I installed Paragon B&R 2013 on my Windows 7 based system. I backed up my hard drive onto DVDs and attempted to restore said data to a second drive as a test. Each time the most it will do is recover a 100M System Reserved partition but will not restore the Primary partition. I have tried multiple drives and different systems, checked and unchecked resize the drive, and made multiple attempts at making new restore discs and with different DVD burner drives. Every disc has data in a format that I would anticipate seeing. Recovery never asks for additional discs. Recovery lasts 8 to 12 seconds and says completed successfully after burning only 30M of data on the 100M System reserved partition. The Source drive has 30G of data on a 150G drive. I've tried 60 to 700G drives as the destination. I have tried multiple permutations of settings resulting in warnings of and deletion of existing drive data and partitions; warnings that partition restoration cannot be done in this setting; and silent flawless execution... all with the exact same results. I even tried to restore just the single partition and it gives up the restoration cannot be done warning. I'm stumped. I have used previous Paragon Backup software on my XP machines over the years and have been delighted with the results. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. Any suggestions you could give me would be greatly appreciated. Paul Hensley
To clarify, the SRP (System Reserved Partition) is also a primary partition, and normally the boot or "active" partition. The other is the OS (C: ) partition. Since there is no problem with the SRP, did you try to back up only the OS partition, and to restore it? If so, what happened? It would help if you could post the map of the partitions in the drive. [I had posted along these lines before, but I don´t see the post, so I´m repeating it].
The architecture is as follows: Basic MBR Hard Disk 0 Internal Hard Disk First Hard Disk Track First Track Master Boot Record MBR System Reserved Primary Local Disk C: Primary It is a 150G Hitachi Drive with a fresh version of Windows 7, Avast AV, MS Office 2007, and a few minor utility programs. Pretty basic setup, a standard for all of my systems. In all it is about 30G of data. The target drives have been Hitachi, Maxtor, WD, & Seagate. I saw no point in archiving the C: drive partition only. The whole point of this software is to be able to back up the entire drive (which it does) and then restore it to its original form or adjusted to fit a new drive. (The previous versions I have purchased have done this flawlessly.) I am doing so now. I will post the results when complete. Paul
I made the new recovery DVDs, booted from them, and selected simple recovery. At first it wanted to load the data into the System Reserved partition. I corrected for that and it began loading the data onto the drive. As it prompted I loaded each disc until it said process was complete. Results: System Reserved was reassigned as drive c: and the NTFS (Drive c was unformatted and returned to free space. I took a few minutes to go through the fix boot options but that didn't help at all. Well I must admit I'm totally confused at this behavior. Now what? Paul
Now that's enough to send shivers down my spine. Also confused here. Isn't System Reserved supposed to be "keep your fingers out of here" because it holds fundamental set-up/installation information to make recovery possible aside from Paragon? If so, what happened to Paul would seem to negate my understanding of its purpose. I've been chomped on over the years so many times on something like this I get really edgy. System goes south, supposed good backup isn't or is non-existent. Not fun. Clarification / education appreciated.
To clarify: SRP is a primary NTFS partition that is only strictly needed in Windows 7 when BitLocker encryption is used. But sometimes it´s also present when BitLocker is not enabled or even supported. It usually contains the information required to boot Windows (BCD, etc.). So, it´s the "boot" or "active" partition. If deleted, corrupted, etc., Windows doesn´t boot. The SRP may have not a letter assigned, so it doesn´t appear in Windows Explorer. In this case, the OS (Windows) partition is shown as "C:". In some Dell computers, SRP also contains the OEM image required to restore the computer to its factory configuration. The label assigned to the SRP is "RECOVERY". So, RECOVERY is the boot or active partition, which is confusing. When BitLocker is not used, the boot information can be transferred to or created in the OS (Windows) partition. After this, the OS partition can be set as "active", it becomes the boot partition, and the SRP can be deleted without negative consequences (except that, if present, the OEM image is lost). This topic has been discussed in detail several times in this forum.
