GPT configuration question

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  1. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #11

    makridge said:
    Kudos to you all, cereberus, lx07, and topgundcp! The one thing I had not tried was Macrium Reflect Free---and it backed up, verified and restored beautifully without hitch nor glitch. The backup solution I've been looking for for over a year (or more, I lose track). Also, I want to try the multipartition thing when I get up enough nerve, cereberus.
    Now you have a good backup, just copy as much data as you can to external drive, and simply shrink partition in disk management, and create a new drive partition in freed up space. This is really easy to do an low risk (even more so with your image backup).

    Then of course image backup smaller OS drive as well again (and data drive if you like).

    Good luck.
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  2. Posts : 8
    windows 10
    Thread Starter
       #12

    reply to dalchina's post


    I've tried Acronis True Image 2015, AOMEI Backupper, the native Windows Backup, and Macrium Reflect Free. The only one that has given no problem at all is Macrium; it is rather detailed compared to others, but with very little adjustment and leaving most settings at default, it did the job for me.
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  3. Posts : 42,737
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #13

    Thanks.. I gave up on Acronis years ago when it didn't even recognise my first SATA drive - it's relative bloatware now.
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  4. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #14

    dalchina said:
    Thanks.. I gave up on Acronis years ago when it didn't even recognise my first SATA drive - it's relative bloatware now.
    I gave up also on (paid) Acronis a few years ago as it was buggy as hell with eufi pcs, but Macrium just worked every time. I did quite a bit of testing of free versions across a range of xdevices eg eufi laptop, a bios laptop, and a tablet with 32 bit eufi.

    Macrium Reflect Free
    Easeus Todo Backup Free
    Veeam (recently)
    Clonezilla
    Paragon
    Aoemi
    Clonezilla

    The only one that was 100% consistent, fast and reliable was Macrium.

    It was the only one that worked on my tablet.

    No contest in my mind. MRF is a Rolls Royce by comparison.
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  5. Posts : 42,737
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #15

    @cereberus: I moved from Easeus to Aomei some time back, no problems with my older BIOS/SATA laptop, but will shortly be getting a UEFI/SSD/HDD laptop.. just wondering if you recall what didn't work for you with Aomei? Can appreciate it's hard to recall the differences.. (I have a Pro license).
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  6. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #16

    dalchina said:
    @cereberus: I moved from Easeus to Aomei some time back, no problems with my older BIOS/SATA laptop, but will shortly be getting a UEFI/SSD/HDD laptop.. just wondering if you recall what didn't work for you with Aomei? Can appreciate it's hard to recall the differences.. (I have a Pro license).
    It just failed to restore properly on my eufi laptop, but it was an older version, and completely refused to work ony tablet.

    I found all packages worked on bios pcs a t had mixed experiences on eufi. To be fair initial implementation of eufi was a bit dodgy as well.

    However all my tablet tests are only a year old, and MRF was the only one that worked, which is a big confidence booster to its overall reliability.

    Basically, I would install Macrium as well and hedge your bets by backing up with it as well as AOEMI, then if one fails, you can use the other. I make occasional backups with Easeus for same reason.
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  7. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #17

    sorry about typing - using mobile
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  8. Posts : 42,737
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #18

    Thanks, I'll have to do a little experimentation when I get the laptop with latest version; better forewarned..
      My Computers


  9. Posts : 15,444
    Windows10
       #19

    dalchina said:
    Thanks, I'll have to do a little experimentation when I get the laptop with latest version; better forewarned..
    Suggest you create a usb recovery drive (control panel, recovery, create recovery drive, and click to copy system files).

    Then it is a good time to experiment with AOEMI and MRF (Easeus is pretty good as well, thereafter much of a much) to your hearts content before you have installed lots of apps, got lots of critical data etc.

    Not trying to teach you to suck eggs as a power user, but the one thing people often forget is to change bios settings so default is to boot from usb stick first.

    Not a big deal for legacy bios pcs provided you know which keys to press, but for uefi pcs, things have changed. One slightly (imo) retrograde step is that with uefi, it is not always possible to get to bios simply by pressing F2 or something like that, requiring you to go via windows menus or startup up drive.

    Even if you can use F2 or similar, it does not always work if fastboot is enabled, as you cannot press key fast enough at correct time.

    This can get you in a catch 22 if windows or boot sectors gets corrupted, as you cannot boot to usb to change order to boot from usb.

    There are ways around it eg remove hard drives completely, so pc boots to usb, and then yiu can get to bios to change boot order, and replace hard drive. Others involve removing cmos battery, changing bios jumper settings etc. to force jump to bios.

    All this hassle can be avoided by changing boot order as soon as you get laptop.
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  10. Posts : 42,737
    Win 10 Pro (22H2) (2nd PC is 22H2)
       #20

    It will be one of my early tasks.. with Win 8 I had boot options set for Safe Mode and Normal.. which led to the interesting situation when I upgraded to '10 that I was initially presented with options to boot to Win 10 and to Win 8 Safe Mode...

    My first thought is usually to try to ensure I can get out of the mess I'm going to get myself into... and since the late 90's and my first laptop I can say I've never lost anything much, as regards data, and recovered from partition table corruption and other problems.

    I've used disk imaging for a good number of years, and am aware of the issues with UEFI of using boot disks- just have to deal with it for the 1st time.

    I am, however, looking forward to an OS booting off Samsung 951 MSata (really fast) to HyperX RAM.... and fast program loading. USB3 then should make imaging a whole lot faster. Add on a hi-res screen.. hmm. And I started with a 366MHz processor, 10Gb disk, 3 laptops ago... (and earlier with a 16 bit system with 64k bytes RAM where 8 cards - PCBs- each had 8kbytes of RAM on them).
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