"'Write Change Sector' option while restoring" doesn't that mean that it needs a record of things that have been changed? Without that, how can only changed sectors be written?
Write Changes Only relies on SSD DRAT. It doesn't need a Hash. Write Changes Only doesn't work with old SSDs that don't have DRAT and doesn't work with HDs at all. You can use Write Changes Only with and without Metadata backup/restore. The Write Changes Only feature predated the introduction of Metadata backup/restore.
Write Changed Sectors Only and Metadata Restores are completely different procedures. The latter is analogous to Delta Restores.
I'll think about it ! This software is a great product. I started, (many) years ago, with IFW 1.21 (+- ?) . Before IFW I had DriveImage of PowerQuest. Which was also made by great programmers.
Brian. I tried the clone/copy again on 2 more drives and it works fine. I also tried to do the fix manually instead of running the script. From everything I've read on the tenforum site all I should have to do is the following - 1. run diskpart and give the 100MB fat32 partition a drive letter (assign letter z), after listing and selecting that volume. 2. exit diskpart 3. to recreate the bootloader run "bcdboot c:\windows /s z: /f UEFI" 4. reboot and press keyboard button to select your boot drive. So I did this a couple of times just to make sure. My PC always booted to the internal samsung m.2 drive. I'm going to ask a youtube guy about this because he had a video about fixing a non-bootable UEFI PC recently. If you are nice friends with Terabyte can you get them to tell us what their script does to make a usb drive bootable? The script seems to be encrypted so I can't read it.
It's protected. People were pirating TeraByte scripts a few years ago. Because I have many partitions on my internal SSD I've stopped using Simple Mode for this procedure as I only need to copy 4 partitions. I use IFW to copy ESP, MSR, Win11 and RE partitions to an empty SSD in the USB Dock. Change Disk ID and GUIDs option is used. The usbboot script is run and the computer restarted to the BIOS Boot Menu. WBM on the USB SSD is chosen. The booted Windows has the C: drive letter. The internal Win11 partition has a different drive letter, as expected.
Instead of doing a multi-partition copy with IFW, you can do a multi-partition image restore. That works too.
So, how then do I check to see if my new samsung 990 pro supports drat? I was under the assumption that drat was more of an enterprise feature than a consumer one.
They do! Cool. The manual says that if that option is available then your drive supports it. I'm going to add it to the ini and test it.
It seems to work. Macrium is a bit faster, but I'm assuming that's because macrium doesn't need to look for changes every time because they're tracked and IFW does. Dunno. But after restoring with changes only active, I was able to restore in roughly 2 min. Then I restored again, right after. That time the restore was 32 seconds, so something is I think it's working. Any idea if Protectit works with the tbi rotate script?
Yes, it works. "Changes Only" doesn't give you a faster restore. It still has to read sectors to see if they have changed. Let's say you create a 20 GB backup image and restore it a few minutes later. You use "Changes Only". You might only restore 100 MB instead of 20 GB. You can test this using Crystal DiskInfo. Look at Total Host Writes.
But that's not quite true. If it's faster to read from a drive than write to it, wouldn't a write changed only mode be faster than a complete restore. For me, it's not much; only a 40 second time difference between the two restore methods. Still, it's something. I'm looking to use this as a make-shift rollbackRX, or (sigh) shadow defender. It seems to be working.
You are correct. I hadn't done the test for a long time but Write Changed Sectors Only was definitely faster today.
This happens when ssd runs out of its pSLC cache but until then there shouldn't be any noticeable difference between read & write speeds on any recent/decent NVMe ssd.
@Brian K I'm trying another method of backup using a VHD as a restore disk sort of. I created a VHD on another m.2 drive, cloned C: to it with IFW, added a boot menu item for it (which works). I then made an image of C: with IFW and put it on the VHD drive as the backup. If C: fails, I boot into the VHD, run IFW to restore it's C: image to a new plugged in replacement m.2 drive. What do you think? It's sort of like rebooting with a restore UFD but I don't have to look for that item or hook up my drive with the C: image on it. I will of course store a copy of the VHD on another unplugged drive.
I made a boot menu item using this command "Bcdboot D:\windows" where D is the VHD drive letter when mounted. I get the menu just before Windows loads as usual. A choice of the main windows install or the VHD. If windows main install fails, I just select the VHD which is basically identical to my main install but it's on another internal drive. You may be thinking how can I boot the VHD, which will be the new C drive, and then restore the image to the C drive? Haha, IFW comes through again. I tried this last night and it worked. When you come to the page where IFW says it has to reboot to restore C drive, I noticed a check box at the bottom of the window saying something like "manually select the drive to restore to". I selected a new m.2 drive plugged in via USB and restored the C image to that. Once done open PC and replace failed C drive with it.
