Backing up an Asus UX32A

You should include all partitions in the backup. You will not need to restore everything everytime. But I strongly recommend you include all partitions.
When you have the opportunity to do a real restore, you will be able to try whether restoring without D creates any issue and decide at this point whether you need to keep on backing D.

Thanks. I got no going back if I mess up. So I have let Asus restore just 3 partitions - System, C and Recovery the order in which they appear in DD. I will do my TI backups on this basis. Does it matter in which order the partitions appear to be and would TI ever change their positions? In the TI Backup Wizard the partitions appear in the following order 440.4GB NTFS (C), 200MB FAT32 (System) and 25GB NTFS (Recovery).

The Recovery partition is described (in TI) as NTFS Partition: 0x27 (Windows RE Hidden, PQ, MirOS).

Incidentally, the HD in this PC is a 7mm thick single platter 500GB Hitachi Z5K500 (HTS545050A7E380) and there is a SanDisk SSD i100 24GB which I think is used for instant on from sleep. This also appears when running from the TI USB boot key - I won't back that up.

My experience with TI going back several versions over several years has always been with Recovery (if it existed), System and C and D in that order. I performed many backups & recoveries without D - therefore D remained untouched or if D was absent, then there would just be an unallocated space at the end.

I would always try to restore the partitions the way they were, and I would use a screenshot of the Windows disk management console as a reference. The SSD is a caching disk. If you can see it for backup, back it up also. This will ensure that you can restore the computer to the state it was in if needed.

I agree with Pat. You should make a full disk backup, selecting the disk so that it includes all partitions. That is the safest, most complete backup.

The Asus 25GB Recovery partition is likely like the Recovery partition on my new Dell laptop: it is useful only to restore the PC to its original factory state. Once you begin installing software and using the computer, such a restore is much less useful and much less appealing.

I removed my Dell Recovery partition and thus freed up almost 20 GB of disk space. But, first I used Dell's backup utility to create the Recovery image to a USB flash drive (you could also choose three DVD-R disks), which could be used restore to Dell factory state if I ever sold the PC. I also moved boot files from Recovery partition to the OS partition.

But, with True Image, the Dell Recovery disks aren't even necessary if you use True Image to create a pre-boot backup image. I also did that (belt and suspenders).

Thanks to Pat L and tuttle.

I successfully created Asus's Recovery DVD spanning 5 DVD's and carried out a test recovery which appeared to reinstal the Recovery partition. This then was followed automatically by a restore of the PC's original software. So that part of it seems to work OK. Now for the more necessary TI backup which will contain all my programmes incuding MS Office when they are installed.

To test it, I booted the Rescue Key to UEFI and selected TI. I found in the Tools 'Add New Disk', found the USB HDD and selected GPT format which created an unallocated GPT space. Then back in normal boot of Rescue Key DD I formatted the USB HDD to Basic GPT (like the Asus partitions).

Back to booting the Rescue Key UEFI TI to start a backup of all 5 partitions to the USB HDD. Started OK but it takes absolutely ages and I am not sure that it's really working properly. The USB HDD activity light is only occassional which seems odd whilst the PC activity light is solidly on. After an hour and a half I cancelled the operation.

Can you give me some advice please.

The next thing I tried was back on the OS. Installed TI and performed a total backup and verified OK. When I tried to open the image (password protected), I got the Windows Explorer 'green ribbon of death' and was unable get there. Something went wrong from then on when I tried to perform a restore and a message came up that the file was corrupted. I noticed in Windows Disk Management that the 2 SSD partitions had disappeared and the SSD was blank.

I am now restoring with the Asus Recovery DVD's. The plan is then to just backup C drive and test a restore. At least I would have a backup for the most likely OS failure and if there is a disk failure, I could restore from the DVD's and put the latest OS on. Will take for ages in the worst scenario.

xyzbird wrote:

Then back in normal boot of Rescue Key DD I formatted the USB HDD to Basic GPT (like the Asus partitions).

Why did you (re)format the USB HDD as GPT? You just need a "regular" USB HDD to store your backup (a TIB file).

Thanks Pat L.

I was under the impression that since the drives on the Asus PC were all GPT that the USB HDD needed to be as well. I had just purchased a brand new HDD to replace a previous failed one that I used to use on the old 'MBR' PC and thought it needed to be set up GPT in the Add New Disk facility.

So should I just use the Asus PC to reformat the USB HDD, forget GPT and proceed as I used to? Will this cure the problem with backing up with the TI Rescue Key?

Not at all. When you do a disk and partition backup, the result is a big file, like any other file. It can be stored on any type of disk. I recommend to store it on a USB disk with the NTFS file system. There is nothing wrong with having formatted GPT, but it is not necessary unless the disk has more than 2TB or you need more than 4 primary partitions.

I am not sure this is the issue with the TI rescue key. I noticed that ATI 2013 is very slow with GPT disks, much slower, in my experience, than with MBR disks and slower than 2012. Maybe Acronis will fix this with the upcoming update...

I think I have got it sorted. There was a bad connection from PSU to notebook which needed a firm push to click into the PC socket. I managed to resize the OS and Data partitions from the rescue media DD. Now backing up and restoring fine. I took an image of the SSD (sector by sector) to archive along with an image of the initial system to save running a 2.5 hour restore from the 5 restoration DVD's if I ever have to. I have been running images of System, OS and Recovery with no problems now, much faster with no hesitation. I notice restores of System and Recovery are sector by sector. Also avoided any backup or restore of MBR which appear in the tasks.

No need to take an image sector by sector. That doesn't anything useful to a normal backup. For encrypted disks or some disk forensics cases, OK.

I didn't choose to do System and Recovery partitions sector by sector - it seems to have been done by default. When setting up a backup task, the SSD partitions were not ticked by default like the others, and under each there was an instruction stating 'Can be backed up only sector-by-sector'. So that's what I did.

Incidentally, I could not get Rescue Media DD to delete the Recovery partition, all the others yes. It seems to be protected in some way. However it would not recover (F9 on boot starts the recovery) until TI restored everything.

Thanks for your help. My confidence is restored.