Maintenance :: How To Create Image Backup And Restoration
Jul 21, 2013
I am new in Windows 8, Secure Boot, UEFI bios, etc.
I have a Windows 8 Single Language (SL) based system (Notebook Acer), that uses Secure Boot in UEFI Bios and has Windows Product Key recorded at BIOS by factory.
I have a 500GB HDD partitioned in drives C: (228GB), E: (40GB), F: (40GB), G: (78GB) and H: (64GB) and Windows is installed on C: partition.
I installed and configured all programs that I use and now I want to do an image to be used in cases of HDD damage, Windows crash or other cases that I need install OS and apps again. I want to earn time with this and don't have to install the apps one by one.
What is the best option (method) to do backup and restoration of the system?How I use the Boot DVD generated by the backup feature (Windows 7 File Recovery)?Can I do image only of partition C: or I need to include all other partitions?Do I need change the BIOS UEFI to LEGACY BIOS to boot with Windows Boot DVD generated?Do I need to format the C: partition before restore the image? What kind of format I need to use? NTFS? FAT32? GPT?
I have a lot of friends that are using Windows 8 now and all of them have the same doubts that I have.
Is it possible to create a new step-by-step tutorial of Backup and Restore process in Windows 8?
Trying to create a System Image Backup on a Windows 8.1 ACER laptop. My latest attempt is to a external hard drive with 3.63 TB free but the backup fails due to not enough disk .
I have attached the full error message.
New to the ways of Windows 8 and this is my first time trying to create a System Image Backup.
I am now getting an Event ID 513 log every time I create a System Image backup using Macrium Reflect Free; however, it doesn't seem to affect the restoral because everything seems just fine after same. Since I have never noticed these logs when running Win 8.0, I'm wondering if this is a brand new issue with 8.1? So, here is my Macrium Free version information and a copy of the Event ID 513 error log. Seeing this log on 8.1 or can confirm it is not present after an 8.0 backup.
I am trying to create a system image backup and I keep getting this error message
[COLOR=#FF0000]'Threre is not enough disk space to create the volum shadow copy on storage location. Make sure that for all volume to be backup up, the minimum disk space required for shadow copy creation is available. this applies to both the backup storage destination and volume included in the backup. Minimum requirement for Volumes less than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 50 megabyte of free space. for voulimes more than 500 megabytes, the minimum is 320 megabytes of free space. Recommended at least 1 gigabytes free of disk space on each volumes if volumes size is more than 1 gigabytes (0x80780119)"
I am backing it up to a external HDD with over a tb of free space but I understand its not letting me perform the backup because the hidden 100mb hidden system partition is full...if i create a larger partition how can I copy that system partition to it? if that is possible....
I recently upgraded to Windows 8.1 from the Microsoft Store. Everything went well (so far) and I want to create a system image backup.
I have a 1 TB external hard drive with plenty of space, but there are some mp3 files on it. I'd like to know if storing the disk image on this drive will affect the mp3's (i.e., are they safe?)
After doing some digging around I found the system image backup under windows 7 file recovery. Then I go to create system image and everything goes fine and then I get an error message after about half way through the back up . Error message will say something like not enough space on drive to create image and I am doing this on a 2TB external hard drive . I did notice one time I accidentally created 500 MB of unallocated space on this drive but I was getting this this error message before I did that and I am not even sure how I created it. I have another PC with windows 7 and don't have a problem with the scheduled image and data backups being performed weekly. Had this problem with windows 8? Also how do eliminate the 500 MB of unallocated space on my 2 TB External HD which is not really a problem but should not be there . I have my files backed up on this HD although I don't use windows data back up utility which I prefer Sync Back to perform instead .
I tried to start windows 8.1 this morning and it was stuck in a boot loop. System tried to carryout repairs to no avail.
I re-installed Windows and I have some drives that are setup in a raid configuration which has a system image I created some time ago after I performed a fresh install of windows 8.1. However, I can't seem to get recovery to locate it.
Is there a way of restoring from this backup to save my having to install each programme from scratch? The file is 141 gig and is an ADI file with an XML and disk image text file.
To ask what is probably well known amongst IT pro's; does a system image backup solution (and consequently a restore from that image if needs be) work on OEM PC's, like a desktop from Acer, actually work without problems, and would I get a proper bootable and working machine after restoration.
Brief scenario - I have used Acronis TI 2014 (Or even the Windows 8.1 system image utility) to create an image of my C: Drive/EFI Partition/Recovery Partition - and backed it up to an external USB HDD.
My OS crashes for whatever reason and I can't boot.
I then either use my Acronis bootable media CD (which I've tested and boots despite all the secure boot/UEFI/GPT mania going about users like myself) to reinstall the Acronis disk image.
OR I use a Widnows 8.1 bootable disk with the ISO (which I've tested to boot) to reinstall the Windows created system image. (I could also use the recovery drive I created in Win 8.1, which just to add, however irrelvanat it might be, includes my OEM factory default partition which was copied as part of the recovery flash drive creation)
Would either of those restore solutions give me a reasonably likely working PC again - taking into account all the stuff I don't understand like the Windows 8.1 OEM key being on the motherboard (which I would understand in terms of Windows activation and authentication could have a negative impact on restoring images over an OEM installed OS and it's partitions)....
I recently got myself into a quandary. I installed 4 additional drives with the intent of creating a RAID volume that's supported by the BIOS. In order to do that I must change the BIOS setting for the controller which includes all volumes including my boot drive (which I don't intend to RAID.) The problem I have is that when I switch the controller from UEFI to RAID, Windows Recovery will not use the System Image that I made. It says the volume was created under a different setting (Bios vs. EFI).
What are my options? Is there a different backup setting that will preserve all my installed software? I'm not concerned about data which I can copy to an external volume but it would take several days to get all my software reinstalled. I'd like to avoid that. I assume I will have to reinstall Windows 8.1 Pro and then use a backup program to restore everything else. If that's the case, then I need to know which backup program will work. If there's a better way, I'd love to know. I see my options as either, get another backup program, get a separate controller card for either the boot drive or the RAID volume, or reinstall everything.
I have spent most of the past 12 hours trying to restore my win8pro system from a system image. the image was saved to a usb hard drive. win8pro system image recovery won't see the usb hard drive. I tried copying the backup to a drive on my network, but recovery won't see that either, even when entering the exact path to the backup using the network option. I then tried to copy the backup to a second hard drive, installing that hard drive directly into the machine. no go, wouldn't even recognize the drive.
I'm having a problem with Windows System Image Backup just when I try to do a image backup it will say that it has failed and suggest to do a disk check. I've searched and some users say to use third party backup programs should I run the disk check first or just go with a different backup tool.
After upgrading to the Win 8.1 upgrade I can no longer find the full backup selection and clicking on the change backup settings only shows a little clock. Has the backup function been removed from win 8.1?
I can't open the mounted image in the disk management console. This is my backup image from my previous win 8.1 pro x64 system. Its stored on a external hdd w/ bit locker protection. My problem is I want to recover some files from the previous image but when I mount the vdhx image, the "Open", when i right click on the partition on the disk mgt console, is greyed out. I also noticed that no drive letter is assigned after i mounted it. I have tried converting it to vhd using Hyper-V, then opening it in win 7 but the same thing happens. It gets mounted, but no letter assigned and still can not be opened in the explorer. Are there 3rd-party tools to open & mount vhdx files?
I have 3 partitions on my main boot drive. XP SP3, win 8.1 32 bit and win 8.1 64 bit. I ran system image backup in the 64 bit version at 7pm and it took an hour to back up these 3 partitions to another hard drive on my system.
I made some changes to the 64 bit OS so decided to update the image, and ran from the file history window with the same 3 partitions, this time it only took half an hour. I was given an overwrite warning but the last drive to be imaged the 32 bit win 8 seemed to complete very quickly.
If the partition hasn't changed will system image skip it and not overwrite the partition image? I notice there are 3 60gb files on the backup hard disk presumably each partition. I even checked the backup log to confirm the first took one hour and second only took half an hour. Using the get items command for wbadmin it says all three partitions are available for bare metal recovery.
I bought an Acer notebook with Windows 8 SL (Single Language) and UEFI BIOS (with Secure Boot) factory installed (Windows Key is set in Bios).
I have the habit of installing all programs and make an image of partition C: in case of having to reinstall the entire system for problems with Windows, HDD exchange or similar cases. With this gain too long and not have to reinstall all the programs one by one.
My HDD is partitioned into 4 parts: C:, E:, F: and G:.
When I enter the Windows 8 app to generate the system image appear two partitions pre-marked for backup: C: (Programs) and EFI System Partition (no drive letter). C: partition is formatted as NTFS, but the EFI is as FAT32.
My question is: when I restore this, how should I format the partition where you install the system again (C ? Format all the partition as NTFS and Backup app creates the EFI partition FAT32 by own?
How it works and how to proceed? I will boot the system by CD-ROM.
So I was just about to create a full system image of one of my HDD's, and I noticed that I have 2 different "system" drives.
My main system drive is the C: Drive, which is the 111.79gig HDD. Im not really sure why the 1TB drive is listed as a system drive, as well as being drive 0. Is there any easy way to fix this so everything to do with the system is back on the 111.79gig C: drive where it belongs?
My system is dell xps 8300. I have upgraded from windows 7 ultimate(64bit) to windows 8 pro 64 bit. My system has
1) dell oem partition (no drive ketter 39MB), 2) recovery partition (ntfs no drive letter) 13.25 GB free 2.94 Gb, 3) C drive windows system partition 100Gb free 31,24 GB rest of the two partitions are 175 Gb each (logical drives).
Total my hard disk capacity is 500GB.
What is the difference of taking backup and which is better for recovering the system to original state just before the backup.
1) System image backup(recovery partition & windows system partition) using windows 8 system backup..ie using windows 7 file recovery menu under control panel. 2) Creating custom recovery image for refresh.(command: recimage -CreateImage)
I have done both and my backup location is external hard drive of 2TB capacity. I made system recovery disk(dvd) from the windows 7 file recovery menu.
The custom recovery image wim file is of size 22.GB
The recovery partition backup(vhdx) is of 9GB and the windows system partition backup is of 43GB.
I have also used macurium reflect pro to take backup of my recovery and windows partition using macurium rescue cd.
My windows 8 pro install messed up n i have almost 2.8tb of stuff on my drive on a 3tb hd. I have an identical hd as a backup which i have (an apparently successful) a backup of my system from a couple of weeks ago on. I had set the system to do scheduled backups of the system (set to backup a system image of efi partition and c. There were a few times where i was trying to get other things done and the systemwas running slow so i cancelled the backups when i noticed them running. The software stopped the backups (seemingly successfully).
As i say my system messed up - i came home to find out it was no longer downloading (as i had left it doing when i went to work) but was on a blue screen (bsod?) saying the system needs to be restarted. Since then it didnt work well at all and after dskchk reported that several sectors were damaged so it was moving data to spare sectors (or whatever it generally reports when this happens) there were a lot of files messed up or reported as deleted when doing a file recovery scan with recuvva.
So i decided to restore the backed up system image from the other hd. Incidentally i tried mounting the vhdx backup image from that hd via windows explorer which then reported "the disk needs formatting" and didnt get any success mounting via disk management either (it mounted in the app but didnt show up on windows explorer and if i tried to access info on it via disk management it reported the same"disk needs formatting prompt".
So when i booted my win 8 dvd it didnt work cos the dvd wasnt an efi booting version so i had to boot from a usb version with the efi bit included.
I formatted the system drive and chose to do an image restore. It started doing the restore (apparently) but every time i came back to it later i had the follwing error:
"Re-image your computer
The system image restore failed.
Error details: The requested system device cannot be identified due to multiple indistinguishable devices potentially matching the identification criteria Ox80073B92"
It took me so long to set up my system n i have a lot of my own data on there too. The system drive I formatted was created in diskpart and then re formatted with "format" command (as it created the disk in raw mode) so now it is ntfs mode (uncompressed).
I started to use the "Create System Image" of the "Windows 7 File Recovery" on my Windows 8 laptop. But after the screen which flashes the total size that would be required, when I ask it to start the process expecting it to prompt me for the 1st DVD, it flashes the message, - "The back-up failed. The system is not ready. (0x80070015) " . I am trying this on an out-of-the-box laptop with pre-installed Windows 8. Also tried it by disabling the anti-virus, but to no avail.
Then I tried to start the process with a 4.7 GB blank DVD already in place. Then it flashed the message "Insert a blank media bigger than 1 GB". Since I expected it take anywhere between 3-8 DVDs, I kept about 9 DVDs ready. I also inserted a USB pen-drive of 16 GB and tried to create the system image. Again it flashed the same message of insert a blank media greater than 1 GB in F: (same drive as USB) -??????? I mean the USB is already in place and has been assigned the drive letter as F:. How can I insert a blank media there ??
I am using Windows 8 Single Language. I was able create a repair disc without issues, though.
I can't get windows 8.1 system image to burn to my backup drive it says access denied for some reason or another, and i can't get it to burn to dvd-r ether. I want to do a image of my drive.
I thought 8.1 was supposed to make things easier? Not so for creating a System Image. Now, you have to use the Windows PowerShell (Admin) to get the job done. The image below will show the command string to use (boxed in red) and my target drive is/was Z:
Attachment 23893
Zoom image to enlarge.
You can use your installation media to access the Repair function and restore your System Image from there.
New Win 8 user. I have tried creating a system image using this program but without success. I have an Asus X202E laptop and am trying to create the image on a 1TB USB hard drive. Everything goes well for a few seconds after the backup starts (the progress bar goes about 10% through) but it then halts and gives an error message: "There is not enough disk space to create the volume shadow copy on the storage location....". I have directed the backup to an empty 500GB partition on the hard drive so there should be ample space. Have tried the same procedure with another USB hard drive with the same result.
BTW, both hard drives show up normally in windows explorer.
Windows 8.1 64 bit pc48 GB RamIntel i7 - 3960X CPUBoxxTech ComputerDrive C: SSD - 446 GB
When I first got my new personal computer in January, I created a System Image using Microsoft's utility. I typically use Acronis for my backups, but after major changes, I use both Microsoft and Acronis.
Now, I am attempting to complete a System Image Backup using Microsoft's utility so that I can fix my SecureBoot concern, knowing that I have a safety net in place. Unfortunately, I am unable to complete a backup. BoxxTech suggests that I use Microsoft's utility.
I begin with the File History in the Control Panel as shown below. Note, that I have plenty of room on my FreeAgent F Drive (standalone USB drive). Yet, Microsoft's utility believes otherwise.
Only the three items that shown to be selected are selected. In other words, there are no other drives or partitions off-screen that are selected.
Thinking that it might be a problem with my external USB hard drive, I look at using one of my internal drives, T.
I get the same error message as shown earlier.
why I am unable to back-up my personal computer using Windows 8.1?
Am using recimg to create custom image on freshly upgraded win 8.1 install. It fails almost immediately with this message appearing in a pop up:
"The procedure entry point ??0BufferedStream@UnBCL@@QEAA@PEAVStream@1@K@Z could not be located in the dynamic link library c:windowssystem32migwizmigcore.dll"
Further info:
Problem signature: Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: recimg.exe Application Version: 6.3.9600.16412 Application Timestamp: 5243fc60 Fault Module Name: KERNELBASE.dll
[Code] ........
System info : OS Name Microsoft Windows 8.1 Version 6.3.9600 Build 9600 Other OS Description Not Available OS Manufacturer Microsoft Corporation System Name TOSHIBA
For the first time, I decided to back up my C: Drive using the Windows back up image tool. I selected my internal D: drive as the storage target. The recovery tool ran, and ran, and ran. The "back up" portion of the event had finished, but the "create shadow copy" went on for a good hour before I aborted the activity. The tool window never closed. After a while I hit the "x" button, but the window remained open. I clicked the shutdown icon and selected "restart", the restarting screen came up and remained for another hour or so before I cut the power to my pc.
Immediate problem: Now, my PC won't boot up. It gets to the windows 8 icon and the spinning dots never stop circling each other.
Attempted remedies: If I disconnect the SATA cable to my D: drive, the pc boots up. I can then connect the D: drive as an external and it will load. I deleted the back up image folder and the .dat file that was created on it. These are the only 2 files I could see created around the time of the back up, with "show hidden files" enabled. However if I reconnect the drive as an internal, my PC still won't boot. I have tried reverting to an older system restore point, but this has not affected whatever is going on during bootup.
What has Windows Back Up image Tool changed that won't allow my D: drive to be connected during boot? How can I remedy this?
Probably unnecessary background info: Last week I decided to clean up my computer, do a fresh install of windows and create a back up so that I *hopefully* never have to clean from scratch again. I had to start by installing windows 7 from DVD. I kept nothing on my 60gb SSD C: drive. Fresh install. Run windows update, then upgrade to Window 8 via a code I got from the "buy win 7 computer and purchase win 8 upgrade for $17" promotion when win 8 first came out. I ran win update again, which bricked my pc with a corrupt update sending it into a continuous loop of "update failed, reverting to old settings" over and over. I reinstalled Win 8 and tried selecting different updates. After 8 or so selections, the list of 72 "required" updates disappeared, and I could finally upgrade to 8.1 After 3 days of these install shenanigans, and finally getting my personal necessity programs installed (chrome, photoshop, etc) I was ready to create a windows back up image. This brings me to the current scenario.
my D: drive is a 1TB MyBook HDD that I took apart and plugged in as an internal. 16 gb of ram, 3.8- 6core AMD processor.
I've been dual-booting Windows 8 Pro and Windows 7 Ultimate, but a while back my Windows 8 kind of went "South" and wouldn't boot at all (I got an error message that a device was "not attached"). I have a recent system image on an external USB hard drive, but when I boot to "system recovery" using my repair disk it can't seem to find my USB drive at all.
The tutorials here mention installing a SATA driver to access disks that are not recognized, but this doesn't seem to be the case.
