OK, @NavyLCDR, it seems that reagentc isn't on the rescue media, so I booted back to Windows and used an elevated command prompt and reagentc /enable said that it succeeded.
Problem: Rather than use the unallocated space at the end of the drive, it put Windows RE in the data partition. See reagentc /info and Disk Manager screens below. Apparently I need to disable Windows RE and make the 1.5 GB space an active hidden partition to get reagentc to make it my Recovery partition.
Hi,
All the actions in bold are superfluous.
I'll say it one more time: make an image of the system with MR and a MR rescue disk.
Boot from the latter, pick your mage for restore and the correct destination drive.
Select system partition and drag it to where the old recovery partition is, pick the Recovery partition from the image and drag that so it juts sit behind the system drive.
Let the restore begin and confirm the overwrite of the partition.
Let it finish, close MR rescue and let the machine reboot into Windows.
Cheers,
Hi,
All the actions in bold are superfluous.
I'll say it one more time: make an image of the system with MR and a MR rescue disk.
Boot from the latter, pick your mage for restore and the correct destination drive.
Select system partition and drag it to where the old recovery partition is, pick the Recovery partition from the image and drag that so it juts sit behind the system drive.
Let the restore begin and confirm the overwrite of the partition.
Let it finish, close MR rescue and let the machine reboot into Windows.
Cheers,
I'm not having any luck generating a new Recovery partition, so it's looking like biting the bullet and letting MR save and restore is the most reliable way to make it work.
At this point, the quickest way to get things in shape for MR is probably to restore my HD from Acronis image before I begin.
I have a boot point that Acronis set up on one of my RAIDs that I can boot to and bring up Acronis all ready to restore my system disk.
I'll make sure that anything I want to save is on another computer until I get time to do the system disk restore, which won't be today. If anyone has any ideas on how to make my new partition the Restore partition, let me know.
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Recovery of the system disk to state as of yesterday evening is in progress. It will take a few hours. I checked the Macrium Reflect DVD, and the computer does boot to it just fine. I'll start with the process laid out by @fdegrove tomorrow.
I tried running the Windows utility that makes install/recovery media, and it doesn't see the optical drive, even when there is a 25 GB blank Blu-Ray disk mounted. It asks which of the USB drives is the thumb drive and wants to erase it and make a recovery media out of it, with the optical drive not listed. So, whether my BIOS will boot from Blu-Ray is moot. My existing install/recovery media, that I made last week, is 7.7 GB. If Microsoft has an iso file that has all that data that I can use to burn a Blu-Ray disk, let me know.
Hi,
You won't need it since you already have the MR rescue DVD built.I tried running the Windows utility that makes install/recovery media, and it doesn't see the optical drive, even when there is a 25 GB blank Blu-Ray disk mounted. It asks which of the USB drives is the thumb drive and wants to erase it and make a recovery media out of it, with the optical drive not listed. So, whether my BIOS will boot from Blu-Ray is moot. My existing install/recovery media, that I made last week, is 7.7 GB. If Microsoft has an iso file that has all that data that I can use to burn a Blu-Ray disk, let me know.
I always use usb sticks for that kind of stuff. Faster and cheap as dirt. Plus they're reusable too.
Cheers,
I still prefer optical disks because they're nonvolatile, labeled with Sharpies, cheap (if bought in 100s, which I do), and compact, particularly if stored in paper envelopes. And, my BIOS can be set up to always look at the optical drive first, then boot to HD, which is convenient for those times that you need to boot to outside media. To boot to thumb drive, you need to press F2 or <Esc> to boot to BIOS to change the boot sequence. You won't need it since you already have the MR rescue DVD built.
I'm trying to figure out the absolute obsession with having a separate recovery partition.
This computer has had a lot of Windows Update error 0x800f0922 for over a year. Downloading and installing updates locally has worked, occasionally with more than one try, until the KB5005033 update. Nothing worked for that one, usually hanging on reboot with a black screen, displaying "Updates completed 100%" from which the only recovery was to power down the computer. I could have used the reset button, but I avoid that because it was known to swing the disk heads across the platters and eventually cause HD errors at one time; as you know, this is why shutting down parks your disk heads. Since the power switch sends a signal to the motherboard and the BIOS controls the shutdown, my hope is that this parks the heads while the disk hardware is in control of the current in the write heads.
One attempt at installing KB5005033 resulted in bricking the machine. Build level is 21H1 but the latest recovery media I could find was v1903 on DVD (I had a later one on thumb drive but found it only later). I used that to repair boot problems, and it said that it failed, but when I selected "Exit to Windows" it succeeded in booting to the lock screen, and KB5005033 showed as successfully installed.
People here determined that the problem was that my 529 MB Recovery partition was at the beginning of my system disk, not at the end as it should be. That sounds like it should be OK because it's over 500 MB but with my system it isn't big enough for some WU operations. WU scratches in the Recovery partition and enlarges it when needed, if it is the last partition on your HD. So, I am modifying my configuration to put the Recovery partition at the end of the system disk.
So, my options are to fix WU or lock out WU the next time I get error 0x800f0922, or move the Recovery partition to the end of the system disk.
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Macrium Reflect restore has begun and is in progress. Ran the image last night. Making the image took about 3 hours, according to the Macrium screen. Booted to Macrium Reflect DVD and found how to reorder the partitions for restore. I made the mistake (?) of asking to verify each partition before restore, which apparently increases the restore time by 50%, but it should be done in 4-6 hours. That puts ETC between noon and 2:00 PM local time.
Aside from anything else your are doing................................I made the mistake (?) of asking to verify each partition
This is NOT a mistake. It is wise to verify, especially in your case. Way too much could go wrong with such a large MR image and your current system. Even under normal circumstances, verifying the image is common sense. You said Restore. Verify is normally done at backup time. You may know that.
All of this is just for your knowledge.
Aside from anything else your are doing................................
This is NOT a mistake. It is wise to verify, especially in your case. Way too much could go wrong with such a large MR image and your current system. Even under normal circumstances, verifying the image is common sense. You said Restore. Verify is normally done at backup time. You may know that.
All of this is just for your knowledge.
No problem. This is the first time I've use Macrium Reflect. The biggest problem I had was disabling all the schedules to make sure it doesn't run again, because my future backup media is NAS, and Macrium doesn't see NAS.
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