Vista drive backup issues - Hard Disk Manager 8 Special Edition

I backed up a full 160GB drive from an Acer Extensa 5230e notebook with Vista Home installed by putting it into a caddy and attaching it to my XP Pro PC. The three partitions (one hidden FAT32 "rescue" partition, two NTFS partitions) on the drive were mis-recognised by HDM8SE, but I performed a full drive backup with the following settings:

Archive integrity control enabled
Best compression
Image splitting at 2GB
Process all sectors
Do not skip auxiliary files

I then proceeded to try to recover data from the notebook drive (the reason for taking a backup in the first place), and botched it.

I restored the backup so I could start again. Net result is that I can mount and read the two NTFS partitions under Windows XP Pro, no problems at all, but the notebook no longer boots, nor can its recovery mode be invoked with Alt+F10, nor can it find its recovery partition if booted from its rescue CD.

I'm mortified, as I presumed a disk backup made using the settings I chose would be an image of the drive.

Is there any way I can determine what the correct MBR/Partition Table should be from the backup, and any way I can use the backup data to restore the disk to its original state?

 

Have you tried restoring the laptop drive backup to the laptop drive while the drive is installed in the laptop instead of in the caddy? There are some cases where the drive's geometry is detected differently depending on how it's connected. If this notebook is like that, the drive may need to be installed into its "normal" place before performing the restore.

 

I've not tried that for a number of reasons.

One trivial: The backup is on my main XP PC, so if I were to try to restore it to this laptop I'd either have to find some portable media large enough to take tens of GB of backup data from that PC to the notebook, or take my main PC down for the duration of the exercise (which I'd rather not do, as it's a server). Not insurmountable, but a disincentive, nonetheless.

One perhaps sometimes overlooked, but important: My licence for PHDM8SE says...

I am not permitted to install or use the software directly on the Notebook.

One quite important: Since I made the backup on the XP machine, the geometry of the drive when the backup was made was as seen by that XP machine. Had I made the backup from the Notebook I'd agree that restoring it on a different machine would be a bad idea, but the converse also applies. Restoring in a different environment can only make things worse, not better, shirley.

 

Not sure I follow your original post.

1. You backed up the Vista notebook drive - now you have restored that backup to the Notebook again and it won't boot?

Try the system recovery options on the Vista dvd - might be on the oem recovery cd you have as well.

Boot the Vista dvd/cd - windows loads files - choose language and keyboard - on the Install Now screen , at the bottom , click Repair My Computer.



2. OR did you restore the netbook image to your XP machine. If that's the case - it won't boot because it is on different hardware.

Depending on the product you are using, there may be an "Adjust o/s to boot on new hardware" function - on the paragon cd under Boot Corrector heading.

There may be also - a "restore to different hardware" function - to use that, boot the Paragon cd to Normal Mode - select Simple Restore - select restore to new hardware when restoring the image to new hardware.

Even if you make it bootable on the new hardware - Windows activation will detect it is a different machine - you will have to reactivate . You need a Retail Windows product key for that, not one that came preinstalled.

I have no idea if any of those adaptive restore functions are on HDM8SE - I doubt it.

One of the Paragon Team may help you out there.

 

Allow me to clarify.

Precisely that. I backed the drive up by putting it in a USB SATA caddy, and restored it the same way, attached to a Windows XP Pro machine. The environment in which I took the backup was the same as the one from which I did the restore.

I have neither for certain. It's neighbour's machine, and comes with an OEM Vista recovery partition, not a vista CD/DVD. I've subsequently burned a boot/recovery CD from the ISO file that resided in the recovery partition, but booting the notebook from that does not achieve recovery - the partition geometry seems not to be correct, even though the NTFS partitions are both readable. The drive is no longer bootable, and I see no way to make it so.

The neighbour hadn't made their own recovery CD in advance of my being handed the machine, and since their problem was one of data recovery from deleted files, I didn't want to boot the machine from its own drive for fear of overwriting wanted data, so I didn't have the opportunity to make one myself either.

 

I believe compatibility with Vista/7 new partitioning rules only started with Paragon 8.5 series.

If you used 8 series - that may explain why the drives weren't recognized properly in the first place, and why the restored o/s won't boot.

It doesn't explain why the disc won't boot - it may be bad if you burned it from an .iso? on the recovery partition.

If there is yellow folder named WAU on the recovery partition - you could make that into bootable .iso.

There is a recovery disc download for Vista hosted by NST
here:

http://neosmart.net/blog/2008/windows-vista-recovery-disc-download/

Another thing you might do is to get a bootable partition manager that is compatible - boot it, shrink or extend the partition - doesn't matter - just do some kind of partition operation - then click Apply and it will update the system information for you.

Paragon have been doing a lot of promo giveaways of those recently.

 

Well, no WAU folder, and a Vista Recovery Disk still needs a copy of Vista, which is locked into the non-functioning recovery partition.

I have been able to get the thing to boot now, after some severe fixing-up of the Vista partition, but it will probably need re-imaging if I'm honest.

I'm a bit disappointed that HDM8SE failed in the apparently simple task of taking a trustworthy image of a hard disk, regardless of the OSes on it. Less clever disk imaging products might have succeeded, simply by not trying anything fancy. I wish I'd used one, with hindsight.

I'd still like to know if there's a way to reconstruct the disk from the backup I have.

 

I think any old imaging app. would have done the same thing if used in the same way.

Probably worth getting a more up to date one.

There is an HDM8.5SE freebie - the installer is 32bit - but it does seem to handle the new o/s partitions better.

There is also an HDM9.5SE freebie - much better with a very comprehensive boot disc.

They are given away in various different places at different times.You may have to google about to see where they are available from.

Don't know what you mean by this:

THe Downloaded Vista recovery disc is fully functional as is - nothing else required.

 

The first thing the Vista Recovery Disc asked me was where my Vista source disk was.

 

An image is an image. If taken on any machine a pure image backup should result in a one-to-one copy that can be restored in a manner that is agnostic to anything but the drive geometry, which will be the same when the disk is reattached to the same machine to perform that restore. It always used to be that way when I were a lad...

Thanks for the tip.

 

Hi Jellyroll,

Sorry - I didn't explain very well, obviously.

What I think may have happened is HDM8SE attempted to "correct" the partition geometry during the restore, according to the old rules. ( Partition Magic does the same and causes havoc on Vista/7).

It then didn't update bcd with the new offset ( because it is pre - Vista and doesn't know how).

If that's the case - Vista won't boot - startup repair from the Vista recovery cd should fix it - may take a few runs.

The Vista Recovery Disk is not an installation cd - it only contains the repair options - e.g. startup repair, command prompt, system restore.

Boot the cd - you get Windows Loading Files- Select Language and Keyboard - Next - screen saying Install Now ( no point in clicking that , it doesn't contain the installation files) - at the bottom of that screen, click Repair My Computer.

It contains exactly the same system recovery\repair options as the Installation dvd.


FYI - here is what an app. using the old rules reports about my drive - you can bet HD8MSE would see the same.

Actual values are:
0 1 00 3956 6 19 07 7221 252 7 63553536 52467712
Error #105: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginHead expected to be 0 or 1, not 6.
Error #106: Partition didn't begin on head boundary.
ucBeginSector expected to be 1, not 19.
Error #108: Partition didn't end on cylinder boundary.
ucEndHead expected to be 254, not 252.
Error #108: Partition didn't end on cylinder boundary.
ucEndSector expected to be 63, not 7.