Backupr&Recovery Free transfer to new system, larger disk, dual boot

Discussion in 'Paragon Drive Backup Product Line' started by otropogo, Feb 24, 2010.

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  1. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    Have just searched the knowledge base and got two hits. I specified B&R 10.1 Free in the version, but don't see it in the list of programs appended to the answers. The closest I can find is 10.1 "personal". Does this mean that the information doesn't apply to my version?

    My questions relate to two issues. The simpler one is this:

    Transferring the contents of a drive to a drive of a different size.

    The more complicated one is this:

    Transferring a bootable partition to a new system.

    Does the free version support either or both of these functions?

    If so, in the first instance, does it matter whether the target disk is formatted or appropriately partitioned before beginning the transfer.

    I also need to know where the program needs to be when writing the backup. I want to use the target hard drive to receive the backup directly, then just move the drive to the new system.

    Right now the program is installed on one of the two system partitions of the source drive. Can it back up the partition from which it's launched?

    If so, how much RAM does it need to work properly?

    If not, how can I achieve this? Would I have to create a new partition with its own OS, install PB&R to that and run it from the new partition? Or could I install and run in from a partition on the target drive?

    Oh, almost forgot - I'm trying to back up a Windows 98/Win2k dual boot system, where Windows is in a FAT32 partition, and W2k is on NTFS. Since PB&R doesn't support Win98 (and W98 can't see the NTFS partition), I've installed it under W2K.

    The source disk is 17GB, the target disk is 250GB.
     
  2. SIW2

    SIW2 Registered Member

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    You will be fine using the free version to restore an image of a 17gb drive to a 250gb drive.

    If you imaged a bootable partition it will be restored as such.

    Paragon can image the partition it is installed on .

    Alternatively, you can run the backup operation from any other o/s you have it installed on , or from the boot cd.

    You can restore to unallocated space , or to a partition that is large enough.

    Hope it helps.

    Yes, I often restore a partition on the same drive I have Paragon installed on.

    Hope it helps
     
  3. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    Thanks. Not sure if we're entirely on the same page though.

    My intention is to copy the two system partitions from the original 17GB drive onto a 250GB drive, then install the 250 GB drive in a second system as disk 0 and (dual) boot from it.

    When I start on this path with Paragon, it gives me various "archive" options - two levels of compression and an uncompressed archive. So it looks as though the archive itself is not a working copy of the orginal partitions, and is meant to be restored either to the original drive or to a third drive.

    Have I misunderstood? Can I simply move the drive with the archived partitions to the new system, boot with the Paragon rescue disk, and set up the 250 GB drive to boot from the second system?

    If not, how can I execute my plan?

    I presently have a "copy" made with another program. The Win2K boot manager comes up, but when I choose to boot W2K, the system locks with the following message:

    "Windows 200 could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt:

    <windows 2000 root> \system32\ntoskrnl.exe

    Please re-instal a copy of the above file"

    However, the file in question IS in place, and has the same byte count as the original on the working system.

    On the off chance it was corrupted, I changed its name and copied the original source file from the working system, and tried again. The same error message was repeated!

    When I boot into Windows 98, I can sometimes access it in Safe Mode (about half the time). But can't get a pointing device to work, not even a serial mouse, so it's impossible to adjust the display, etc..
     
  4. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    I've just run through the process for backing up to local drive, and learned while looking up hot processing, that I have to enable it in order to back up a Fat32 partition. And since I'm backing up from Win2k, not Win98, that partition isn't locked (??), so I have to enable hot processing "always".

    That leaves the question of selecting the "Hot processing temporary drive". The drop down menu shows the options c, f, g,k, and l. C and F are the source partitions I want to back up. G and K are their (non-working) copies on the target disk, and L is the large remaining fat32 partition on the target disk where I intend to copy the archive.

    Questions I couldn't answer with the help files:


    1. Can/should I designate the target partition as the "hot processing temporary drive", or would one of the other partitions be better?

    The target partition has 21GB free, and the archive is 10.2GB, the largest free space in the other partitions is 5GB in the two NTFS partitions, F and K.

    2. Would it make any difference in reliability to reformat the storage partition L from Fat32 to NTFS?

    Am trying the backup with L as both archival and hot processing temporary drive right now. PB&R is showing no errors and time to completion of 50 minutes.
     
  5. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    Ooops! After 12 minutes of completing "sub-operation", everything stopped, and a window popped up demanding:

    "please specify where to find next archive volume"

    The progress window showed only 24% progress, and only the primary partition (Fat32 Win9:cool: backed up, although I specified all of disk 0 when configuring the wizard. I tried clicking on the remaining F drive, but got no active button except "cancel", after which a window popped up and reported :

    "Operation Failed - not enough space in the new partition to keep user data (if you make the partition with data too small)" [sic]

    I'm guessing the original German text for this window makes more sense.

    When I clicked on "more options" in the popup, I got:

    Error source: Hard Disk Manager
    Error code: 0x10019

    When I looked at the target partition "L", I found a single folder in it containing no files, no folders, 0 bytes.

    I have no idea what just happened. Apparently, the program can write to a fat32 partition, else what was it doing for 12 minutes? And where did it put the 3.9GB of data it reported writing?
     
  6. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    Well, it seems that PB&R just won't or can't write to a fat32 partition. Too bad it doesn't warn the user but lets him go ahead and designate one.

    After trying to archive just the primary partition with the same weird result - too little space.. I reformated drive L to ntfs and tried archiving the whole of disk 0 again. This time there were no errors, and the program transitioned to archiving the extended partition and logical drive F automatically.

    Only the time remaining counter malfunctioned, remaining almost unchanged for 15 minutes, and still reading 10 minutes remaining when the backup completed.

    The whole operation took 32 minutes for 10.2GB
     
  7. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    After successfully completing the backup of all the partitions on disk 0 to the second primary partition , L:, of disk 1, I installed the archival disk as the boot disk on the new system.

    I booted with the PB&R recovery CD and chose the restore option. The disk already had a copy of the Win98 system in the first primary partition C:, and the Win2K system in the logical drive F:

    Since I couldn't restore the disk, I restored each partition separately - first the Win98, and then the Win2K, overwriting the existing data.

    When everything had been restored, I booted from the hard drive, and got the boot manager, just as before, only now it displayed "on volume 3" beside Windows 2000.

    When I tried to boot into Win2K, I got the following message:

    Stop: ,0x0000007B (0xEB41884C, 0xC0000034,0x00000000,0x00000000)
    INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE

    When I chose "Windows" the error message was:

    "while initializing device CONFIGMG WINDOWS PROTECTION ERROR
    You need to restart your computer.

    On rebooting Win98, I could get the Safe Mode dsiplay, but without any mouse. Sometimes I could move the cursor with the keyboard, but on other tries, even that froze.

    Stumped...
     
  8. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    Today I took my "restored" drive to a third system, a Dell Millenium 4300 with a 1.5Mhz celeron cpu and 512MB of PC133 RAM, and tried to boot from it.

    On this system the response was simple:

    "NTLDR is missing"

    I didn't even get the Win2k boot manager menu this time.

    I was suprised to get an even worse response from this system than from the one previously tried, an Intel D865GLC Motherboard with a 2.5Mhz celeron cpu and 1GB of DDR RAM .

    I assumed the Dell would be a better match to the hardware and firmware of the original system.

    These results are not very encouraging...

    What do you do to recover if your motherboard dies, have an identical one for a spare?
     
  9. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    And the saga goes on...

    Yesterday I decided to try saving to an external USB drive, so I could then do a whole disk restore from the archive to the target drive. My first test indicated excruciatingly slow transfer of the archive via USB 2.0 - the estimated time to archive 10.2GB uncompressed was shown as over 6 hours! (Note to self - don't buy a new laptop unless it supports USB3...) So I waited until bedtime and restarted it then.

    I watched for a while (the first 15 minutes or so) as the ETA shrank slowly to about 6 hours, 15 minutes, and stabilized there, with a combined read/write speed of about 778KB/s (archiving via the IDE channel had shown a rate of 5.6MB/s)

    This morning, the Operation details page showed a "Time elapsed" of 3:51, which, according to my calculations (10200MB/13860seconds), resolves to 736KB/s.

    Apparently, there's something seriously amiss with Paragon B&R's estimation of remaining time to completion, as at the stated rate of 778KB/s displayed 15 minutes into the backup, 6 hours and 15 minutes would have sufficed to archive 17.5GB...

    Next project - restore the backup to hard drive and try booting from it again.
     
  10. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    I next used the same original win2K system to "restore" the source 17GB disk to the same 40GB target disk used in the previous failed restores. This time copying from the archive on the USB 2.0 - connected hdd to the IDE hard drive (installed as disk 1 on the system).

    The "Operation statistics" window again displayed mathematically unbelievably bizarre figure. Only this time much worse than before.

    After stabilizing after some 12 minutes at a "Time remaining of 4 hours 12 minutes" the window gave the following performance figures:

    Read speed: 1.1 MBs

    Write speed: 35.1 MBs

    Read/write speed: 845 KBs

    Data read: 905.7 MB

    Data writen: 905.7 MB

    Data processed: 666.7 MB (the .7 of the last three "measurements" never changed until "1GB" was reached, and after that changed by increments of .1 GB)


    Data to be processed: 4.1 GB (the size of the primary partition)

    As the backup progressed, both the "read speed" and "write speed" steadily declined (the latter by more than 20% from a high of more than 40 MBs in the first ten minutes to 32.1 MBs by minute 30. Yet the "Read/write speed" steadily increased to 858 KBs! Data processed lags .2 GB to .3 GB behind data written and read.

    Meanwhile, the combined time elapsed and time remaining remains stable at 4 hours, 15 minutes...
     
  11. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    After taking some time off for other tasks, I returned to check on the backup process, and found things getting even stranger!

    The process had finished restoring the primary partition of 4.1GB, and was now processing the 6.1 extended/logical partitions.

    The most striking change was in the "time elapsed/time remaining" fields, which now totalled only 2 hours, 35 minutes, despite the fact that the read and write speeds had continued to drop (to 890 KBs and 27.1 MBs, respectively), while combined read/write speed was showing as 858 KBs.

    But as I watched the display more closely, I noticed something even stranger - the read time was showing 50 minutes, while the write time showed less than 2 minutes!

    Over a period of 15 minutes or so, the program reports having spent more than ten minutes reading data, and less than 30 seconds writing it...

    The window presently shows 59 minutes of read time and 2 minutes of write time, 3GB of 6.1GB processed, and 30 minutes of "time remaining".

    Can anyone makes sense of these figures? My basic math skills can't make them add up.
     
  12. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    I took another break to watch the US hockey team tie up the gold medal game in the last 20 seconds. When I came back, an error pop-up was waiting for me:

    "Integrity error has occurred

    Archive integrity error between sectors 10946600 and 10947112!

    Ignore, Ignore All, Abort"

    The time elapsed 2:44:22

    time remaining: 00:22:22

    read time: 01:17:18

    write time 00:02:39

    and for the first time, data read, data written, and data processed are all the same at 3.9GB, with 2.2GB remaining.

    I have a feeling this isn't going to end well either....

    I choose "ignore", and the "time remaining" immediately increased by half a minute, while the program restarted.

    A minute later, another integrity error occurred. So now I choose "ignore all", since there's no explanation or help available for these options either, and the program continues its restore process.

    The combined elapsed and remaining time is now back up to 3 hours, 35 minutes. With 10 minutes to go...
     
  13. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    The restore process finishes without further surprises on the revised schedule with the following end stats:

    elapsed time: 3:42:27

    read time: 2:13:50

    write time: 00:04:01 (these last two times presumably for the 6.1GB second sub-process only).

    The program reports the process completed, I shut down the system, install the drive once again in the Dell Dimension 4300 (NOT "Millenium" as previously reported), and once again get the same refusal to boot and error message:

    "NTLDR is missing"

    hmmm. What's left to try?

    Letting PB&R run a scan on the target drive before restoring, and thus perhaps eliminating the "integrity errors"?

    Initiating the restore operation from the rescue CD with the target disk in the Disk 0 position on the target system?

    Any ideas...?
     
  14. otropogo

    otropogo Registered Member

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    Today, I tried the last trick I can think of to reinstall my dual boot setup to another hard drive on another system.

    I installed the target hard drive as disk 0 on the target PC, then booted with the PB&R rescue CD. The archived backup files were on an external USB hdd.

    I was presented with only one option, which appeared to contain all of the subsidiary archives (for the extended and logical drives where Win2K resides). And the target disk 0 was grayed out in the drop down menu, while the source drive containing the archive showed normally.

    However, when I clicked on disk 0 as the target, the program accepted it and subsequently showed "Restore partition or disk" as the selected procedure.

    When the restore started, the time remaining was remarkably short, and the read and write times much faster than on the previous restore, done to the same disk from the same source, but on a 400Mhz system with 512MB of pc100 RAM. This time the cpu was a 1.5Mhz celeron with 1GB of pc133 RAM.

    A proper comparison isn't possible, though, because the restore wizard installed only the MBR and the primary partition of 6.1GB, ignoring the logical partition. It took just under 18 minutes to do that, at reported read/write speeds of 14/32MBs.

    Then it stopped and reported the restore was complete, despite the fact that the archive is 10.2GB in size...

    After doing this in "advanced" mode, I tried it again in default mode. The only difference this time was that I got a warning message at the start that I was trying to restore the archive to a disk that was different from the original (DUH!), and that there might be data loss as a result ...

    In both modes, the restore function run from the rescue CD presents a radically different display while processing than that run from the hard drive installation.


    I'd tried without success to save a log on the first try. On the second try I succeeded, but don't have it handy right now.

    And the result? After both restores, the result was the same as on the previous attempt:

    "NTLDR is missing

    Please restart the computer"


    Perhaps if someone who understands how this software works deigns to respond to this thread, it may be worth the effort to post the log here. Until then, I can't think of anything else I can try.

    I tried this program because it was listed at www.pricelesswarehome.org among the "priceless" freeware programs of 2009 selected by alt.comp.feeware newsgroup participants. In six years of relying on this list, this is the worst disappointment I've encountered.
     
  15. MrBrian

    MrBrian Registered Member

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