System Restore - Disk to small on identical disk
I've got a problem with System Restore on a Surface Pro 4: before sending my
device to repair, I did a system backup with Backupper. I did a simple System Backup without any extra options.
Now I got back a new device in exchange (exact same model and specs!) but
System Restore tells me the target disk is to small!
From what I can
tell, in System Restore I need to choose a target *partition*, but the
backup also contains the boot partition - wich makes it 400MB bigger
then the target partition (C:). The "continue" button stays greyed out - no way to restore.
When I do a seperate restore on both the partitions in the backup, afterwards the device won't boot and tells me it needs repair.
I even purchased Backupper Professional, as the website says it can restore even to a smaller disk, but IT JUST WON'T DO IT.
HOW
can I simply do a System Restore when Backupper won't even count in
that there are two partition in the System backup??? This is a serious
BUG!
Please help !
Comments
It sounds like they gave you back a disk with Windows already installed. If you want YOUR system back and not what the store gave you, you might try cleaning the disk completely in diskpart first. That way you'll be restoring YOUR system to a fresh disk.
You can use the utility section of the Aomei boot disk to enter diskpart or you can use a Windows install USB "repair" option. In any case once at the command prompt, type the following:
diskpart
list drive
select drive 0 (or whatever number it is)
clean
---------
now this is where it might get interesting... IF your old drive was MBR and the new drive is GPT, you'll need to convert it back... the other way works also... MBR to GPT. If you know they're both the same you can skip this.
-------
convert MBR (or convert GPT)... skip this if both are the same
exit
exit
Then proceed with a restore from the boot disk.
(in lieu of doing all this, instead of trying to restore to a "partition", select the whole disk for the restore location)
Good luck. Let us know what happened.
The 1TB Surface Pro 2017 actually contains two 512GB physical drives:
https://www.computerworld.com/article/3216499/microsoft-windows/looking-at-a-1tb-surface-pro-2017-make-sure-you-know-what-youre-getting.html
Your older Surface Pro 4 may contain 2 physical drives as well, I don't know and do not have time to research it right now, I am just pointing out that this MAY be your problem, and letting others reading this thread know about this unusual hardware configuration.
The 2x512GB problem is only with Surface Pro 2017 1TB, not Pro 4.
Unfortunately at the moment I can't try Flyer's approach, as I have to turn in the device again due to touch screen failure - I'll try it as soon as I have the device back.
Before wipe and restore...which works as well...you can try this...
1. Select image to restore.
2. When asked "Do you want to do a System Restore"...click NO
3. Select only the Windows Partition to restore...usually C:
4. Restore to the Partition where you want Windows to be on...usually C:
5. Upon completing restoration do not restart yet...Go to Utiilites > Command Prompt.
6. Enter these comands to restore the UEFI bootmgr...
Diskpart
List disk
Select disk "0" (change the number where your Windows disk is located, without quotations)
List volume
Select volume "3" (Select where you see the "FAT32" volume, without quotations)
assign letter=L (any letter not used)
exit (exit Diskpart)
BCDboot C:\windows /s L= /f UEFI
exit
Go ahead and restart your system...It should now be ok with two options to boot upon.
to elimnate the 2nd boot option...
WinKey+R
msconfig
select Boot Tab
highlight the O/S that is not currently being used and Delete.
Reboot
I have what I believe is the same problem but when I go through the steps after entering:
bcdboot c:\windows /s L: /f UEFI
I get the error:
Failure when attempting to copy boot files.
Is the problem locating the source files or is it writing to the destination, or something else?
My letter L drive is FAT32, type Partition, size 101 MB, Status Healthy unlabeled, and has the following directories:
EFI
Temp
My letter C drive is NTFS, type Partition, size 164 MB, Status Healthy, labeled Recovery and is empty.
My letter G drive is RAW, type Partition, size 16 MB, Status Healthy and unlabeled.
My letter H drive is NTFS, type Partition, size 232 GB, Status Healthy, unlabeled and is where where my Windows directory (and others) resides.
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I have emailed AOMEI tech support, haven't heard anything back and the machine is down.