Factory recovery - Create a Custom Recovery Partition  

Actually, I have another question. Currently I split my laptop hard drive into something like 200GB C drive (Windows, programs, etc) and 400-500GB D drive for downloads and documents. There's more room for something else, if necessary.

For one, it makes it easy to backup to an external drive once a week or so. Also, if Windows becomes a mess my files on a separate partition are easy to locate/copy in a non-GUI environment. Obviously if there's a total hard drive failure I will have to rely on my off drive backups.

What I want is to be able to restore my Windows and programs as quickly as possible on the road. Now that I am using this tutorial to prepare my custom recovery partition, install Windows, add user account(s), and define that the user profiles are on drive D, I think there's an issue with my strategy.

Won't restoring from this custom partition, which is essentially equal to a clean install, overwrite my data on drive D? How could I avoid that?

Thanks

MMZWHAT said:

What I want is to be able to restore my Windows and programs as quickly as possible on the road. Now that I am using this tutorial to prepare my custom recovery partition, install Windows, add user account(s), and define that the user profiles are on drive D, I think there's an issue with my strategy.

Why not just make a custom recovery partition that boots into Macrium Reflect rescue environment and contains an image of your C: drive partition? If your C: drive crashes, just boot into your recovery partition which loads Macrium Reflect, then restore the image of C: drive.

NavyLCDR said:

Why not just make a custom recovery partition that boots into Macrium Reflect rescue environment and contains an image of your C: drive partition? If your C: drive crashes, just boot into your recovery partition which loads Macrium Reflect, then restore the image of C: drive.

Dear NavyLCDR, I appreciate the thought. But if I do that, as with Kari's tutorial, the new installation still won't read my D drive user profiles properly. Different SID's.

It seems that, unless you or someone else have a different idea I've got to rethink placing user-specific directories on a separate partition.

NavyLCDR said:

Why not just make a custom recovery partition that boots into Macrium Reflect rescue environment and contains an image of your C: drive partition? If your C: drive crashes, just boot into your recovery partition which loads Macrium Reflect, then restore the image of C: drive.

Thank you for your suggestion, NavyLCDR. I think the issue remains: a new Windows installation will not recognize user profiles on D: partition because of different SID's.

Unless you or someone else have a different suggestion, I've got to rethink the strategy of putting user profiles on that partition.

MMZWHAT said:

Thank you for your suggestion, NavyLCDR. I think the issue remains: a new Windows installation will not recognize user profiles on D: partition because of different SID's.

Unless you or someone else have a different suggestion, I've got to rethink the strategy of putting user profiles on that partition.

But if your recovery is an image of a good install of Windows 10 in it's current state, the user SSID's are preserved. Macrium Reflect creates an image of the OS exactly like it is at the time the image is created. When it is restored, it is exactly at the same state as when the image was created. When you restore and image, there is no "re-installation" of Windows. There is a restoration of the OS that is exactly the same state as when the image was created.

A recap and a couple of issues:
I experimented with following Kari's tutorial on a virtual machine and eventually installed Windows from an HDD partition to my laptop.


There were some issues.

• When I booted using a USB drive, the first setup window opened up. I opened a command window, navigated to my "Recovery" partition on the hard drive, and launched setup from there. Unfortunately, the installation used files on the USB drive. I rebooted and repeated the steps very carefully with the same results.
  
  The only way to install updated files from the hard drive was to yank the USB boot drive after starting the installation. Doesn't feel right and wasn't in the instructions, so I would like someone's input as to what's going on. Installing directly from boot USB itself works fine, by the way.

Post-install:

• As part of customizing my installation, I renamed my C drive as "MAIN_DRIVE". That did not stick and after restore it is a nameless drive. BUT the name "MAIN_DRIVE" shows up in "System Protection" as "missing." I can remove it but prefer it wasn't there from the start
• In "User Profiles" ("System Properties" -> "User Profiles") is an entry "Account Unknown" with almost 2GB of data. I cannot copy it, only delete it. There are no references to it in the registry, control panels, or anywhere else that I can find. I can delete it but it returns when I run the installation again.
• Prior to creating an image I entered my MalwareBytes registration info. However after the installation MalwareBytes shows up as "Free" and I have to enter the registration again.

I followed Kari's instructions completely except I: a) did not use a network share (optional), and b) did not create a startup entry. I am perfectly comfortable (prefer, even) to start the installation from the hard drive or USB drive. Though see the trouble with USB above, again.

Looking forward to some great ideas and again, thank you Kari and all for helping each other out.

I don't see how I can edit my post above, so another post-install note.

Hyper-V does not retain the custom file location settings and returns to its defaults.

P.S. I can still edit this post, so there must be a time limit on editing, which answers that question.

rdias008 said:

Edit: I just realized, I get an error while running the batch file. Maybe this is the reason. The error occurs due to bcdedit /create {ramdiskoptions} /d "Ramdisk" Here is the output.Attachment 226627

I seem to have the same issue running the bat, did you cure it? If so how please?

Thanks for your post Kari, it clears up at least that part.

Followed your tut to the letter, captured install image, no issues, created the recovery partition and copied mounted iso files across to new recovery partition, put install.wim into sources.

But when booting to the recovery partition I also have the same windows boot manager screen, windows failed to start. A recent hardware..... as did rdias008 in his post #81. Do you have any idea why this would be happening please?