Backup and Restore Windows 10 Pro

Let me clarify something that perhaps you misunderstood. I never said I used a Microsoft account in the process. I don't use a Microsoft account while I am using my laptops and the internet, but for posting on this forum I have to. The account I was referring to was my Windows user account, which is alwsys as an Administrator.

And I have never been able to mske a copy of the backup image because the partition where I wanted to copy to was never large enough. Right now I am waiting till Thursday when I get receive my 2 Tb USB stick that will allow me to copy the image and also will be located in the root directory of the drive. That together with the original backup also connected and visible to the system will possibly duplicate a similar situation that you tried and worked and if that does not work I will attempt what tried to do but did not work because of partition size, which is to backup to the USB stick and then replace the backup in the stick with the one in the USB drive.

Hi,

I have learned a few new things this morning, or at least refreshed my memory..

I was able to get any of the three images I created to Recover to a different drive.. Unlike your's, they would appear, but would fail with various errors..

I have a desktop machine with multiple drives, and that seems to be the problem.. The images would recover to the original drive but not any other.. After unhooking all other drives except for the Windows drive, all three images worked on the same drives that had been failing..

Another thing I discovered, and maybe PCR can comment better on this.. I originally created an image to a USB HDD to duplicate your issue.. I then copied that image to a internal drive after which both appeared and worked..

This morning I attempted to recover the image I had copied to the internal drive and it did not appear..

It turns out that after hooking up the USB HDD with the original image, the copy also was available.. It seems there is some type of link between the original and copy that requires the original to be available for the copy to appear..

This really seems to defeat the purpose of having a copy, but that is typical of the finicky stuff the Backup + Restore does..

So... To be safe, I would suggest that anything you do as you suggested to PCR, that you verify that the copy will work WITHOUT the original attached before deleting the original..

Since you state that your images are never modified after creation, I am thinking that there is still something going on with Permissions.. Not because of changes you made, but because of the formatting of individual partitions possibly being done on different machines.. I am just guessing here, but that may be confusing the Recovery Process in a similar fashion as my multiple drives did..

I think you mentioned using a Microsoft Account.. This in itself can cause problems with permissions as they seem to act differently with a Microsoft Account than they do with a more standard Local Account.. Changing that at this point would likely be of little benefit..

Just something to think about.. PCR seems to have deeper knowledge as to the workings of the Backup + Restore than I, so maybe this will give him some possible ideas as to a solution or workaround.. We have worked on issues like this together previously..

I did not understand your concept of a shadow copy, but I believe I do now. I deleted the image that I had just created, trying to make room for the image that I could not restore. The size of the image file that I was going to copy was 584 Gb and the partition size where I was going to copy this image was about 40 Gb larger, so presumably no problem, but there was a problema. Windows told me there was not enough room, it was short by about 400 Gb??, which when you add it the actual size of the backup file it becomes about 1 Tb, which was the size of the disk in my laptop, which explains the concept of a shadow copy which is not actually there because the partition size was around 600 Gb only, but I ordered a 2 Tb USB memory stick, which I will get next Thursday, and intend to copy the image file to the memory stick and repeat the process.

When using the Repair Disc or equivalent external recovery environment, I would think whatever image is there is the right one. The HDD is reformatted & all the partitions are restored from the image. That should end up bad only if BIOS had been switched away from the UEFI/Legacy mode that existed when the image was made. You'd have to switch it back to boot. Or maybe it would detect the problem & warn of it before doing the restore, I don't really know. But I'll bet Slance310 knows.

The last thing Backup & Restore does when making its image is to make a shadow copy onto the HDD/partition to which it made the image. I think that's what causes trouble when the WindowsImageBackup folder is moved to another drive because it stays behind. It could be worth a try, but I think your plan also will run into trouble owing to the shadow copy. Sounds as if you'll have one that doesn't match the image.

Based partially on something you suggested, something along those occurred to me, which is to do a backup of my existing installation, which is small in a diferent partition in the same USB drive and then erase the backup and copy the old backup to this drive and then try to do a restore, all without rebooting. I wonder what it is that Windows looks at to determine if a backup is the right one and whether it will also reject this copy of the old backup. I am also creating a System Repair Disk right after the backup.