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What partitions must be restored with OS?

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Hi,

 

I have read a few old threads on Disk vs partition backup and understand there should be no difference in the archive if all partitions on a disk are selected at backup (I assume this is still so on current TI versions and it's just a UI representation).

 

I have some queries regarding recovery though.

I'll set the following to assist with an example:

1. C-drive = OS

2. D-Drive = data

 

 

For a legacy machine (Win 7 thus no UEFI) I have the above AND "system Reserved" partition.

Where I wish to recover the C-Drive only to restore OS function, what is the impact of restoring/not restoring the "system reserved" partition?

 

For a UEFI enabled machine (Win 8 or 10, GPT disk formatted NTFS I would guess?):

A.  what partitions exist, and what must be restored to restore OS function.

B. what is the impact of not restoring different partitions for the data or OS in general?

 

Where I am coming from with this is that in the past I have restored the C-Drive only, and listed in my TI 2014 OEM I have had a partition called 'MBR' (is this just the system reserved?).

 

Everything seems fine but I am uncertain if there are elements stored on the Reserved or UEFI partitions that change with data/OS installation and thus have potential to create a mess.

Alternatively, I would not want to recover the reserved partition and kill or corrupt data on D-Drive.

 

Have I confused you yet? :D

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Hello, the simple answer to your questions is 'it depends!'.

It depends on what problem you are trying to recover from:

If you are recovering from a broken program or configuration in your basic Windows 7 system, then just restoring your backup image of the Windows partition / drive (C:) should be sufficient without needing to restore the hidden System Reserved partition or the Master Boot Record (MBR).  I took this approach recently on my Windows 10 system where for no obvious reason my sound was lost and nothing I could do within Windows could fix it - I just restored my most recent backup image of drive C: and all was back to normal again!

If you are recovering from any form of virus, trojan etc that could potentially have infected boot sectors or the Boot Configuration Data store (BCD) then you would be best advised to recover both the System Reserved and MBR data as well as the Windows drive.

For UEFI / GPT / Secure Boot systems, the answer is much the same except that there additional hidden partitions that will need to be recovered in the second example above.  This is a case of ensuring you have a complete 'full' backup of your system partitions, which in turn means selecting the Full Partition List rather than the Short Partition List when selecting the source data to be included in your backup image.  The short partition list does not show all the hidden partitions that are present whereas the full partition list will show all that needs to be included.

As far as your Data partition goes, you should also make a separate backup of this unless you are already duplicating or syncing the data in this partition with an external drive or NAS etc.  At the end of the day, if you lose your internal hard drive due to a head crash or logic board failure etc, then you will need to rebuild the whole disk to recover, i.e. to put back all the partitions on the new drive that existed on the failed one, including any hidden diagnostics, recovery and system partitions.

Thank you.

 

Just to be clear - are you saying for win 7 Acronis shows the system partition in Partition mode, but on a UEFI disk it will not show all of the hidden partitions in partition mode and should be used in Disk mode?

I'm all sorted for redundancy and layering of my backups I think - but thank you for considering that aspect in your answer as well.

Just to clarify, in ATIH 2016, the choices are to select as the source for a backup:

Entire System = All installed disks and partitions, which can include connected external drives.

Disks and Partitions = The choice of selecting one or more entire disks (including all partitions on the same) or selecting individual partitions on selected disk(s).

Files and Folders = As it says, selected individual or groups of folders and/or files.

When choosing Disks and Partitions, it is important to set the view to Full partition list in order to reveal any hidden partitions that are present, such as the System Reserved partition on Windows 7 - 10 MBR systems, or the UEFI partition on those same systems.  Note: Acronis will rebuild the MSR partition on UEFI systems on recovery - there have been some lengthy discussions on this in the forum recently.

Hope the above is clearer.

Certainly is :). Thanks you

 

I'm back on TI 2014 until some changes occur with 2016 (or 2017 :P) so was looking at slightly different options.