Solved Questions on Vista's backup facility

Hi,

I have a very nice Vista Biz, 32 bit system. I've believe that I've backed up the whole system, using the command line:

wbadmin.exe start backup -backuptarget:"\\LENOVO\Vista backup" -allCritical -VSSfull -quiet
​

That produces a backup structure worth about 25G on the remote drive - maybe a 50% reduction of space.

I'm using the command line because in its wonderfulness, MS provides no way to access a network drive using the backup's GUI.

This batch file setup is convenient for me, but I'm wondering this about it:

• Does this command truly back up the entire partition?
• Does it also back up the small active system partition that contains the BCD?
• Does it back up the MBR?
• Will the restore be available via the RE disk? Even if the data is out on the network?

I would appreciate any insight you could give. I want to make sure I can restore this system in its entirety should I lose the hard disk.

Be blessed,
Paul

I use Macrium Reflect to make an image to restore from.

You may also like shadow explorer. It will recover your stuff if ever accidentaly deleted.

richc46 said:

You may also like shadow explorer. It will recover your stuff if ever accidentaly deleted.

Click to expand...

But not if your restore points have gone as that is where it gets the files from.

I've used Macrium Reflect and thought highly of it. The free version doesn't do incrementals, but then I'm not doing them here either. Does it also back up the BCD and MBR, and is it easy to restore from? I've had network problems restoring from Paragon's free backup prog.

As for the VSS explorer, I thought versions were accessible via the Property sheets, even in Home Windows versions. But I'll definitely keep it in mind in an emergency.

To answer your questions:

1. It does backup the whole partition and creates a VHD file which you can attach with Disk Management.

2. It only backs up the partition you have in your command. It does not work like Win7 imaging where the 100MB active partition is automatically dragged along.

3. It does not backup the MBR

4. That restore question I cannot answer. I never tried a network drive.

whs, thanks for that explanation. I'm not sure what you meant by attach with Disk Management, as I couldn't see the share in DM, but the other answers have convinced me that this backup is not adequate. I could construct a new BCD and MBR on the fly, but why go to that effort?

I decided to retry Macrium free, since I'm not looking for incremental here, and it is very good. It took a while, but everything is backed up. I need to cut a rescue disk and try that out, which I can't do until I put an optical drive in this thing (well, maybe I can put it on a usb stick....), just to make sure everything is airtight.

Thanks all for your insight. I'm going to mark this thread solved. And I'll give MS another mark for an inadequate facility for a critical function. I may end up going this route for my Win7 box as well, because I'm not sure if the indigenous facility there is much better than this one.

1. Re Attach - go to the Action tab on the top left of Disk management (next to File), there use the Attach function. You will see, it is pretty obvious. You have to navigate to the VHD and then OK. This will mount the VHD like any other partition which you can open e.g. in Computer. You can even image it with Macrium. This volume will disappear when you reboot.

2. Re Macrium - I have once made a video tutorial about it which also shows the recovery portion. Maybe it is helpful: Imaging with free Macrium - Windows 7 Forums
PS: the tutorial applies exactly the same to Vista.

Strange, I looked once again, and I don't have that function on disk management. By tab I take it you mean the menu, right?

That was a good thread over at SF. I think there is one error though - isn't the MBR separate from the service partition? This might shed light on the weirdness expressed there on restoring the MBR from Macrium. I would have to do a test run on this, as I find it hard to follow verbally.

1. Re Attach - I am on Windows7 and assumed that the Attach works the same in Vista. But maybe it does not. You may heve to scout for it. I am sorry if I mislead you. But I do not have a functional Vista at this location. So it is difficult for me to check.

2. Re MBR - the MBR is in the 512 first bytes of the disk - any disk. It is normally not neccessary to restore it. You normally do that only if you made changes in the bootmgr (active partition respectively).

Maybe it is a Win7 thing, because my Win7 laptop shows attach very plainly, and it's only Home Premium, but I can't see it at all in Vista Biz.

I can see where if you replace the partitions in the same place they were, the old MBR should still function. So if I do a recovery, my first attempt will be to leave the existing MBR alone.

Thanks,
p.

Yeah, I just checked how to attach/mount a vhd file in Vista. It is a bit more complicated than in Win7: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/cschotte/archive/2008/03/26/how-to-mount-a-vhd-quickly-under-vista-using-your-mouse.aspx

Aha. Thanks much for that. I don't think my Win7 CPU will do virtual, but the Vista box will. So I'll hold onto that for a future date.

Be well,
p.

I just tested a dry run of Macrium's Linux Rescue disk, and it performed flawlessly, with one exception. It found my network and successfully ran DHCP for the machine, but then it couldn't log on to the network itself. I'm on a workgroup, and maybe the lack of a workgroup spec is the obstacle.

Even without the network this is a great system and I'm going to use it. But I'd like to clear this up if possible.

Thanks,
p.