Dell's Media Direct Partition Bugging me
This computer came with Windows 7 Home Premium which included Media Direct from Dell. I clean installed Windows 8 Pro on it and wiped everything when I did that, the recovery partition, Media Direct - all of it. I also enabled BitLocker. Today I did a full disk backup from within Windows due to BitLocker. I had to do some testing of things so I restored the computer back to it's original OS to do so. Now I want to restore the Windows 8 backup I made today. I am going from the rescue CD since the backup inside Windows is unencrypted. But Media Direct and other Dell whack partitions from the prior OS are bothering me.
I should be able to just select the "Disk" (and everything that includes) and then select the "placement" of the entire disk and hit restore - but it is making me break it down. I have had this happen a few times with the newer versions of Acronis 2012 and 2013 - but never this bad.
Under what to recover I want to select the entire disk which is made up of three boxes:
NTFS (unlabeled C:) Pri 186GB (this is called settings of Partition c)
MBR and Track 0 (This is called MBR of Disk 1)
NTFS (System reserved) Pri,Act. 350MB (this is called Settings of Partition 1-1)
On the next page I have to select "New Location" for Partition 1-1 and the only place to put it is Media Direct - I also have some small partition that is Fat 16 with 78MB that is greyed out and cannot be selected.
If I decide to just recover the C partition and the MBR what happens when I try to boot without recovering that smaller partition called Partition 1-1 when I do not include it? And will Media Direct now survive because that is not what I want. In addition I would lose space.
If I do decide to put that smaller partition 1-1 where media direct is do I lose the space? Media Direct is considerably bigger. And what about the Fat16 partition that is greyed out - do I lose that space as well?
I do own Disk Director 11 (the newer one I forget the exact number) and was thinking of loading it and blasting through all these Media Direct partitions to get them out of my face...??...
I made that full disk backup today - why can't I simply do a full disk restore without having to deal with partitions that have nothing to do with that full disk backup? why bring my past into my present wrecking my future?
If nobody responds I get it, I wouldn't respond to this either.
Sandy
I think I will just clean install 8 again and enable BitLocker (not do a full re-encrypt, just enable it) that way I created partitions to "match" the full disk backup I made today. Then I will know what to pick when it makes me lay it out.
Sandy
This worked flawlessly! But I am surprised I had (and will continue to have) to go through all this. Every time I want to load the old OS from an older backup for testing - when I go to back to the new OS (which I took a full disk backup image of) I am presented with the old OS' partitions which in NO WAY work for the new OS? Then I have to reinstall the new OS from the disk to get the partition layout correct before I can do full disk restore of that OS. I get problems due to coming/going from dissimilar hardware but this is not that. This is the "same" machine just different OS'.
Wow. In any event it works but is very time consuming. It can take half a day now to get back and running...
The Sand,
There has been several recent postings whereby the disk option restore user was forced into selecting individual partions--which it should not do. I have not been able to find the cause yet but I believe the cause to be that the backup was not a full disk image backup thereby forcing a restore of partitions rather than the whole disk.
Under normal condition, selecting the disk to what was to be restored should have taken you to the next screen whereby you selected the disk to receive the restore--without any partition selection.
Glad to now it is not designed to work this way. I have a "saved scheme" set to do Full backups only with all my defaults set to work like I want. I am more familiar and prefer to run ALL backups from outside the OS, but due to BitLocker I have to backup inside Windows and therefore have to work more closely with the Acronis program whereas the rescue CD is pretty basic. I selected both partitions to backup and did a Full backup - but now that I look at it I did not select "turn to Disk mode." I thought since I selected both partitions and did a Full backup I was getting full disk. I believe in the older versions of True Image when you selected all partitions it changed it to "full disk" automatically. So that is confusing and if you have had several instances of this on the forum maybe a change should be made..??...
Really I am surprised you can't get a restore to work like "disk" when selecting "all" partitions within a Disk - I mean you got it, all of it - you only enter into my train wreck for laying it out when restoring a different OS.
I will select "Switch to Disk Mode" for the future but it is sad, because the original backups made for this system are needed, they cannot be replaced with backups at a later date - I will want to use them. If I never go back and test this machine I will okay (since restoring back to the SAME OS has the same partition structure.)
Thanks for your comments - as always you are invaluable here and always truly delightful to encounter! Keep up the good work ; )
Sandy
The Sand,
When restoring an old backup to a disk which does not have the same partition layout, I would use the "add disk" opiton and delete the backups from the target disk so all the space on the target disk becomes unallocated.
While designing the Partition mode backup, if you have only two partitons and both are checked, you have the effect of a disk mode and there should be no difference. Choosing the disk mode is insurance that you have included all partitons as many users are not aware of how many partitions are actually on the disk as many can be without drive letters and could be accidentally omitted from a partition backup but would be otherwise included if the backup was a disk option backup.
You can look at link #3 below but I believe you may already be aware of its content.
When doing the backup I did select all partitions (with the way I set up Windows 8 there are only 2 partitions (I know I set it up myself) there is nothing hidden) but it did not give me the effect of a Full Disk Backup. You have to change the setting in the program to "Switch to Disk Mode" in order to get a Full Disk Backup now. For me anyway, if you do not switch to "Full Disk Backup" you will have to go through laying out all the partitions even if you did indeed select every single partition for backup.
The Sand,
When restoring an old backup to a disk which does not have the same partition layout, I would use the "add disk" opiton and delete the backups from the target disk so all the space on the target disk becomes unallocated.
Actually, I was restoring a new backup to an older partition layout, but I guess the same applies. Is that option of "Add Disk" available when running from the Rescue CD?
Yes, the add disk option is listed under the tools menu on the CD.
Look at your win 8 disk in Windows disk management. Does it show any odd spacing, etc? Perhaps it is me but I find it odd that there is a difference between the two modes if there are only two partitons listed in both modes.
Yes, the add disk option is listed under the tools menu on the CD.
Look at your win 8 disk in Windows disk management. Does it show any odd spacing, etc? Perhaps it is me but I find it odd that there is a difference between the two modes if there are only two partitons listed in both modes.
Yes, I was surprised too. I was using the new version and expecting it to work like the older versions did, which was give me full disk upon selecting "All" partitions - there was no need to "Switch to Disk Mode." I don't even recall if the older versions had "Switch to Disk Mode."
I will use Tools and create unallocated space if this happens again which would be far quicker than what I did to create the same partition structure to match my backup.
See the attached print screen of my Disks. Both Alienware and XPS have the exact same partitions since I clean installed Windows 8 Pro on both.
