Restoring Windows Backup images?

If your backups were created by the Windows Backup feature then they cannot be restored by using Acronis 2019 - it would need to be restored using Windows tools.

Steve Smith wrote:

If your backups were created by the Windows Backup feature then they cannot be restored by using Acronis 2019 - it would need to be restored using Windows tools.

I have a external USB HDD with a Windows 7 NTFS  OS image folder for each PC and Win 7 restore does not need any additional drivers to use these. There is also a separate 9GB FAT32 partition in the hope of being able to install some kind of recovery app.

Can I place ATI2019 OS images in the same folders as the Windows images?

Is there a way to build a recovery app in the FAT32 partition which can auto-boot on any PC and selectively restore the ATI images?

Will this work with both Win 7 pro and Win 10 pro PCs?

Thanks in advance

Taking the later question first:

Is there a way to build a recovery app in the FAT32 partition which can auto-boot on any PC and selectively restore the ATI images?

If your 9 GB FAT32 partition is empty and has a Windows drive letter allocated, then you can use the normal Acronis Rescue Media Builder tool to create rescue media in that partition so that you can boot from the external USB HDD drive.

Such rescue media will work with most recent versions of Windows OS, the key caveat being to boot from it using the same BIOS mode as the OS uses to boot.  This is to avoid migrating between MBR and GPT partition schemes.

KB 59877: Acronis True Image: how to distinguish between UEFI and Legacy BIOS boot modes of Acronis Bootable Media

See KB 61632: Acronis True Image 2019: how to create bootable media
Also KB 61621: Acronis True Image 2019: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

Can I place ATI2019 OS images in the same folders as the Windows images?

You could but it is not recommended, especially if the folders hold Windows system images created by the Windows Backup tool, not by ATI.  I would recommend keeping your ATI backup images in separate folders, one per different computer being backed up, so as to make life easier for recognising what images belong to which systems etc.

Steve Smith wrote:

Such rescue media will work with most recent versions of Windows OS, the key caveat being to boot from it using the same BIOS mode as the OS uses to boot.  This is to avoid migrating between MBR and GPT partition schemes 

 All my Win 7 PCs use only MBR, whilst my Servers are Win 10 MBR OS disks with larger GPT Data disks, so do I need 2 or even 3 different Rescue builds?

I do already have separate partitions for each working PC image and Windows gives the same Image folder name "WindowsImageBackup" to each one. Given that the ATI image will have a completely different name, would that remove any confusion on which image to use?

Provided that all your ATI backup images have clearly identifiable unique names, then there should be no issue with knowing which is for what computer system.

The only reason why you might need more than one rescue media build would be if there were different device driver requirements in play.

Personally, I use the MVP Custom PE Builder tool (link in my signature) and add any extra device drivers needed for my computers using the same, then the media built works on almost all of my computers.  The only exception I have is for a very old IBM Thinkpad T42 which has a Non-PAE CPU for which I need to build specific Linux based rescue media using the option --forcepae-- for that one laptop.

The key benefits of the MVP Custom WinPE rescue media is that it provides a Windows PE desktop type environment with all my installed Acronis applications available (True Image, Disk Director, Revive and Universal Restore), plus has a file manager, web browser, PDF viewer, screen shot capture, plus can include other WinPE capable utilities. 
The one key caveat with any WinPE media is that is it built as either 64-bit or 32-bit, so if you have a mix of systems with either architecture, you would need separate media for each type.

Steve Smith wrote:

...The only reason why you might need more than one rescue media build would be if there were different device driver requirements in play.

Personally, I use the MVP Custom PE Builder tool (link in my signature) and add any extra device drivers needed for my computers using the same, then the media built works on almost all of my computers....

Thanks.  I'm asking these questions because as a newbie, I find it impossible to find the drivers for restore, whether it be WHS2011 client restore (Dell laptops do not work) or Win PE (too complex for my comprehension).

Windows backup just works without drivers simply using a USB hard drive needed no drivers, so can I configure a simple ATI2019 Recovery Builder that again uses USB hard drive without drivers?

On reading your links, I could be completely missing the point but it seems on face value that the Linux method is more newbie-friendly (=simpler) so is that a sensible approach?

Just to pick up on one point here:

I find it impossible to find the drivers for restore, whether it be WHS2011 client restore (Dell laptops do not work) or Win PE (too complex for my comprehension).

What exactly are you restoring here? 

If you are restoring a backup created from the same computer, then there should be no need for any new device drivers.  Drivers are normally only needed when restoring a backup from computer A to a different computer B that has changes in hardware from the one where the backup was created.

Acronis Linux based rescue media will work with older hardware for most purposes, but it has limitations when dealing with more modern computers due to new hardware components these can have, i.e. NVMe M.2 drives, use of RAID SATA controller mode for performance of single drives etc.

Steve Smith wrote:

What exactly are you restoring here? ...

As above, it is my OS drives that I need to (bare metal / system) restore after finding WHS2011 Client Restore does not work with Dell laptops (despite loading 'drivers for system restore') when the OS drive has failed.

I do understand that the other drives (or files and folders they contain) are easy to restore if the OS is working and intend to use Acronis 2019 to save to a new server I just set up.

Whilst trying to setup my OS backup above, I just installed ATI2019 to backup my data, although it has not asked me for my Key.

When trying to setup the destination, it did not identify any of my main HP servers as NAS although they could be found on Network connections. However the major problem is that I use DrivePool instead of RAID on all of them and the Pool drive is not visible to be selected - only individual HDDs can be seen.

Can you help?

For any bare metal recovery, then this should always be done using the Acronis rescue media, so the only real problem area is whether the rescue media is able to see the drives involved in the recovery process, i.e. the bare metal target drive and the backup drive containing the image to be recovered.

The ATI 2019 'Simple' rescue media should work with most computers with standard SATA type drives.  That just leaves the question of what drives do you have in the range of computers that you want to use the rescue media with, and are these SATA drives or something else?

Do you have RAID involved in any of these systems?

Steve Smith wrote:

Do you have RAID involved in any of these systems?

No, as I indicated above. Also my latest question was about data drives (which you earlier said does not require recovery media) and the inability to setup StablebitDrivePool as the destination on any of my HP servers because it does not appear in the list of HDDs.

I have just checked Paragon HDM17 backup and it does see the DrivePool drive

My earlier reply was based on you stating about doing bare metal recovery for OS drives rather than for data drives.

I have no experience with DrivePool so cannot advise on that but suspect that you would need to have extra software to allow access to such drives from any form of bootable media.

If the DrivePool is visible in Explorer from Windows, then it should be also visible to the Acronis GUI application also in Windows.

Steve Smith wrote:

I have no experience with DrivePool so cannot advise on that but suspect that you would need to have extra software to allow access to such drives from any form of bootable media.

If the DrivePool is visible in Explorer from Windows, then it should be also visible to the Acronis GUI application also in Windows.

DrivePool is frequently used by Windows server users as an alternative to RAID, which mirrors folders across a pool of disks and appears as a single drive in Windows Explorer in Networks. I checked this again today that it is visible on all my HP servers from all my PCs

It does not appear in ATI2019 available destinations when configuring data HDD backup, but does appear in Paragon Backup and Recovery

You did say that restoring data drives while ATI is running in Windows should not need bootable recovery media

I would expect that ATI 2019 should also be able to see your DrivePool location if it is visible in Explorer but you may need to use the \\ address to the server to see it if it is shown as a network location.

Steve Smith wrote:

I would expect that ATI 2019 should also be able to see your DrivePool location if it is visible in Explorer but you may need to use the \\ address to the server to see it if it is shown as a network location.

I checked the \\IP address and one server was visible (and could be pinged) while the other was not, although both show up in "Network" in Windows Explorer.

As both had been on for many days, I closed ATI, shut them down and rebooted , then restarted ATI and both servers DrivePools now showed up in ATI  and I managed to do a data drive backup to DrivePool on the server that was not visible.

I then tried the one that was visible and the server initially appeared, but while setting up backup, it disappeared from the selection list. Shutting down ATi then restarting made that server appear again.

Any thoughts?

Good to read that your DrivePool locations can be accessed from ATI 2019 but no real guesses as to why they may be disappearing unless restarting ATI again?

Steve Smith wrote:

Good to read that your DrivePool locations can be accessed from ATI 2019 but no real guesses as to why they may be disappearing unless restarting ATI again? 

 It has now done 2 incremental backups, so it seems like it is stable, thanks.

Now to set up the external USB HDD OS recovery drive. The 9TB FAT32 partition now needs setting up with Recovery Media Builder, which has many different options so advice would be welcome.

I will initially be backing up just Win 7 Pro PCs OS and will set a separate USB HD when I need to backup Win 10, so do I need to install WAIK or WADK and which version?

Then which Creation Method is easiest (ie. should not need more drivers) with most reliable restore?

For the 9GB FAT32 partition on your external USB HDD drive, I would recommend creating the rescue media on a Windows 10 PC using either the Windows 10 #1903 ADK & PE or else using the Simple method from the Windows 10 Recovery Environment.

The advantage of using the Windows 10 system is that it is fully backwards compatible for your Windows 7 PC's and includes all the support for the hardware they use plus can also be used with any Windows 10 PC's too.

The main requirement for the above is that the FAT32 partition has a Windows drive letter assigned to pass to the Acronis Rescue Media Builder program.

I would again recommend that you consider using the MVP Custom PE Builder script for creating the rescue media, as you will this to be much easier to use and has a comprehensive set of extras not found in the normal Acronis rescue media. 

The screen shot below is from the MVP tool (from back when I was using it with ATI 2018) and shows some of the features it provides. Note: it will include all installed Acronis applications on the PC where the media is created by the tool, hence those shown in the image.

This is the main rescue media tool that I use personally for my own computers and those I work on for friends & family with a range of different Windows OS versions (from Vista to 10) plus with Ubuntu linux.

Steve Smith wrote:

...I would again recommend that you consider using the MVP Custom PE Builder script for creating the rescue media, as you will this to be much easier to use and has a comprehensive set of extras not found in the normal Acronis rescue media. 

 

Thanks for your patient advice. 

I downloaded the PE Builder script and the ReadMe.txt is explicit about matching to the exact version of installed ADK. The included documentation refers to older ATI 2016 / 2017 so what ADK do I need for ATI 2019 Installation? and what components of ADK do I need as there are include / exclude options at install time?

Also I see that Microsoft has separated out PE from ADK in more recent releases so does that obsolete or limit the PE Builder version?

Finally, I see folders / txt that identify drivers already included (eg. the IRST driver that my Dell laptops use) so if I am solely using an external USB HDD and do not require Network or Wi-Fi access, should the included drivers be all I need or is there anything else you think I should add? 

I would suggest trying the MVP Custom PE script 'as is' with your Windows 10 Recovery Environment files to start with, without the need to download the ADK & PE files.

When running the script, choose the option to 'Build from WinRE (No ADK needed...).

Choose the option to 'Build Customized 64-bit WinPE Rescue Media'

Choose 'No' for mapping a network share in WinPE.

Choose 'Yes' for injecting Custom drivers (for IRST for RAID and NVMe support). then press any key to continue.

Choose whether to leave the default prompt for CD/DVD in place.

Choose to overwrite destination ISO file if necessary.

Choose 'Yes' to create a bootable USB flash drive then provide the drive letter for where to do so.  Take care to choose the correct drive letter!

Choose if to create a bootable CD/DVD disc.

Then that is about it apart from testing the media for yourself.

See the attached text output from doing the above on my own computer (less actually creating a new USB flash drive).

Steve Smith wrote:

....Choose 'Yes' for injecting Custom drivers (for IRST for RAID and NVMe support). then press any key to continue....

 Very informative, thanks.

Do I need to find the IRST and NVMe drivers? I do not have the latter and do I need different IRST drivers to cover each of the PCs, both Win 7 and 10?

Also where are my "Windows 10 Recovery Environment files to start with"?

I see there is that there is a location for my Dell drivers CAB, so do I need to find these too? One CAB is live on the Dell web site, but my other laptop's (Precision M4600) CAB web link does not work.

Apologies for the ongoing nervous newbie questions as I need to be very certain what I'm doing before I start, especially as WHS2011 has let me down.

Regarding the IRST and NVMe drivers, these will only be loaded / used if needed, so no harm in including them for the rescue media.  I use them just for 2 of my laptops (my own & sons) where they are needed, but use the media on lots of other PC's without any such devices or need with no problem.

The WinRE files are stored in a hidden Windows Recovery partition that gets created on install or else when doing a major upgrade such as the 1903 or 1909 update versions.

You can check the Recovery Environment is good to go by using the command shown below:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>reagentc /info
Windows Recovery Environment (Windows RE) and system reset configuration
Information:

    Windows RE status:         Enabled
    Windows RE location:       \\?\GLOBALROOT\device\harddisk0\partition4\Recovery\WindowsRE
    Boot Configuration Data (BCD) identifier: f613c408-ab3e-11e9-ac1c-a86daa71efa2
    Recovery image location:
    Recovery image index:      0
    Custom image location:
    Custom image index:        0

REAGENTC.EXE: Operation Successful.

I would avoid adding any further Dell drivers until you find that these are actually needed!  Again I haven't needed to add anything more than just the IRST & NVMe ones and the media works just fine on a mix of different makes & types of PC's and laptops that I have (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer plus some home brew PC's etc).

Steve Smith wrote:

I would avoid adding any further Dell drivers until you find that these are actually needed!  Again I haven't needed to add anything more than just the IRST & NVMe ones and the media works just fine on a mix of different makes & types of PC's and laptops that I have (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Samsung, Acer plus some home brew PC's etc).

Thanks, I never knew that WinRE was already installed !!

I see slight differences between the successful cmd output on Win 7 and Win 10 and also between the driver x64 and x64_Windows_7 folders, so if I am creating a recovery mainly for Win 7 today, am I not better to create it on a Win 7 PC?

I am happy to generate a separate Win 10 USB recovery HDD as there is not enough space for both Windows and Acronis images of all my Win 7 & Win 10 OS backups on a single 1TB external drive 

Also my Dell Win 7 Pro laptops both use Renesas USB 3.0, so should I add this to the x64 Win 7 drivers folder?

 Thanks again for your continued help...TomP

Tom, do a test run from one of your Windows 10 computers then give a test on some of the others, that will tell you if any additional drivers are needed.  Win 10 is backwards compatible with earlier versions such as 7 and I have used the Win 10 media with my own Win 7 boxes without issues.

Steve Smith wrote:

Tom, do a test run .... that will tell you if any additional drivers are needed.

 It worked on all my win 7 PCs and I backed up all the OS onto individual folders on same external USB HD without extra drivers. Thanks.

I have not checked the restore function yet as there seem to be several restore utilities; the one created on the USB HD; another in the ATI2019 install and one available as a separate download "AcronisTrueImage2019_ur_en-US".

Are they all the same thing and how far can I go through the restore process to check it out without actually / accidentally over-writing the current OS drives? The user guide seems to focus on Linux media which I think is not what I created as winRE / winPE.

Tom, for recovery, you should be able to use the same boot media as you used for the successful backups, taking the Recovery option instead of Backup.

In terms of testing Recovery, the ideal way would be to recover to a spare disk drive rather than to the working drive.  This would allow you to temporarily remove the working drive, substitute the spare drive, perform recovery, test all is working, then shutdown and swap back in the original drive with no risks involved (provided normal care is taken regarding static charges when handling electronic components and connecting cables etc).

See KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

When doing the restore of your backup, this needs to be done as a Disk & Partition restore and at the top Disk selection level.

Please see forum topic: [How to] recover an entire disk backup - and in particular the attached PDF document which shows a step-by-step tutorial for doing this type of recovery / restore.

Steve Smith wrote:

See KB 63295: Acronis True Image 2020: How to restore your computer with WinPE-based or WinRE-based media

 That was what I wanted to see, thanks. I can safely do my initial checks right up the the 'Proceed' stage which I can't reach on my current WHS2011.

However it only describes restore to an existing / formatted drive which is then deleted, whereas a typical use case would be to restore to a new / un-formatted / no disk letter drive (as you suggest above) so what would happen in this case?

Tom, the steps are the same for a bare-metal recovery or if using the same / original drive - the first action in both cases would be to wipe out all current partitions and then set up the new partitions as based from the backup image.

If your target drive doesn't show as an option to recover to, then you should click on Tools then on Add new disk in order to prepare the drive, but can leave it as unallocated space after selecting the partitions scheme to be either MBR or GPT.  This is only normally needed when using brand new drives that come as raw format.

See the following screen shots from when I used Add new disk for a new NVMe M.2 SSD recently.

Thanks Steve, most helpful (I couldn't quote your last reply and accidentally incorrectly said it didn't help, sorry)

One question, I see the .tib backups are about 25% of the original files on disk, so is there a reason for this?

Tom, the size of .tib backup files depend on a number of factors.  In part this is down to compression being used but this will vary according to the files involved, i.e. documents can be highly compressed but files for images, videos, music are already in a high compression state, inbetween these other files vary in how compressible they are.

ATI excludes some potentially large files by default, i.e. pagefile.sys, hiberfil.sys & swapfile.sys, all of which get recreated by Windows on boot, plus also hidden folders used by Windows System Protection (which Microsoft turns off by default in all newer Windows 10 installs).

The file name for the .tib file also will suggest a size difference, i.e. _full_ will be largest, but _inc_ will be significantly smaller etc.

Steve Smith wrote:

...the size of .tib backup files depend on a number of factors...

 I just discovered why the size seems odd. I had backed for a second time up expecting an incremental file to be generated, a completely new one was generated with a different name instead.

I now see that the first backup using the recovery media allowed me to select a name, but when I did the second backup in desktop ATI2019, I was not given that opportunity as the backup was automatically given the manufacturer's name of the SSD Samsung "SSD 860 EVO 500GB_full_b1_s1_v1". Thus there was a lot more disk space used for 2 separate full backups.

Now doing an incremental backup on the desktop gives me a tiny file  "Samsung SSD 860 EVO 500GB_inc_b1_s2_v1".

Can you help me understand what is happening?

Tom, when you create a new backup task, you can rename the default name that Acronis show in the GUI - if you use the task menu (click on the caret (v) to the right of the current task name) there is a rename option there.

Note: if you rename an existing backup it will not change the name of the files that have already been created.

See the ATI 2019 User Guide:  Backing up disks and partitions and also Backup operations menu

Steve Smith wrote:

... if you rename an existing backup it will not change the name of the files that have already been created....

Thanks Steve, helpful as always.

I am just waiting for Amazon to send me another external HDD so I can test the bare metal restore.

I am regularly backing up my data drive to my new server and can see that the size of what is stored can quickly become huge as regular full backups are done. I selected incremental backup but wonder if differential will help with this, along with selecting long intervals between full backups and short removal of backups to ensure that maybe only 2 full backups are present at any time?

Also when recovering files, can I select one of the incremental / differential backups as the date from which to recover and is there a difference in performance / speed /reliability depending on whether is is incremental or differential and the number of interim backups between full backups?

Tom, backup files can grow quickly in size depending on the options used and frequency of backup etc.

Incremental backups should represent the smallest individual file sizes as these only contain the changed data since the prior backup operation.  The caution with incremental backups is that these are all interdependent on each other, i.e. if you create a long incremental chain of files with say 30 files and file #3 gets corrupted or damaged, then all files after that one are lost too!

Differential backups will start at the same size as Incremental but will quickly increase in size because each new differential is capturing all changed data since the initial full backup of the chain.  Their advantage (in all versions prior to ATI 2020) is that the files are independent of each other, so you should only need the full plus one differential file for recovery!

The downside with Differential backups is that there is no automatic cleanup method that can delete just unwanted differential files.  Automatic cleanup only works on completed version chains, i.e. the whole chain, not just parts of it.   The new Clean up versions tool in ATI 2019 and later versions does allow for manual cleanup of selected differential files.

For recovery, you can select any specific point in time based on the date/time when backups were created (full, incremental or differential) - this can be done in the ATI GUI on the Recovery page, or else by double-clicking on an individual file in Explorer and using Copy & Paste.

Steve Smith wrote:

Incremental backups should represent the smallest individual file sizes as these only contain the changed data since the prior backup operation.

 Just experimenting with various schemes / settings,with my current WHS2011 (incremental and no full backup after the first) which has keep-for-days, -weeks and -months 'keep-for' settings and the latter being set for 3 months, I end up with a storage size of about twice the size of the sources being backed-up.

To keep the same kind of 1:2 ratio in ATI2019, which kind of incremental backup and cleanup settings would you recommend ?

Tom, you haven't mentioned what your typical source data size is and what the size of your backup drive is?

Personally, I tend to use the default backup scheme settings for Incremental backups, i.e. to create a new Full backup after 5 or 6 incremental files.  Then for my cleanup settings, I use the option to 'Store no more than 2 recent version chains' which is the easiest one to understand and manage.

This works for me but then I am not using my laptop for any business purpose (am retired) and have multiple different backups of my OS drive and applications, as well as separate backups of my important data, which go to different destinations for protection.

The other questions that apply to deciding on what backup scheme, what number of incrementals, what to store etc, is how often does your data change, how vital are those changes, and how often will you be making backups?

ATI allows for multiple backup tasks to be created for the same Source data where these can be directed to different destination storage locations and be run on different / separate schedules, so that you could have a daily backup task, and separate weekly and monthly tasks to give a wide range of cover.

Steve Smith wrote:

Tom, you haven't mentioned what your typical source data size is and what the size of your backup drive is?

 All PCs are Win 7 Pro with 500GB OS SSDs backed up with your Recovery Builder on an external 1TB USB HDD

One PC has two Data 2TB HDs more than 75% full and the other PC has one 2TB drive (75% full) while the other laptop has a 1TB HD about 25% full.

I'm migrating the backups to a new HP server which currently only has 4TB  available until I can move over the latter two and free enough HDD space to allow me to move some of the 4TB HDDs from my old HP server, to allow me to migrate over the first PC. Hope this is clear?

Thus it all needs to be carefully sequenced for me to achieve this.