Restore to smaller harddrive

I am currently working on building my golden windows 7 image at work of a virtual machine environment running VMWare server. I had originally built the basics of the image on a Latitude e5510 as i need to look at how the image reacted to hardware and now that i have that more or less figured out i am moving to a vm environment for testing since snapshotting will save me a lot of time from reimage my physical reference machine.

getting to the point i used Paragon Backup and recovery Free to take a harddisk image of the laptop (about 16.6 GB) and I am trying to put that to a virtual disk. the virtual disk is a smaller harddrive which I didn't think would be an issue. Problem is that the restore wizard mixes up the drive letters and sets up the System Reserved Partition to C: and the main os drive to [no name]. Also i only restore the reserved partition skipping the main partition leaving me with a boot loader and no OS.

I am trying to figure out if
1. Moving to a smaller drive is not possible as i would definitely run into this in the future.
2. If it is possible am i imaging the reference computer wrong which is preventing me from doing this.

I like paragon especially the archive mounting portion so i would like to get this working.

Images below to provide more of an idea whats going on

Harddisk before restore
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f199/NegativeZero000/Screenshots/disk.jpg

Archive details
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f199/NegativeZero000/Screenshots/archive.jpg

Job Summary
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f199/NegativeZero000/Screenshots/jobcomplete.jpg

Post Job View
http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f199/NegativeZero000/Screenshots/postjob.jpg

Thanks,
From Me

 

Did you try restoring the partitions individually?

 

My initial thought was just to do that but it told me that it was not a supported operation for the image that i took.

"This image can't be restored on the current selection."

Which im guessing is because i backed up the harddisk and not the partition itself

 

Not sure what the issue is.

Paragon images can be restored to a smaller drive - it uses file level restore - long process , but it does work.

Perhaps that is not available from the Linux boot disc ? - I don't know because I put my paragon apps. on my winpe3 media.

Perhaps it would be easier to shrink the 233 gb partition to below the size of the target vhd - then make an image.

 

I am assuming that you mean to shrink partition before I take the image. It seems tedious to do so but i will if that's what's required so be it ( as long as it will expand to the size of the target disk i suppose thats fine.) Can the recovery cd resize partitions?

Is it possible to shrink the partition at the same time that i take the image thereby not affecting the reference machine?

Or a better question would be : Can i make an image that is HD size independent. Similar to how ghost images work. I'm used to ghost but the company i work for cant really afford it.

Or. I made this ISO from the Recovery Media Builder and accepted the defaults. Is there another way to do it?

 

Yes.

No - shrink it first - then take the image.

Paragon images are size independent - you can restore to a smaller drive - ususally - I think your issue may be that the linux cd with the free version doesn't supprt that function.

However, restoring to a smaller drive takes longer.

I usually shrink my partitions before imaging. The shrink proces is almost instant - but only if it is just free space that is being shrunk.

You can make a winpe3 media easily enough - much better.

make a winpe3 media

create-or-download-windows-7-repair-disc



You could also try making two partition images - one of the little system partition - the other of the windows partition.

Then restore each partition.

You can resize up during restore - pretty sure you can do that from the Linux disc also.

 

I am trying a backup with a the winpe3 disc. I made a job that did a resize > hd backup > and resize back. Will let you know how that works out.

That ISO it spits out is very versatile. It also looks like you had a hand in making. How did you go about doing that?

Also i will try and see if the linux disc does do resizes as well. If i do one before the imaging maybe i can just get into the habit of that

Thanks for getting me this far. Keep you posted.

 

I backed up the partition as was able to successfully write it to the VM i had set up. The partition was larger than the image so there was no issue. I'll play with it to get the most efficient solution but this put me towards that solution.

Thanks for the help.

 

Yes, I made that.

Sorry it isn't quite as fancy as the one I use ( wireless connection - Aero, sound, flash, themes .net framework 2.0, disk mgmt , device mgmt - everything really - except media centre, LOL ) - but it would have been tricky doing that with a .cmd file.


Glad it worked for you. Please keep us posted.

If there is another app. you want to include in your winpe3 media - let me know and will try to see if it can be done easily.

 

If you are willing. I would be more interested in how you made the disc in the first place so that i can make my own.

Either way thanks again.

 

WOW.

Well, that's a bit like saying to Paragon - "can you show me how to make a partition manager "

Have you done any of this stuff before - like making bartpe or anything related?

Because you are using win 7 it is a bit easier - at least you can mount the boot.wim easily with dism.

 

Forgive me i didnt mean for you to think that i wanted you to tell me how do the entire thing from scratch or anything. Think of it as me being flattered by your work and am curious about it. I have some familiarity with BartPE and i used that many moons ago to make a basic disc to run ghost from so i could multicast.

I am using the ParPE.iso to pxe boot from and would like to make its footprint smaller so that takes up less bandwidth on transfer making everything faster. I was hoping for a nudge in a general direction. Some of the tools included I don't see myself using so I wanted to play with it and maybe in the future add some of my own

 

Yes, by all means - customize as you wish.

Have sent a pm which may help.

 

if I could resurrect this common issue. I've done this job before, twice, imaging a larger drive and restoring to smaller, and I just can't recall what I did to get the archive right. where is the setting? I did not shrink the volume via disk management... still have the original drive, original size partition.
I must be not reading a menu right or something...
i'm now using the 2011 advanced free version...

 

If i understand and can relate my situation. The issue lies in when you are capturing the original image. Before you start the capture you resize the partition to just above the minimal size ie. if the the os partiion takes up 10GB on a 200GB drive you would have to first shrink the partition to say 11GB and then capture the image. The image can then be put on any drive with at least 11GB of space.

When you go to deploy the image to another computer you click on More Options on the bottom of the Restore Wizard and there is a check box for Resize Partition Proportionality which will grow the partition to the maximum size.

Forgive me if the instructions are misleading or vague. This is what i do and it works for me just fine.

 

If that's the way it is intended to work it is pretty dumb! Most products backup the in-use sectors, not any free space, and then can restore to any drive or partition that is at least the size of the in-use sectors. However, if there is a problem with the shrinking I can see where your method would get around it since it doesn't have to do any shrinking at the restore stage.

If you have ticked the option to back-up every sector on the partition or disk regardless if it is being used or not then I can see where you need to have the full partition size available.

 

I don't recall the issue i had at the time other than when i made this post i was using the linux boot disc and when i tried to move the image, created with the default settings, to a smaller drive the wizard failed to copy the drive.

I have used Ghost in the past which does not have this issue but since i needed a free solution and this seems to work i put up with it. Its 30 seconds of extra steps and all in all the product does work. I have no need / time to see if i can improve those 30 seconds so i just live with it. If someone else know what needs to be done to avoid this they can chime in but that is what SIW2 did for me in the beginning to get me this far.

 

if you are booted/running on the partition to be backed, how to resize? I don't think that can be done. Do you mean, remove the drive, slave it to another system, use Disk Management or some app, hack it down some, reinstall it, run the backup, remove/restore?

 

Read the full of this thread. It contains the instructions that i followed to create a WinPE boot disc. Again if you are using the linux boot disc that is what was giving me the hassle in the beginning. Following the instructions here is what i am doing now and it is working fine.

 

First a comment about drive letters as seen in the Linux recovery environment. Linux uses a different letter assigning algorithm so the letters may or may not be the same. This is why all your partitions should have meaningful labels on them. The drive letter assignments all get fixed up when Windows restarts unless there is a virtual machine issue.

Does this solve the original question about restoring to a smaller partition? I realize it is a real not a virtual drive.

I did this with both the Linux recovery CD for B&R 10 Home (paid) and B&R 2011 Free.

I had a partition whose total space was greater than the total size of the partition it was being restored to. The used space was smaller as usual.

Booted up the CD.
Selected the B&R program at the top of the list not the Simple Restore Wizard underneath it. This wizard may work but I didn't use it.
Select the Restore Wizard from the menu bar at the top.
Advanced Mode box is ticked.
Go through the wizard doing the restore and then you will come to a screen that shows the size of the partition being restored to with a recommended size which is probably the size of the partition being restored. A slider allows you to change the value of this partition up to the maximum available and down to the used sector size. I selected a value near the used sector size.
Did the restore and booted up the restored partition.
Windows Explorer showed the partition is now at the value I selected and the fact the original partition was larger than that available was no problem.

 

helpful... a little...Re: Restore to smaller harddrive

thank you, seekforever.

all, forgive the multiple posts but I'm trying to figure out the best way to glean expert help here..

the above post is helpful because it tells me what I'm NOT getting.
so I downloaded 2011 Free Advanced just a few days ago, so its fresh. I've used Paragon B&R with no drama no issues previously to restore big drives to small ones... so uneventful it was that I can't really recall doing anything unusual. this includes Win7 bootable drives, which can sink the boat of paragon's 'rivals'.

so I have a 60'ish GB Crucial SSD. It works. I loaded Winxp Pro on it from 'scratch' with a normal oem cd. no issues at all. But I have a spinning drive that I want to clone - its a nominal 80gb sata drive. it has all my fine touches on it. I archived it two different ways, suspecting maybe USB was the issue.
1. backed up image to the "spinning" drive, then copied the archive to a USB drive [spinning, not flash].
2. backed up the drive to the USB device directly.
- Both images come out about the same. i used the laptop some today so there's a little variance in the arc size.

I made a bootable CD image from the new program. it works, apparently.

1. Following exactly your routine, above [after 4 failed attempts otherwise], what I do not see is any chance to modify entries. I tick "advanced" mode, per the notes, but there's really nothing there to monkey with.
- On first screen I am to pick the archive. I do so, off the attached USB drive, there is only one arc there. I pick it.
- on Next screen ... "Inspect the image". it all looks kosher. 74.5GB drive, 24.1GB used.... logical & data structures. there's no options or adjustments or anything in this pane.
- Next: "Select Partition or Hard Disk to Restore To"
The default appears to be genuine. It shows me two entries in the lower part, the 'parent' entry is simply "Basic Hard Disk 0". The sub-entry is the partition - NOTE that the first column, "N" has no entry for the Partition info.
Also note that I'm not allowed to select that sub-entry, only the "parent" entry - Hard Drive 0. I tried this with the default, [didn't work] and then I tried first to "create Partition" but the result re: this screen is identical. I note that when I "created" a partition, NTFS, using all available space on the SSD, the operation took 5 seconds. I know an SSD is fast, but that fast?
This is 1 second longer than the many failed attempts at restoring the image.

- So, I play along, on the Next screen I get the projected "before and after" screen: Hard Disk 0 before the Restore, and Hard Disk 0 after: they are the same - the whole drive is "Free". Obviously implying a big error.

I"m stumped. [oh, also I have tried checking, and unchecking, the 'Restore Proportionately" option. same/same... 4 seconds, "close", and the drive wiped again.]

The only reason I stick with this process is that I am a Tech, and this should not be a hard or mysterious exercise... there are a LOT ... LOTTTT of people transferring over to SSD's these days. I need a swift way to do it so I can move on to the next.

 

I'm a bit short on time right now but I'll go through the process again tomorrow and compare your results to what I see.

Although you have a more serious problem right now, I think you may have another problem using the Free version to restore an XP image to the SSD. It will not be properly aligned and that can slow it by 50% although this should have nothing to do with your unsuccessful partition restores. There are some Paragon products that align SSDs properly but I am not familiar enough with Paragon to say much about them and SSD alignment. If you are unfamiliar with this issue Google it and you will find lots of info.

 

thank you seek.
did as you suggested. I see what you're talking about. so, firmware is the latest [this is a crucial C300, 64gb], easy enough to do the alignment on one of my win7 machines.
What I'm not clear on is this: irrespective of the imaging package I use, is it not possible to clone the spinning sata win xp pro image and have it come out "aligned"? the implication is "ain't no way!"...

 

I wouldn't write it off totally but I don't really know for sure particularly with Paragon since I don't have that much experience with it.

My friend did it but he was restoring a Windows 7 spinning HD image to a SSD drive that had been set up with Windows 7 and he was using Acronis True Image. I believe he booted up a W7 installation DVD and pretended he was going to install it on the SSD. After the partitioning and formatting phase was done he abandoned the installation. This method will setup the MBR and the correct offset.

If Paragon will restore to an existing partition without adjusting its starting position, it should work (hopefully).

 

It looks like Paragon B&R Free 2011 will do it but it takes a bit of manipulating. The idea is to use a mechanism to get the partition on the SSD or target drive aligned first then restore to it. I used a Windows 7 intallation DVD but anything that will set it up will work.

Note: This was done using a spinning HD not a SSD but that shouldn't matter (famous last words). It is also meant to address XP but most should apply to Win 7 as well but not the resettng the System Reserved Partion to Inactive.
The "click on Next" is not shown in the instructions.

Be very careful you are dealing with the correct partition - ideally disconnect your existing system drive if present so you can't accidently overwrite it.

Boot with W7 install DVD:
Use Custom/Advanced setup
Drive Options (Advanced)
New Partition of whatever size you want/need.
It will create the partition and also a 100MB System Reserved Partition
Don't bother to format but you can if you wish.
Next will start the file copying - turn off PC
You now have an aligned partition on the drive.

Boot Paragon Free 2011 Recovery CD or USB stick:
Normal Mode
Paragon Backup and Recovery program
Look at the target disk layout
This is important for XP (leave alone for Windows 7):
Note the System Reserved partiton is marked active.
Select it (highlight)
Partition (top menu line) -- Modify -- Set Inactive
Select the partition that will receive the XP image
Partition -- Modify -- Set Active

Note that you can see the partition offset in Paragon (Click on the partition of interest in the graphic to select it), Partition -- Properties -- Advanced Tab in the Partition Information Window. The Win7 setup procedure will give an First Sector of 33000Hex whereas the standard XP first sector is 3FHex (63 decimal).

Wizards -- Restore Wizard
Select image (note Advanced Mode is ticked)
Image Properties is displayed
Select (highlight) Partition not Basic Hard disk above (if you do select Disk it appears to want to do all the partitions. There is a resize proportionally box but there is no individual control on partition resizing. Partition is what we want to deal with and an option to resize the partition being restored will be presented.)

Select Destination to Restore Chosen Partition or Disk
(Be careful you get the correct one, you may have to scroll down)
Select the partition - this is the one you made active earlier
Next screen allows you to resize, I didn't resize.
Apply - the partition restoration should now start and run to completion

System should reboot normally and you can check the alignment in XP or 32 bit W7 by running MSinfo32 (Run MSinfo32)
Examine Components -- Storage -- Disk -- Partition Start Offset (for the OS partition). The number provided is decimal and must be divisible by 4096 (answer is a whole number like 1234 not like 1234.3)

Like I said this was done on a regular HD not a SSD.

Only strange thing I see is that Windows Disk Management does not show (Active) beside the C partition. It obviously is active as Windows Disk Management has the Set Active command grayed out and Windows does boot. I suspect Paragon in setting it Active didn't do it totally correctly but that's a guess.