How to backup for System recovery to a new disk, without backing up a huge drive D:
I want to archive a backup of my computer for future backup to a new disk, without backing up my huge drive D: partition. Drive C: is only 50G on a 500G drive and all the stuff on drive D: is just a copy of stuff I have stored elsewhere.
I don't see how to backup of a Windows 7 System for recovery to a new disk without doing an "Entire Disk" backup.
I have tried restoring from Partiton Backups of System Reserved and C:\ (to avoid backing up D:) but I can never get a disk restored from these backups to boot. Its missing the Master Book Record.
One drive with three partitions"
System Reserved
Partition C:\
Partition D:\
The backup type was Partition Backup of System Reserved and C:
I restore from the Partition Backup in this order:
1. MBR
2. System Reserved
3. C:\
but it won't boot because "BOOTMGR is missing:
I just looked at the restored Drive in Disk Manager.
Even though I restored these items in this order
1. MBR
2. System Reserved
3. C:\
The only Partition is Drive C: the entire Disk Size. There is no System Reserved.
I noticed that when you "Add" the disk in the Acronis Boot program it created drive C: on a blank disk and it was the full size of the drive. So the whole partiton recovery procedure seemed bogus even though all three recovery steps listed above said they were "successful".
Why don't you want to include D: in the backup? For simplicity, I would recommend that you make a full disk backup (which would include all partitions). If you don't want to include D:, then still do a full disk backup but exclude the contents of D: by entering its pathname in the exclusions.
Or, if most of the space on D: is used by just a few file types, you could exclude those file types. I do that on my main drive. It includes a partition containing hundreds of GB of music, so I exclude those file types from the backup:
*.flac
*.m4a
*.mp3
.etc
I do a separate type of backup of the music.
Excluding D:\ using a full disk backup sounds like the solution. I am trying a backup right now with that exclusion. I don't want D:\ in my archive of "clean install" backups because it all stuff that I have on a file server too and the system backups for about 12 computers fits on one USB drive. (I have been using Windows 7 images)
Your answer suggests its not possible to restore a bootable system from partitions backups ? Is that true ?
You can restore a bootable system with partition backups, but it's more complicated. A full disk backup is the simplest and safest method, IMO.
I would concur with the post #6. That is also the procedure I use to include the data partition but not the data.
There is a good chance, if you needed a replacement disk, you would want the D to be part of the new disk--even with no data. Having a backup where D is configured (even if empty) just makes the restore easier to do.
I tried excluding partition D:\ by adding the exclusion
d:\
but folders and files on D:\ were still in the backup
So I tried this exclusion
d:\*.*
this did not work either
So I tried this exclusion
d:\*
this did not work either, the recovery to a blank disk from this backup still had files and folder on d:
I tried editing a post but it create a new one . sorry
Try just D: without the trailing slash.