Windows 10 System Image Restore failure with some types of error.

Hi, with Macrium you have an easy option for Windows:
Click Backup, Click Backup Windows.

All the relevant partitions are selected.

Create separate images for other data partitions or disks.
(Backup, Image Selected Disks).

Once you have your first base images on (e.g.) an external USB disk, you can subsequently create differential images (faster, smaller). This is obscure... click tab Backup Definition Files, Rt click the relevant XML, click Differential

Trick to make sure your external USB disk is always allocated the same letter- change its drive letter to e.g. M in Drive Management.

Hi.
When you first got the laptop, and you made C, D and E, the other hidden partitions were there as well - they just don't show in File Explorer. (There can even be unallocated partitions which will show in Macrium and not in Disk Management or File Explorer.)

If you check the box to "backup partitions required to restore Windows" and just have a look, you will see which partitions are absolutely required for the operating system to be restored by Macrium. However, it will *not* select partitions required to use the recovery function to restore Windows using your Manufacturer's hidden recovery partition. Yes, there is a difference.

You have quite a lot of storage space available on D and E; the few MB you might gain by deleting unnecessary partitions and merging them, in my opinion, is not worth the trouble or the risk, as any time you mess with partitions, you run the risk of losing data if you're not very careful and don't know what you're doing.

Dalchina is correct about the Macrium differential image option. Just remember, differentials/incrementals have dependencies, and if one in the chain fails, you could be in trouble. I prefer to make full images, and verify them during creation, to be safe. I also keep about 8-12 at any given time, depending on how large they are and how much room I have available on my external drive. It's your choice which you prefer to run though.

You could run a couple baseline full hard drive images, (all partitions), and just save those for catastrophe (failed hard drive). Then, run separate images on C, D and E, on a regular basis, because they are the ones that regularly change. That way, if your operating system gets borked, (from a bad update?), you'd have an image only for C, which you could restore, and not have to do anything with D & E.

Hope that helps.

Thank You, Dalchina and Simrick. Im so grateful because both of you patiently give the explanation to such a newbie like me. I understand most of the part of your explanation. But, im still confused about this part:

"Just remember, differentials/incrementals have dependencies, and if one in the chain fails, you could be in trouble. I prefer to make full images, and verify them during creation, to be safe. I also keep about 8-12 at any given time, depending on how large they are and how much room I have available on my external drive. It's your choice which you prefer to run though."

I lost at the "chain" you mentioned there. And how is the proper way to make the chain not fail.

so i just need to check which one is needed by windows by just looking at partition(s) showed in "creating an image of partition(s) required to backup and restore windows" and then choose differential method for those partition. and what do you mean by 8-12 at any given time. do you mean you always make 8-12 exact copy of an image backup at one time ?
Sorry for troubling both of you

ARNaja said:

Thank You, Dalchina and Simrick. Im so grateful because both of you patiently give the explanation to such as a newbie like me. I understand most of the part of your explanation. But, im still confused about this part:

"Just remember, differentials/incrementals have dependencies, and if one in the chain fails, you could be in trouble. I prefer to make full images, and verify them during creation, to be safe. I also keep about 8-12 at any given time, depending on how large they are and how much room I have available on my external drive. It's your choice which you prefer to run though."

I dont get about the chain you mentioned there. And how is the proper way to make the chain not fail.

The "chain" refers to something other than full backups.
See in Part 4 of the tutorial:
Macrium Reflect - Backup Restore - Windows 10 Forums

Information
Differential Backup / Image

A differential backup checks what has been changed since the last full backup and only saves those changes. When restoring a differential backup both differential image and full backup image must be available on same folder on backup storage drive.

Because only changes since last full backup will be saved, differential images can be quite small compared to full backup, of course depending how big changes user has made. The later a differential backup is created, the more changes have been made, the bigger the differential image will be.

Incremental Backup / Image
(Not available in Free edition!)

An incremental backup checks what has been changed since the last backup regardless if the last backup was full, differential or incremental and only saves those changes. When restoring an incremental backup all differential and incremental images and full backup image must be available on same folder on backup storage drive.

Incremental images can be really small. An example: if you take daily incremental backups and today you just browsed the web and got a few emails but did not download or install anything, today's incremental backup is only a few kilobytes, a megabyte or two max.

So, if any of these in the chain are bad, your restore is jeopardized. Images can fail. That's why you need to have several (redundancy).

ARNaja said:

so i just need to check which one is needed by windows by just looking at partition(s) showed in "creating an image of partition(s) required to backup and restore windows" and then choose differential method for those partition. and what do you mean 8-12 at any given time. do you mean you always make 8-12 an exact copy of image backup at one time ?
Sorry for troubling both of you

Here's what I would do for your system:
I would make two complete images of the entire hard drive (every partition), and store those away for safety. Then, I would create a recurring full backup for C, D and E. I would schedule this to run automatically, at certain time intervals, (once a month, once a week, etc.), and I would include in the instruction set how many copies to retain at any given time. I would also tic the box to auto-verify when the image is made, so I can be assured I get good images. If you only want to backup C once a month, D every 2 weeks, and E weekly, then you would make 3 different instruction sets for automatic backup. So, if your hard drive ever completely failed, you could go back to one of your original full hard drive images of all the partitions, restore that to a new hard drive, then mount the most recent images for the C, D & E partitions, and restore those individually, to be fully up-to-date.

Perhaps this, in Part #5 of the tutorial, explains it a little better than I can:

1.) You can restore a full backup or if you want to any of your subsequent differential or incremental images:

• Restoring a full backup does restore only the full backup, not differential or incremental images created after it
  
• Restoring a differential backup will restore the last full backup and changes saved in selected differential backup (only these two files needed regardless how many differential and incremental backups have been made between full backup and selected differential backup)
  
• Restoring an incremental backup will restore set of backups (full, differential, incremental) up to selected incremental backup

And here is the Macrium support article on it:
How backup sets are created and maintained - KnowledgeBase - Macrium Reflect Knowledgebase

.

If you like, you can very simply create a full backup of Windows (all partitions related) via Backup, Windows Backup.
Then you can maintain that with differential backups (free edition).

Any other partitions and disks- base image, differential images.

ARNaja said:

So, basically what i need here is full backup. My conclusion from your explanation of full backup is "it is the safest method but can't bbe updated with only the changes happen after it's backed up like differential and incremental backup. And it's gonna take more space than differential or incremental backup on my storage. But it is not using "chain" so the failure risk for a newbie like me will be more reduced. so "full bakup" method is just like windows version of system image backup. Am i right sir?

Yes, basically you are correct. Except, there's nothing stopping you from making an incremental/differential at any time, against one of the full backups.

Let's say you made two full backups of the entire drive, (all partitions), and saved them in a folder on an external drive called H:\FullBackupImages. You've scheduled this backup to run once a week, and it takes quite a long time to run and verify. You decide you're going to install a new program, but you're not sure how it will function on the system, and you want to prepare just in case something goes wrong. You'd rather not wait for the full backup to run, but you really want some protection, as the last one was made 6 days ago, so you have quite a bit to lose if you have to restore from the last full backup. In this case, you could go to the instruction set for your full backup image, right-click it, and select to run a differential/incremental:



The differential/incremental will basically capture the differences between how the system was at the last full backup and how it is at this moment. That differential/incremental will be quite small and fast to complete. Once the new software is installed and you've verified that everything is good, your next full image will run as normally scheduled, and the differential should never be needed. However, if the install completely borks the system, or introduces some unwanted malware, the easiest way to recover is to re-image the full backup and the differential, to get you right back where you were before the program was installed. So, it does have its advantages. I just wouldn't depend on a collection of differentials/incrementals only.