Maintenance :: System Image Recovery Can't Find Image On USB Drive
Mar 7, 2013
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.
I have been routinely backuping my OS and important files using Windows 7 backup on a NAS. It just so happened that I needed to re-image my OS drive and I got into the Windows 8 recovery boot sequence.
Under the Advanced tools I selected the System Image Recovery and tried to look for the system image on the network path. Although the prompt said it was connecting to the network , the network share was not found. the command prompt couldn't ping google.com and netsh wlan <SSID> command did not work in hopes of connecting to my local wifi.
Is there a way to connect to the wifi network where my NAS is connected to in order to re-image from the system image found on the NAS? Luckily , there was an older image on a separate local HDD that I could re-image from but I would prefer if I could connect to the NAS during the recovery process.
I bought a new laptop with a Windows 8 Pro x64 pre-installed on it.
Then I upgraded my OS to Windows 8.1 Pro from Windows Store.
After that I thought I'd create a backup of my system so I don't have to re-download the Windows 8.1 upgrade and at the same time having the option to reset my laptop to it's old operating system in case I want to, so that being said, I created a system image backup using Windows' Imaging Utility and pointed it my external drive. It took a couple of minutes and the image was successfully created.
I double checked the image file and I can see it on my external drive saved in a folder called 'WindowsImageBackup'. The backup files is approximately around 35 GB.
I also tried using the System Image Recovery option from BIOS to check whether the backup file I created really works, and it did because it was recognized by the system through the dialog box "Re-image your computer".
My mind was set that if anything bad happens to may laptop, whether if it got infected with a virus or the operating system crashed or even if the hard disk gets broken I could simply put it back to it's previous state using the backup image I created. So I played with the partitioning of my laptop, I even installed other operating systems for educational purposes, but when I finally wanted to bring my laptop to its previous state I failed...
The System Image Recovery from BIOS that once recognized my backup image throw an error at me saying the 'Windows cannot find a system image on this computer'. How can I fix this error? Is there still a way to recover my laptops previous installed OS or is it gone for good?...
1. Download bootable USB 3.0 drivers and tried to load the drivers on the during System Image Recovery. I think I got that tutorial here in this forum also but not sure, anyways it says that my external hard disk might not properly load because windows does not support usb 3.0.
2. I tried installing macrium free to re-image the vhd files from my backup image and tried to use the new image created by macrium to backup from. Re-imaging and backing up from the macrium image is successful but when I restart my laptop to check whether the backup works, I got an error saying 'Your PC needs to be repaired... Error code: 0x0000225'. I boot from my rescue disk and open up the command prompt to run a command like 'bootrec /scanos' but the result says detected windows installation is zero (0)...
I am trying to get a handle on how these 2 functions are related. I assume the Recovery disk would be needed if you can't boot to the computer (assume the OS needs to be present) and does the Recovery disk replace the boot files that may be damaged and then after you get booted up I assume the System Image (is that is referred to as a "backup")?? would be ran to get the computer back to the working order when the Image was taken. Assume that the Recovery disk would take place of the OS installation disk if it were not available and you couldn't just reinstall the OS and so you could load the Image.
I need creating a recovery image of my system. I would like to create an image recovery drive with just the barebones needed for Windows 8 to run. I all ready have a recovery partition created. I just don't know how to create a recovery image for usage whenever something happens to the system.
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 running Windows 8.0 Pro 64bit in UEFI mode & I have successfully taken a Windows System Image of my PC in preparation for upgrading to Windows 8.1.
So now I'm testing that I can actually restore my system, so I go to:
PC Settings -> General -> Advanced Startup -> Troubleshoot -> Advanced Options -> System Image Recovery
On the next screen I select my PC Account name (the only account listed) and then enter my password. However, I always get "Password Incorrect. Please try again".
I am 100% certain that I am entering the correct password.
I can restart the PC and login to windows using the same Account & password without any problems. In User Accounts there is only 1 User Account listed which has administrator rights. Nor have I tried to change the password since the System Image was taken.
Recently i upgraded my system to windows 8..N after clean install i backed up the copy of my C drive (Includes System Image) to my external 2TB Hard Drive.. It took around 250GB of hard drive space..Now since i am running out of space i decided to delete the back up copy from My hard drive.. I deleted WindowsImageBackup and all associated files using control panel..But around 150GB space is missing(not visible) from my external Hard Drive..
As You can see from attached pic that 125 GB free out of 1.81TB..But size of all files including hidden files is 1.53TB..
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.
Although I have been able to make a full disk image using the built in "system image" option, I can not find any way to restore it. The recovery options only point to system restore and refresh PC. I'm navigating to <control panel> and then <file history> to access the recovery options. I can not find any restore from system image option anywhere.
Am I missing something, or is it deliberately missing in the Enterprise editions ? If so is there any way I can restore the backup image ?
I have made a System Image & a Custom Recovery Image on my Asus Vivotab but I cannot get the system to recognize them on a USB Hard Drive.
I got into this by testing the Refresh Custom Recovery Image. The system did not find the image as the system allocated a different drive letter so I have basic Refresh. I have found my way to the Administrator Command but cannot find RECIMG on either the x: or C: drives. Do I need a Path Command from System32?
I also have a System image on a USB Hard Drive but cannot get the system to find it. I have tried putting the files folders in the root directory but the system still does not recognise them.
I created a custom refresh image the day before upgrading to 8.1. I am having shut down and sleep issues with windows 8.1 that I don't have time to troubleshoot any longer and I wish to go back to win 8 for now. I went to check that my image was there and active and this is what i get:
It showed successful when I created it? I can find in in the location that is it supposed to be:
and:
Now I'm stuck. I don't want to use the factory image and reinstall everything, and I can't cope with the bsods and hangs when trying to sleep or shutdown ( I have tried every option in that massive thread about windows 8.1 not sleeping ) ...
I had my Acer desktop come back from the factory a couple of weeks ago. They did a great job in reparing it, however:
When confirming that they had did everything correctly, I out of curiosity, ran the ''reagentc.exe /showcurrent'' command from an elevated command prompt. Whoops, there was no recovery image specified.
After hurting my brain somewhat, I deduced I would need to mount the ''Push Button Reset'' partition with a letter - I used ''Z'' for clarity. *EDIT* So I could locate the folder that the image was stored in, and specify it in the command..** (I used Acronis Disk Director for this simple operation)
I was then able to use the ''REAGENTC /SetOSImage ... '' commmand and specified it in the folder in my OEM Push Button Recovery partition.
My question is this, if I unmount the letter Z, and therefore make it a hidden partition, I guess that Windows won't be able to find it if I need to do a recovery? Would you know of any work a round, or if I could perhaps use another command to specify the OEM recovery image, which is located in that hidden partition.
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....
Win 8.1 ProThe system allows system image backup done on either external hard drive ( which I do every week ), or on DVDs. Why it does not allow USB flash drive ? I tried to use a 32 GB flash and it refuses to do backup on it.
Its my first time to create my first system image in my windows 8. Can I exclude a certain file if not how many blank cd's do I need I got 146GB used currently in my C drive and while creating a system image could it take the process an hour or more?
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'm attempting to follow the instructions here, to do a system image of my Dell Windows 8 machine:
Using Windows 8′s “hidden” backup to clone and recover your whole PC | Ars Technica
As I go through the wizard, I arrive at this screen:
I don't have the option to deselect any of these "drives". I proceed with the backup - it chugs along, and then consistently fails here:
"One of the critical volumes is not having enough free space." It doesn't tell me which - but, it's certainly not the OS drive, this is a virgin system.
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 crashed yesterday. I am trying to recover my image. I boot from the recovery CD that I created when created the system image. The system image is stored on an external hard drive. When I try to recover the image it comes up with an error "Network path not found error 0x80070035". I have shared the folder, I have tried everything that I can think of to fix this.
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 have read a lot about windows 8 (and 8.1) and how to make a system image for it.
Well the most people used the 7 file recovery tool in windows 8 to make full system images. But in windows 8.1 it's gone.
Like in this thread: System Image - Create in Windows 8
Now I hear and see everyone making system images with a powershell command.. How to Create and Restore System Image Backups on Windows 8.1
But why doesn't anybody just use the windows 8 (and 8.1) backup function wich also includes a feature called:
include a system image of drives:
It seems to me that if you do this at an clean install it's a lot easier then powershell? (and maybe you can uncheck the backup of files and only include a sytem image?)
I know that at this moment I can still make a 7 file recovery tool image and restore it with windows 8(.1) repair/recovery disc.
But I wan't to know this for the future when I have a system with 8.1 from factory.. (some manufacturers like asus don't provide repair/system restore discs or utils anymore....)
I made a system image from Windows 8.1 using Windows' own system image feature. I seem to be unable to restore it. I booted with the Windows 8 disc, and told it to restore from a system image. It found the image, ran a few minutes, then failed because of version mismatch (?). Not before hosing the entire system, by the way. Luckily, I was well backed up.
I booted with the Windows 7 disc, and it didn't even see the system image (on my external HD). It saw my Windows 7 system image and restored it just fine, and here I am.
Anyway, is there some trick to restoring a Windows 8.1 system image? I am not running Windows 8.1, so I can't generate a repair disk that way. Is there one available online somewhere for download?
I have been trying to a system image (Windows 8) and keeps telling me to insert a blank disk and mark it, Computer Name, Date and Disk #. It keeps telling me to install one and mark it #1 every time the current disk (DVD) is full, also the status bar does not show any advancement in the process. The other 2 machines I have and did a system image on asks you to insert a disk with the numbers going in sequence, 1, 2, 3 etc.
I had a windows 7 laptop which finally died but before it did a made a system image backup to my external hard drive so I have all the files. How do I load that onto my new windows 8.1 laptop so I have all my files there?
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'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.
