Confused with Backup and Recovery 15 Home version

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by Rob G, Aug 31, 2015.

  1. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    I'm pretty stumped after installing the free (demo) version of Backup and Recovery 15 Home.

    I've used PowerQuest's Drive Image from way back and more recently Ghost to produce imaged backups of my systems but now that Ghost is dead and Windows 10 is out, it's time to update to something more modern. Because I own 2 other Paragon utilities, I decided to try B&R 15 but have hit some issues and am hoping someone can help me with them.

    1) How do you save a hard drive image to a file which can be copied to a NAS or a network share or a USB drive? I want to save my bootable Windows 7 drive C to a file which I can store on another hard drive and I want to be able to restore a fully bootable functional hard drive from the file. How do you do this?

    If I go to the "Copy & Migration" tab and then "Backup your hard drive" wizard, it will clone my hard drive to another hard drive but there are no options to have it write the image to a file.

    2) I can go to the "Backup & Restore" tab and then choose "Backup to a VD" then it will allow me to create a backup to a virtual disk -- but is this what I want? I don't care if it's a virtual disk; I just want a file I can copy around.

    3) How do I mount this file so I can access it as a drive? The file I get when I "backup to a VD" will not show up as an "archive" so I can't mount it. I'm confused. Is it not an archive?

    4) Is the "Smart backup wizard" available in Backup and Recovery 15 Home edition? I've been through every option in the UI and I can't find it. But when I look online, this wizard seems to be flexible enough to ask me what device I want the backup to be written to. But I can't find it in the UI.

    Help would be very appreciated!
     
  2. fireworker

    fireworker Registered Member

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    4) Switch to "Legacy view" (in the upper right corner "wrench and screwdriver" icon) then there will be the "Smart backup".
    3) Select "Show VD containers" if you have saved files in pvhd. Select "Show partitions" (If your backup is not visible in the list, you may need to add it using the "green plus" sign).
    pvhd a new format, pbf - old. For a simple user does not have much of a difference, IMHO.
     

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  3. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    I use HDM15S but most versions are somewhat alike. Go "Backup to a VD", a VD is smaller and when done you can copy it to anywhere it'll fit. I backup to a NAS and copy that to another external HD. To mount a VD, click on the Show, select Partitions, right click on the partition and select mount.

    While using W10TP, I probably restored 12-15 times and 2 or 3 times when it hosed W7 on my dual boot as well.
     
  4. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    Thanks guys! I'll give this a shot tomorrow and report back. :)
     
  5. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    I switched to "legacy view" and things were enormously simpler and I used the smart backup to kick off a backup to my NAS. I'll try mounting the backup after the long and slow backup is complete. :)

    So far, so good!
     
  6. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    I ended up turning legacy mode off and backing up using the newer pvhd format and all went well backing it up to the NAS. I still couldn't get to the "show vd containers" "show partitions" and I couldn't figure out how to successfully mount the pvhd file.

    I finally turned legacy mode back on just in case it would work there and I was able to successfully mount the backup as a drive. Is it not possible to do this while in the "newer" UI?

    This program seems to do what it sets out to do, but this UI just seems like a horrible mess to me and even after mastering Drive Image and Ghost and using them for 12-15 years, this UI is still very unintuitive. I imagine if I continue using the program that I'll eventually figure it out but this is so much more difficult than it has to be...

    The next step is the one that I really don't want to do. If I pull the hard drive and replace it with a blank one, can I then reimage from my saved copy and have it all boot correctly? If it can't do that without any glitches then nothing else really matters.

    Have you guys had good luck doing that?
     
  7. routerguy99

    routerguy99 Registered Member

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    "The next step is the one that I really don't want to do. If I pull the hard drive and replace it with a blank one, can I then reimage from my saved copy and have it all boot correctly? If it can't do that without any glitches then nothing else really matters."

    Yes it can do that, I have no problems,

    I couldn't figure out how to successfully mount the pvhd file.
    You can convert to VHD and mount it,

    Chris
     
  8. fireworker

    fireworker Registered Member

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    Strangely, now I also can't mount pvhd.
    But sometime earlier it succeeded.
    ----------------
    I reinstalled HDM (repair) and now PVHD may be mounted without problems.
     
    Last edited: Sep 3, 2015
  9. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    Hmmm. I've been trying to restore my PVHD backup from my NAS drive in the recovery boot environment (WinPE for me since I'm running Windows 7 64 bit).

    I'm able to create and boot the recovery media but it won't load my wireless network drivers for me so I have no lan functionality in the recovery boot environment. I've told it where the INF file is for the wireless network adapter and I've told it to automatically find the network adapter when WinPE boots but nothing seems to work. The wireless network adapter is never initialized.

    Have you guys gotten this to work okay? Restoring from a backup from my NAS is going to be really unpleasant if I can't make the network work in the WinPE environment.

    Or should I create a new thread for this question somewhere else on the forum?

    Rob
     
    Last edited: Sep 5, 2015
  10. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    No problem on a wired NAS using HDM15S.
     
  11. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    Did you have to load NIC drivers for the boot environment or did it just work?
     
  12. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    I just boot the WinPE , select the network panel, locate the network drives, assign a letter and enter passwords, etc. I've probably restored 15 times or so.
     
  13. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    Yeah, but when you built your recovery media, did you have to tell it to include specific INF files before your network would connect?

    That's the real crux of the issue.
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2015
  14. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Nope! Are you using the the built in Boot Media Builder?
     
  15. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    Yeah and my NIC shows up but I need my wireless NIC to show up in the list instead. I just can't seem to find any combination of "choosing INF files" when I build the recovery environment where it'll appear as an option when I boot the recovery environment. This PC is about 50' away from my NAS box so wireless is a good thing. :)
     
  16. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Oh yeah, that's right, one of the drawbacks of BMB is no option to install drivers, you'll have to roll your own for that. I did that before with a free version before moving up where at first a WinPE boot disk was offer where one could install drivers which I needed for USB 3.0 support.
     
  17. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    I used the built in feature to build recovery media in B&R 15 Home and it does offer the ability to include drivers, one for storage and one for NICs (I think). In any case, it let me select the correct INF file for my wireless NIC but it doesn't seem to do anything; the wireless NIC dongle isn't initialized when I boot from the recovery media and of course it's not a valid option in the network pulldown.

    Sounds like I'm going to have another driver issue when I need to do this on my other computers that have only USB3 ports.

    BTW, just had a scare; I went to verify with the recovery media that B&R 15 Home could actually restore my backup image that I made the other day through my network wireless functionality (when Windows was up so the network worked) and it had it fail miserably. I was getting all kinds of weird error messages from the program; turns out that the hard drive that I'd written the backup image to had issues so there was data loss inside the backup file. Tossed that drive and will try that experiment again tomorrow; just wasted hours on that red herring and preparing the new drives for the same test.
     
  18. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Hmm, it's been some time since I needed to install drivers unless HDM15S is different.
     
  19. Rob G

    Rob G Registered Member

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    I submitted a tech support ticket to Paragon and they answered in less than a day; I'm very impressed!

    They said that WinPE isn't compatible with wireless network adapters so I'm basically out of luck.
     
  20. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    I suspected this, but wasn´t sure. In all of Paragon´s documentation that I have browsed, "wireless" or "wi-fi" don´t appear even once.
     
  21. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Maybe not with Paragon's software but if you Google "WinPE isn't compatible with wireless network adapters" you'll find a thread in a W8 forum about using Acronis like that. The thread ends with not a 100% YES answer but maybe worth reading.
     
  22. Robin A.

    Robin A. Registered Member

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    Yes, wireless can be used with some imaging programs. I was referring to Paragon.
     
  23. wptski

    wptski Registered Member

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    Yes, I understand that but Paragon said that WinPE is compatible but that's not correct.
     
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