Backup and Restore Windows 10 Pro

I already went through all that about permissions and made sure they were ok and yes, In File Explorer when you try to access the drive where the backup file is located, it will tell you don't have permission to open that location, that it needs Administrators permission, but since my Windows account is that of an Administrator, by hitting "continue", it will open the folder. Yes, both hard discs were the same size, nominally, 1 Tb, but different manufacturers, which means, not exactly to the byte level, but I believe if the one you are cloning to is equal or larger than the cloned one, it will work. The cloning software will tell you if the cloning is feasible. One curious thing is that if you want to copy the image file to another location, that location has to have same or more space than the hard disc size where the image was created from, even if the image size is much smaller.

Hi,

I just tried this again with the same results..

Something I just thought of.. By chance could you have changed Permissions\Ownership of the WindowsImageBackup folder or the entire partition it is on ? I have done that before and the image was not usable..

The Owner should be "System" on the original.. It is "Administrators" on the copy..

Both need Full Permissions..

BTW.. Are the disks you are cloning the same size as the one the image was created for ??

If it even the slightest bit smaller it will not work..

Hi,

I just completed saving an image to a USB HDD and restoring a COPY of the image and everything worked perfectly.. This is with a Repair CD that was created at the time the image was saved..

My machine is running Legacy Bios which may give different results than you experience.. Let me know and I may have a UEFI setup I can try..

I did this with the latest Windows 10 build of 21H1... 19043.1165...

I will try it again from the actual USB HDD and not the copy to a internal HDD as I wait for your reply...

I have attempted to restore an image backup in several ways, with the same results. The normal or regular way is to use the Windows backup and Restore, Windows 7 style, since that was how I created the backup. When you create a backup you have the chance to Create a system repair disk, which is a bootable disk, which the only thing it does is to put Windows in Recovery mode where you have several Options and one of them is to Recover or Restore an image file and basically it is the same as the Windows 7 restore procedure.

The way I see it, now that none of my laptops, which include the ones with no problems, can actually recognize or find the WindowsImageBackup file in my USB drives, is that Microsoft has screwed up this part of the Restore or Recovery, or whatever you want to call it. As I said, I was in contact with Microsoft level 2 support, where the agent had control of my computer and basically had me go over all the things that I had already tried and finally gave up and said she had schedule for someone from level 3 call me yesterday within a 2 hour window, which never happen.

I have been using Windows ever since it practically started. I have three Lenovo laptop, two of which are very close model wise and I cloned the hard disk, knowing that it might not work because of differences in hardware, etc,, and put the cloned disk in the one with the problems, and it booted up and worked, and then I attempted to do the Restore operation, knowing that it might not work, and again with the same results. This was done before this morning, which is when I attempted to use the Restore feature in the second good laptop and realized that it did not work either, so my conclusion is that Windows has messed it up. Right now none of the backups I have in my USB drives for my 4 laptops are good or can be used in the future for fixing problems which require restoring an old backup, So, as I said, MIcrosoft messed up realy good this time.

I tried to look online for Backup and Restore apps which might work with the image file created by Windows, but none do.

Hi,

Just to clarify... You are using bootable media in your attempts to "Recover an Image" ?

You have mentioned "Restore" and this is not the correct function for an image..

Restore references a "System Restore", not reloading an image..

Again, just to clarify we are on the same page..

I do synpathize with you on this.. There have been times when my saved images worked perfectly, and times when I could not get them to be recognized.. The issues have become more frequent as the Windows Imaging Tool is no longer supported..

I will try an image and see what happens on my machine..