Full drive backup and MBR restore

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by mjschust, Dec 29, 2009.

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  1. mjschust

    mjschust Registered Member

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    I've been evaluating Drive Backup Professional for personal use for a few days now, and it seems to have all the functionality I need, however I've been a little confused by the behavior of the disk backup functionality. My system has two primary partitions (one with an NTFS file system for Windows XP and the other with an ext3 FS for Linux), and one logical partition for Linux swap. I am running Drive Backup on Windows XP and am attempting to backup the entire drive, storing the image on an external hard drive. There are three things:

    1. I've backup-ed my entire drive twice, the first time it was able to backup the entire drive online, that is, within Windows. The second time it had to restart the computer and load Drive Backup at boot. While I did open a browser the second time, I didn't expect it to be able to backup the entire drive without a restart at all. Is this normal?

    2. The first time (without restart) created an image that was substantially (~15GB) larger than the second.

    3. Both times I had Drive Backup backup the entire drive, including the first track (MBR). However, the MBR does not appear as a component to restore in the restore wizard. I'm able to backup and restore the MBR separately, so why can't I restore it from a full drive image?

    Thanks for any help you can give.
     
  2. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    Hi mj,

    1. Not sure why that happened - I never need a restart.

    2. Are you sure all the partitions were selected both times ? If not , that would acount for the size difference.
    You might use the Volume Explorer/File Transfer Wizard, or Restore Wizard to browse both the backup images and see what is in one , but not the other.

    3. To get the option to either restore the partition, or the mbr (or both ) from a complex archive:

    Select the complex archive ( click it to highlight) then click Next:

    PAR-RESTORE-COMPLEX-ARC-1-2009-12-29_234316.jpg

    Expand the complex arc by clicking the little cross next to it. Then select what you want to restore and click Next.

    PAR-REST-COMPLEX-ARC-2009-12-29_234419.jpg


    How to Restore with Paragon 10

    Hope it helps
     
    Last edited: Dec 29, 2009
  3. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    No, this is not normal. In drive backup under "Tools" > "Settings" > "Hot processing option", make sure the box to enable hot processing is checked. If it is not check then Paragon will not be able to perform backup of locked system partition online.

    I don't know what happened here, perhaps one of your partitions was missing from the second backup

    Paragon automatically backsup your MBR when you backup your system partition and restores it automatically when you restore your system partition. You do not need to backup and restore MBR separately. The option is there in case you just want to backup only your MBR and first track for some reason.
     
  4. mjschust

    mjschust Registered Member

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    It looks like I accidentally unchecked the hot processing option.

    All of my data seems to be there in both archives, and I'm *fairly* certain I didn't change the compression setting between backups, do you think it could be a difference between online backup and restart backup? It seems that it's too big a difference in size to be simply a matter of Windows clean up...


    What does this mean if my backup has multiple partitions? Will Drive Backup restore the MBR if I choose to restore any whole partition, or only the entire archive?
     
  5. Raza0007

    Raza0007 Registered Member

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    Then the difference could again be the settings. You didn't accidentally uncheck skip auxiliary files under "tools" > "settings" > "copy and backup options" did you?

    In fact in copy and backup options you should only have "skip auxiliary files" and "skip archive files" checked. All others should be unchecked. checking and unchecking these copy and backup options can result in a huge difference in image size.

    The MBR will be automatically restored if you restore the system partition or the entire disk. If you restore any other partition you do not generally need to restore the MBR, as the MBR exists only on the first track of the first partition and is not overwritten if any other partition is restored.
     
  6. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    The mbr is on the first track of the drive. It is not inside a partition.

    There is usually no need to restore the mbr, it's unlikely to be damaged.

    In the event the mbr executable code does get damaged, or if you want to overwrite it - e.g. you have grub or some other 3rd party boot manager installed on it that you no longer want - there are many ways to do it. [Windows boot managers are not installed on the mbr - they are on the "System" partition.]

    E.G. you could restore a backup, or run startup repair from the o/s installation dvd, or use the bootsect command with /mbr switch, or simply rt click the Hard Drive ( not a partition ) in Paragon main window and select Update mbr.

    The latter will actually write standard mbr code to the drive - it is capable handing control to the bootsector code of any o/s.

    Hope it helps.
     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2009
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