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Terrified about making and restoring new images

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I have used TI2019 successfully for years , making images and restoring them, I upgraded to 2021 and then my expensive problems started. It was not True Images's fault but my own. I restored an image which turned out to be corrupted, the problem now was restoring all the passwords for True Image, Mailwasher and Outlook, it took my techie a week to get it back to normal but now I am scared about making an image that is restorable in case I make the same mistake againI attach a screen capture of my Backup Source if someone could confirm that I have that part correct. I have ticked Boot Disc SSD C: as my source,  System Reserved  is selected by default when I go to the next stepor I choose my external SSD drive as the destination, I do not understand what the EFI partition System Partition means. I include two more captures to demonstrate my choices and on of it proceeding.

 

One more question I have is the Media Rescue disc, I use a new DVD RW disc, I choose the Simple Choice and have tried burrning directlty to a disc and producing an ISO file which I then burn to a new disc both methods fail to boot my Desktop PC, with TI 2019 I never had to adjust the boot parameters , what am I doing wrong with TI 2021

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Peter, when selecting the source of a Windows OS disk, then you should be including all the hidden / system partitions along with the OS partition.

You can see the full list of these partitions by clicking on Full partition list shown in the lower left part of your first image - this is a toggle that flips between the 'Short' listing shown and the 'Full' list of all partitions.

The EFI System Partition is vital if you want the backup to be bootable when recovered - this is the partition that holds the Windows Boot Configuration Data store (BCD) that tells the UEFI BIOS how to boot into the OS.

If you have no other data partitions on the OS disk, then you should be selecting the whole disk using the top selection option and also including the small 'Microsoft System Reserved' partition shown in your image - this typically is around 100MB and takes no real space in the wider scheme of things!

With regards to using DVD RW discs, there are warnings in the rescue media builder that RW discs may not be bootable!  Personally I haven't been creating or using CD or DVD rescue media for a very long time other than for some very old PC's that simply don't support booting from USB media!  All my main rescue media is either on 16GB USB memory sticks, or else is using the Survival Kit approach to boot from a 2GB FAT32 partition on a much larger USB 3.0 HDD.

Thank you Steve. I now have my PC back and am going to attempt another image. Would you be kind enough to confirm that my choices are correct?If I tick CT1000MX, the partiitions underneath are automatically ticked, is this correct? It appears that CT1000 MX is the umbrella under which all the partitions to be imaged are nested, I apologise if these are silly questions but I am so nervous about doing something wrong. My last attempt to restore a partition cost many dollars and a week without my PC, so I would like to be assured that am I at least imaging correctly before I attempt another restore Thank you again so much for your efforts and time to help an old man

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Peter, selecting the top level tick box for the source disk drive is the correct option and will automatically include all partitions for that disk drive.  Happy to help other old men Peter - I am one myself!