support expired on 17 February 2016.

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Vocalpoint
Starting Member

Canada
7 Posts
Posted - September 16 2011 :  15:13:09  Show Profile
Morning,

Yesterday - I had to use Reflect for the very first time to get myself out of an emergency situation. The day previous - Windows 7 reports several S.M.A.R.T. disk alerts and claims I am close to immediate failure. So I image the C drive with Reflect and pop in a new drive and set to restoring the image.

Since this was a Windows 7 x64 image - I must say - I can't think of a process that wasted more time than this - as far as making the right choices in Reflect. I burned up about 4 hours first having Windows tell me repeatedly (after several restores) that it could not find the Boot\bcd files and could not boot.

Only after a frantic search (via my cell phone) of you knowledge base did I find the references to the exact process to restore a Windows 7 box with it's special System Reserved partition and the use of DiskRestore via the Windows PE version of the Rescue CD.

So some questions:

1. Is it impossible to use the standard Linux based Rescue CD to restore a Windows 7 system image. Seems to be from my angle as no amount of fiddling cound make it work. Even trying to restore the System Reserved first as Active followed by the Image itself as Primary. The Linux restore CD allows the system reserved to grab the C drive letter thereby making the actual image appear as F....

2. Why oh why is the DiskRestore applet buried under the File menu of the PE Rescue CD? Again after finally getting the PE version up and running - I wasted more time trashing partitions and ending up with a non-bootable system until I finally stumbled onto the article referencing DiskRestore - which does put a Windows 7 box back correctly.

3. You guys need to remember that - like in my case - there may not be any time to casually browse tech articles to find the How and Where that are required for a restore. May I suggest that some version of your Rescue CD - have a better wizard that asks the user WHAT kind of image they are trying to restore and then have the wizard apply the correct settings? If I could have had the wizard determine that I was restoring a Windows 7 image - it could have saved me hours of time.

On a good note - the restore worked fine when I finally got there. Today tho - I am having network problems as the restore seems to not be able to restore an Active Directory based machine back to it's orginal state with respect to GUID's and the like.

I tried to remote into my box today and Remote Desktop is reporting that my machine does not exist on the network - even tho it's up and running just fine. So some work to be done there...

Overall tho - Reflect did waste a lot of time but saved me from having to reinstall the workstation. Ironically - a fresh install would have been a lot shorter than what I went thru with this restore.

VP

Nick
Moderator

United Kingdom
6303 Posts
Posted - September 16 2011 :  16:04:43  Show Profile
Hi

Thanks for your post. Sorry you have had problems.

Restoring both the Microsoft System Reserved (MSR) and OS partitions is essential to restoring your OS. Without using DiskRestore, restoring these partitions sequentially should present no problems. If the BCD is invalid because the the MSR size has changed or the starting offset for drive 'C' has changed then taking the 'Fix Boot Problems' in Windows PE resolves this issue.

This may be of little consolation to you but all of these issues are addressed in v5 which can restore multiple partitions (and resize/expand/shrink) in one go. You might want to consider upgrading. Please see this kb article on restoring Win 7 with v5. There is a short video of the process at the end:

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50079.aspx

Kind Regards



Nick - Macrium Support
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Vocalpoint
Starting Member

Canada
7 Posts
Posted - September 16 2011 :  16:17:55  Show Profile
quote:
Originally posted by Nick

Hi

Thanks for your post. Sorry you have had problems.

Restoring both the Microsoft System Reserved (MSR) and OS partitions is essential to restoring your OS. Without using DiskRestore, restoring these partitions sequentially should present no problems. If the BCD is invalid because the the MSR size has changed or the starting offset for drive 'C' has changed then taking the 'Fix Boot Problems' in Windows PE resolves this issue.

This may be of little consolation to you but all of these issues are addressed in v5 which can restore multiple partitions (and resize/expand/shrink) in one go. You might want to consider upgrading. Please see this kb article on restoring Win 7 with v5. There is a short video of the process at the end:

http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50079.aspx

Kind Regards



Nick - Macrium Support



Nick - thanks for the update - and yes - I am considering a move to v5.

With respect to a "sequential" restore using the basic Linux disk in v4 - I can confirm with 100% certainty that this does not work. You can restore the partitions alright - but your "C" drive will become an "F" drive or similar since the basic Linux rescue CD places the C drive letter on the System Reserved partition....plus a bunch of additional errors occur and the system will not boot.

EDIT: Network issues - sort of resolved. I can remote into this box now via IP but not by computer name. Doesn't look like a restore issue...most likely local network related.

VP
Edited by - Vocalpoint on September 16 2011 16:26:56
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