Help! Disk Restore Problems

I am running Drive Backup Pro 9.0.

I am trying to restore to a larger 500GB HDD outside of the PC from an external HDD. The image I previously created was for an entire 160GB HDD with 3 partitions; one primary NTFS boot, one extended NTFS, and one primary FAT32.

I wanted to expand the boot partition and leave the other partitions their existing sizes. Only way I know of doing that is to restore each partiton individually. The disk restore only has the proportional option - is that correct?

I tired to restore the boot partiton first after expanding size. It failed with an error message saying "cross linked files?" I think I selected the wrong partiton howeve. I think I selected the archive of the extended partiton. However, the files it restored were indeed from the boot drive? The archive is strange in that the boot drive archive is shown after the extended partiton archive? But the second archive shown has an earlier time and is definitely the boot drive archive.

Anyway my questions.

1. The restore has to done positionally in reference to the old drive - is this correct? In my case, the boot drive first, the extended partition second, and the FAT32 position last.

2. Do I have to assign drive letters? I know the boot partiton was C: but I am not sure of the other two.

3. Will the boot drive partiton be automatically marked in the MBR of the new drive as active?

 

I have been thinking about this a bit more.

My gut is telling me that the second partition, the extended one, has to be restored prior to the primary partiton which contains XP OS and registry files.
The cross linked file error from Paragon is probably occuring when the primary boot partition is restored since the registry is looking for files on the extended partiton?

So should I partition and format the new drive first? Then restore the extended drive image first? Then the FAT32 partition that just contains Norton Ghost image files but may be referenced in the registry - not sure about that. Then last the primary boot partiton? Or can I just do a full drive restore to the partitioned and formated new drive?

Sure wish there was a way to specify multiple partition sizes on a full disk restore ......................

 

Well, I got tired of waiting for a reply so I just did a full disk restore using the proportional resize partitions option.

The restore worked! Well it restored without any errors. Won't know for sure until I install the HDD in the PC.

This also confirms my assumptions about extended partitions. Would be nice if Paragon would provide details on how to do a multiple partition restore when one or more of the partitions is extended.

I did have one issue with the full disk restore. The proportional resize map prior to restore showed that the three new partitons would be sized 200GB, 200GB, and 63GB. Well, after restore the first(boot) partition ended up sized its original 65GB size with 135GB of unallocated space behind it. Have no clue why it did that? Now I have to find a utility to resize that boot partiton .....

 

You can restore any partitions to anywhere you like.

The partition table info is updated accordingly.

You can resize during restore if the target is larger.

If you are restoring a system partition - then boot.ini or bcd are automatically updated by paragon at the end of the restore process.

 

Like I said in my last posting, the restore with proportional resizing did not resize the system partition. It is its old size of 65GB. It just created 135GB of unallocated space after the system partiton and prior to the restored extended partition which it did resize to 200GB.

I have the restored drive now hooked up as a USB device to my PC. Can I use WIN 7's disk manager to expand the XP system partition on the restored drive? I don't want to corrupt that restored XP partition by doing so.

 

WIn 7 disk management worked with no problems on that XP drive I had connected via a USB to IDE adapter. It took a grand total of 3 secs. to expand the system partiton into all available unallocated space that was adjacent to the system partiton.

 

Yes, I expected it would.

I believe Paragon does not resize the system partition automatically - because many people have the 100mb system partition - you can do it afterwards if you choose.

Thanks for the update.

 

Normally I only do partition image backups and restores. This was the first time I did an entire drive image backup in ages. I was lazy and was in a rush when I did this backup.

My advice is don't do image backups of drives with multiple partitions unless you intend to do a fulll drive image restore. From what I saw in this recovery experience was Paragon does quite a bit of checking on a restored boot partition on a bare drive and one of those checks is that the registry and MBR are in sync. It is highly likelily that the restored MBR references multiple partitions and/or the registry is pointing to files and directories in non-boot partitions. The end result is a "cross-linked files" error due to the missing partition.

It still would be nice to get a reply from Paragon as to the proper partition restore sequence for drives with multiple partitions.

 

What happens with the Registry? Is it also updated automatically?

For example, it the system partition was the third primary partition, and is restored to the first primary, does the Registry detect any problem? Will Windows boot normally after the restore?

This must always happen in my case. I have a system partition and a data partition (and the Dell service partitions). When I restore an image of the system partition, the Registry is not "synchronized" with the files in the data partition, because these have changed since the image was created.

But I have never had any problems with this, nor have I received any "cross-linked files" error.

 

Yes, it works perfectly.

If you are using an old o/s like XP - then the boot.ini is udated to reflect the new hd and and partition numbers.

If you are using a modern o/s Vista/7 , then the bcd store ( which is a hive ) is updated
to let bootmgr know where winload is.