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Does TI Home 2010 correctly restore vista and Windows 7 boot manager without needing repair?

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Firstly I tried searching for the answers but did not find what I was looking for.

I'm now using TI 11 8,101 and windows 7 pro 64 bit. I only use the TI boot disk to backup/restore. I wanted to test a complete backup/restore cycle to make sure it would work when I needed it. Well guess what its not. Backups are created and verified without problem. When I restore the process completes without error. When I reboot the system I get a windows error screen stating you may have changed hardware or drivers and to insert the windows install disk and reboot. When I do this and choose repair and follow the prompts to repair the boot record windows is restored to a bootable state.

It would seem TI 11 does not understand that Windows Vista and 7 do not use the same 63 sector offset XP and prior used. Windows seems to work fine but I now have two C:\drives in system restore. One is Windows 7(C:) (missing) and protection is on. The other is Windows 7(C:) (system) and protection is off. Keep in mind this was not there before the restore. Also keep in mind I used a Vista disk to partition the hard drive into two partitions. One for the OS and one for backup. I used a Vista disk because I did not want the diagnostic partition that Windows 7 creates if the drive is not partitioned before hand. I had a look in disk management and only two partitions are on the drive as it should be. I found I was able to get rid of the entry in system restore by turning off protection on the missing drive.

Next I find that the default OS name was changed to Windows 7 (restored) or similar. I think I can fix this by using BCDEDIT
or EasyBCD. This just P's me off. Ok so what else did running the repair change that will P me off later when I find it?

Now that you have an idea as to whats going on will TI Home 2010 allow me to backup and restore Vista/Win7 to a bootable state? Meaning it can handle Vista/Win 7 new sector offset. Also does TI 2010 Home have a BartPE plugin or a PE2/3 plugin?

Thanks
Bill

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The problems you ran into are fairly normal for what you did. While not a smooth restore, there shouldn't be problems because of it (enable System Restore, if you wish). If you generalize the BCD file and create a new backup image, future restores with TI 11 may be okay (you could test it). You may not need TI 2010.

TI 2010 should restore Windows 7 correctly and it does have a BartPE plugin.

MudCrab wrote:
The problems you ran into are fairly normal for what you did. While not a smooth restore, there shouldn't be problems because of it (enable System Restore, if you wish). If you generalize the BCD file and create a new backup image, future restores with TI 11 may be okay (you could test it). You may not need TI 2010.

TI 2010 should restore Windows 7 correctly and it does have a BartPE plugin.

Questions, if I do get TI 11 working by using the above method is there any downside? Will I be able to migrate later to a disk drive that has the new 4k sector size or a SSD without problems or performance loss? AKA use the images that I will make now if I the generalized BCD file works with TI 11. Is TI 11 messing up the sector offset? Would it be best to restore the partition again and then generalize the BCD instead of using the repair option on the Win 7 boot disk? What did the repair really do anyway. I know I'm just full of questions. If the result has a 63k offset like XP and prior its going to be hell when SSD's and 4k sector drives become common. I kind of wanted to get around this problem. Reading the thread you linked to gives me the impression that TI 11 Home and newer did not have problems restoring Vista/Win 7.

Thanks for your time MudCrab.
Bill

Bill,

The thread I linked to was created in 2007. TI 11 is not aware of Windows 7. However, the intstructions are the same as for Vista.

If you're going to use TI 11, you need to ONLY do Entire Disk Image backups and restores. Don't restore a single partition. This is what causes the offset change. TI 11 will only do the XP alignment (63 sector offset) on a partition restore -- no matter what the source partition was. This means that you can't backup a Vista aligned partition and restore it and have it still Vista aligned. The restored partition will be moved and realigned to XP standards. This is what causes the booting problems. It will also cause performance problems if a non-XP alignment is needed.

If you want more control over this, then consider trying TI 2010. If I remember correctly from tests I ran, it keeps the Vista/Windows 7 offset if it existed already. I don't remember if it held when moving between drives, though. I don't have a 4K drive so I haven't run any tests on that type of setup.

The Windows 7 boot repair just updated the BCD file to point to the correct partition. Because TI 11 moved the partition (by changing the alignment), the BCD values were wrong. TI 11 didn't update them and Windows 7 couldn't boot.

Great info thanks! I wish I would have purchased TI 2010 Home with Plus Pack as an upgrade back when it was offered to me for $30. Now it seems if I try to buy the upgrade price I do not get the Plus Pack. BTW I rarely if ever have a single partition on my drives and I only want to backup
the boot partition so its a gotcha.

Bill

I did more testing and the workaround does work. All image backups made after generalized the BCD restore just fine.
So this will get me by for now but I still need a backup plan that works without changing the sector offset in the future.