Maintenance :: Windows 8.1 - Backing Up And Restoring System Drive
Jun 12, 2014
In few days I will have my new computer with Windows 8.1, and I wonder what solution would be the best for easy backing up and restoring of system drive in the new machine. For last 5 years I've been using Acronis to create an image of entire partition c: , with windows and all my crucial software, and if only my system felt slow or there was too many stuff installed, I simply restored it from this image (of course app data was moved to d:, so that no settings of my programs were replaced). From time to time I was making new image, so that it was always ready to work 'out of the box' with all the updates etc..
Any different solution to accomplish the same as I don't want to move app data to d: any more because I'll have ssd drive for my system, and I would prefer to have it all in one partition, so my solution will no longer be effective. Is there any native Windows 8 solution for system backup and is it any good? Or maybe I could simply backup "windows" and "program files" folders, and restore just them. Would it be as effective as restoring entire partition?
When I bought my new Asus laptop, lady told me I should buy a 32 gb stick to back up o/s, as M/S no longer supply a recovery disk. I started the sequence.
control panel--recovery--create a recovery drive--then got a bit scared .....
I went through it with MS but after booting up, I inserted stick, r/c, properties, stick was empty???
My laptop came with Windows 8 pre-installed and I want to make a backup of it in case it crashes. I have a 1 TB external USB HDD. Can I use it for both making a backup of Windows and then continue using same drive to make auto backups of my PC per request. Or do I have to have separate memory devices, i.e., one that only contains a backup of windows and one for other backups. Just wondering before I do any backing up because if I backup Windows on my 1 TB drive and the rest gets blocked for other saves then that would be a waste of good memory space..,
I am trying to to back up my files, using file history, but the program will not recognize my Iomega portable hard drive. I keep getting this error message every time I try to back up the files.
"File history does not recognise this drive"
There doesn't appear to be any problem with the Omega as I have copied my files to this and double Save when modified.
It seems this problem has been around generally for a long time now as W8.1 search turns many pages on this and I have tried several of the suggestions without success.
I have a Toshiba Satellite C855D laptop and I was wondering if there's a way to backup my files onto a computer with a new harddrive I just bought-
Amazon.com: WD Blue 1 TB Desktop Hard Drive: 3.5 Inch, 7200 RPM, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64 MB Cache - WD10EZEX: Electronics
Basically, I just want to have the same files from my latop on my desktop computer with a fresh harddrive. Ofcourse the new harddrive that I will install onto the desktop wont have an OS, so how would I do it? I dont have an external HD either.
I'm having an issue with the new File History (sure do miss the windows 7 backup) thing in 8.1.
Basically when I tell File History to run it says it's updating for a minute or two, then says it's done, but it doesn't actually back up anything at all. I have it set to backup to my 750GB external drive (connected via esata) which is solely for backups. The only files that show up on it are the configuration files.
Here's the setup I'm working with:
HP DV7-4285dx laptop with > 2 week old fresh 8.1 install SanDisk 256GB SSD (C: internal; for OSs and installed programs only) Samsung 1TB HDD (D: internal; for data only) Sandisk 750GB HDD (G: external over esata; for backup)
I'm suspecting the problem might have something to do with the fact that I have all of my documents, music, etc. folders redirected (changed the targets of all of the folders in my user directory to D:UsersMatt...) to my D: drive instead of them being on the C: drive.
I'm trying to backup my Quicken data files using File History. I tried creating a new Library folder and moving the files into it, but they don't backup to my external HD when using File History.
File history seemed to be working OK. But then I added a library in Windows Explorer with my Google Drive folder. I don't have much stuff in this folder, less than 1GB. The problem is that File History is not backing up this folder in its backups.
Do I have to delete the file history backup and redo it again every time I add a library? (I haven't tried it but it'd be a nuisance wouldn't it?).
I bought a sumsung Ativ smart pc about a year ago, recently had to take it in for repairs (still under warranty), before taking it in I used the "windows 7 recovery" system (despite being in windows 8) to create a system image, I then reset my computer to factory settings
Have the image on a USB drive, just got the computer back, however I cannot restore my computer. Not sure why but whenever I select the restore option it wont let me pick a local folder or usb drive as the location of the backup image, it seems to be looking exclusively for networked drives/machines
I've read I may need a restore cd to get this working, however my tablet only has 1 usb drive and no disk drive, what should I do?
Using the built in Windows 8 function. Using a User Profile tool and experimenting with copying profile settings, I managed to corrupt my Windows 8.1 install. I thought, no, problem, I'd made images of the system partition and I would restore one of those.
Upon attempting to copy one of those image files back to the system partition, I found my machine unbootable.
I used Aomei Partition Assistant to create the image and to copy it back. Aomei though requires that the destination partition be deleted before it will copy and I think that's the root of the problem. I suspect that Aomei destroys the hidden UEFI partitions in the process which renders the machine unbootable. I did check with Diskpart and could see that I no longer had four partitions after the above which does indicate that Aomei did trash one of the other partitions.
I have now used my bootable install media to make a new windows 8 instal on the machine. I can see with Diskpart that the machine again has the four UEFI partitions.
So, now I'm ready to try again to copy my backup system partition to the new system partition. I had put in lots of work updating to 8.1, installing software, and customizing settings, etc. so I'd rather not reinstall everything again!
The question is how to do this without messing it up again. By the way, windows own "restore from image" function will not allow me to select my Aomei created drive image.
My thought right now is to find a different partition copy tool which will allow me to OVERWRITE the new system partition on the machine (as said Aomei Partition Assistant does not allow this). The old version of Norton Ghost would do that, but my only copy is floppy based and this new MOBO doesn't even have a floppy connector.
I do want to maintain the setup as UEFI and I'm wondering whether there's anything else I need to know about UEFI installs that would suggest another approach.If indeed I can solve this by overwriting the partition (instead of deleting and creating a new one), any recommendation for a bootable tool (USB or CD) ....
I have a 3-months old Dell laptop, which I need to do a factory reset for, using the recovery partition.
Since I don't have an external hdd available, in order to backup everything I needed (roughly 95 GB), I shrunk my C drive by 100 gig and created a secondary partition, and just moved my files there.
Now, if I remember correctly, unlike windows disc-installation, it will not let me choose which drive to format and install the new OS on, it'll just delete everything and restore it to the state it was in when I first got it.
Since both drives are on the same HDD, will it actually be deleted? (the secondary drive). If yes, what can I do to "tell it" not to touch that drive?
My old Sony Vaio broke the other day, so I've just got a new laptop. The Vaio was Vista, but now I'm on Windows 8.
I'd been backing up my Vaio to an external harddrive, but all I ever did was run the backup and let it get on with it. So for example, within the external harddrive now it just has a list of the dates I ran a backup, followed by 'Backup files 1', 'Backup files 2' etc. I'm hoping these include some of the documents/files I had on there, but I can't be sure. What exactly will have been backed up here?
I've been trying now to restore these files on my new laptop, but I can't seem to find a way. Is it possible?
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 take a File History snapshot every night. I have had to do a restore of my c: drive and need to apply my File History for four days. How to do this because I have never done it before.
I have two desktop PCs, both of which are 5-7 year old Intel Core 2 Duo-based with 2-4GB of RAM.
I performed a clean install of Win 8.1 Pro onto the first partition on a freshly cleaned disk and all went well. Booted up and ran MS Update to get the whole system up to date. Then installed all of my apps. Then I used Acronis TrueImage to create an image backup of the Windows/App partition.
Then rather than going through the entire process on my second PC, I simply partitioned the drive in an identical manner to the first PC then restored the image backup from the other PC onto the second system. Then I rebooted the system and it came up without any issues. I ran MS Update and it downloaded and installed a couple of drivers (GFX, audio, etc) since the second system was slightly different hardware-wise. The only thing I changed on the second system was to give the PC a different name and also change the default user account name, to avoid networking conflicts.
That was a couple of weeks ago. I've been running both systems (seemingly) without any problems. I have two Win 8 licenses, but only used the first. I haven't been nagged or warned about the same licensing key when running essentially the same system on two different machines.
Aside from the obviously licensing issue, are there likely to be any other problems that may crop up?
I just installed Windows 8.1 on my system (from Windows 8) and had to restore to an earlier time (to one from earlier today). The issue is that my solid state hard drive was reduced by about 20 Gigs! I even deleted the other restore points and rebooted, but my hard drive has about 136 gigs of space. Before the restore, it was 156.
Does windows restore really eat up this much hard drive space? Is there a way to get it back?
I created the system backup (bit copy) in my Win 8.1 Pro and saved it to my internal HDD.
It is possible to move it now to another drive (e.g. to NAS)?
I try to do this manually, but even though I can open the folder "WindowsImageBackup" and I see several saved files in included folders I cannot manipulate with them.
I naturally thought that if I used File History that I would be able to get my files back from the external drive if I had to reinstall Windows8. After a HDD crash it appears that isn't the case.
13gb of Excel Spreadsheets is riding on this solution.
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 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 created some windows 8 system images(Using the internal system image tool). Now I find restore points more useful, but I would have to turn the system protection on for an external hard drive. The problem is that I don't understand the sophisticated message Using system protection on a drive that contains system image backups will cause other shadow copies to be deleted faster than normal. Does it mean, that under some circumstances my manually created full system images could be deleted to create a restore point? I would like to keep the system images. Also, I hope it doesn't override existing directories on this harddrive, but I don't want to try it out without being sure.
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 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 have a laptop that has an SSD with Win 8.1 + programs, and an HDD for projects. They are both formatted GPT. When I launch Macrium, for some reason my SSD is now GPT 1 and the second drive is now GPT 2. This is confusing because I'm used to imaging the top line of partitions which is usually my OS. Now that the GPT numbers are reversed, I have to be careful when doing my backups. How to change this assignment so that the SSD will be GPT1 again?
I currently run Win 7/Ubuntu 12.10 dual boot. Win 7 is installed, obviously, on my C: Drive and Ubuntu is installed on my D: Drive (Both are 500GB HDD's. Drive D: also is where I Store my photos, movies, document, music, etc)).
I'm going to do a clean install of Win 8 on my C: Drive, but how will I be able to access my Ubuntu install after I get Win 8 all set up?
I've installed Windows 8 starting the installer from Windows 8 RP and I've just noticed that it picked up the drive letters from the old system. Now my system drive is Y instead of C , because in the old system that partition was Y. If I try to change the drive letter in the Drive Management it gives an error. how to change system drive letter in Windows 8 RTM?
I wish to purchase a new laptop that has Windows 8 OEM pre-installed on a 256GB SSD and a recovery partition. I would like to move the recovery partition to an USB drive using the feature available in Windows 8 and create another partition on the SSD for a different OS (linux). I have several questions:
1. Is there any difference between a recovery USB and the recovery partition on the SSD?
2. [Answered] If I completely wipe the original Windows 8 installation can I restore my system using the USB drive?
3. [Answered] During recovery, can I chose on what partition I want to install Windows 8 or create a new partition for it (similarly to a fresh install) or is the whole thing done automatically? I want to know if the recovery process wipes the whole SSD or only the Windows partition and if my other partitions will be left intact (I can live with it overriding the bootloader).
4. If I shrink the Windows 8 partition, can I still perform the recovery? (assuming that I have enough space for the installation).
I am having problems with system imaging my Windows 8 machine to an external hardrive via a usb (??) cable.
First, as mentioned in another thread is the exceptionally long time. The external drive is a WD 1TB BTW. I have two older hardrives on the computer. Just installed the second, which at this time is not being used. Trying several several programs, Paragon Free, Easeus, Macrium Reflect and the built in Windows Backup I was getting 14 hour estimates.
The actual issue I wish to resolve is that during a over 9 hour backup of the primary drive with approx. 34GBs, I noted what appears to be a folder with the Windows backup icon called the name of my computer on my external drive. It contains approximately 3GBs of data in multiple folders. Windows backup is turned off. I did not have this file on the external hardrive and I didn't initiate the OS to perform this. It showed no indication of running and occurred during the Macrium backup.
