Restore: Source and Destination drive letters not the same
I am testing Backupper to restore from an image in case of total HD failure, and have made a boot USB drive and an image on an external hard drive. The image has Disk0 is OSDisk(C:) with a small Recovery Volume also on Disk0. I am able to boot my Win7 laptop fine on the USB drive , select Restore and use Path to navigate to my image on external hard drive G:.
-Under Backup Point, I highlight my Full Backup and hit Next
-Under Operation Summary it shows two source and two destination Partitions:
Source Destination
C:OSDisk --> E: OSDisk
*:Recovery --> C:Recovery
So why Backupper trying to put the C:OSDisk onto the E:drive, which does not even exist?! Is there a problem with the Recovery part of Disk 0? If so, what do I do to ensure the C:OSDisk is restored to the C: drive?
-Under Backup Point, I highlight my Full Backup and hit Next
-Under Operation Summary it shows two source and two destination Partitions:
Source Destination
C:OSDisk --> E: OSDisk
*:Recovery --> C:Recovery
So why Backupper trying to put the C:OSDisk onto the E:drive, which does not even exist?! Is there a problem with the Recovery part of Disk 0? If so, what do I do to ensure the C:OSDisk is restored to the C: drive?
Comments
My Backup image was on external HD with the letter G:
What I am trying to understand is why Backupper shows the non-existent E: drive as destination for the restored image and not C:
If I went ahead with the restore as shown, what would happen to my image--would it actually get put on the C: drive or would the C:drive be renamed to E: ? Or would it just fail altogether because there is no E: dirve?
Flyer, you are right, I do not have the skills or spare drive to swap out the internal C:drive on my laptop and I see I cannot do a Test Restore to an external USB HD so I will have to trust that the Image will work should I ever actually need it. If not, I have my data files backed up in the cloud so not total disaster--just the nuisance of rebuilding the system and software install.
On the Drive letters, this time I booted up using my Backupper boot thumbdrive and *wrote down* what drives were mapped where (I had it wrong before):
Recovery C:
Backupper D :
OSDisk E:
CDdrive F:
Image G:
Boot X:
Here is my understanding so far. So as Johnnygoboy said, the Boot Media assigned different drive letters. I have always assumed the C drive was the C drive, never changed and this led to my confusion. So the Restore showing a restore to the E drive is the correct location in that the Boot Media is calling the OSDisk the E drive, instead of the C drive. And when I looked at Clone Disk as Admin suggested I see that Disk0 is comprised of 2 parts: E:OSDisk and C:Recovery.
Okay, so that clears up the E disk thing--I see the Boot Media has assigned that letter to my Boot Volume.
Suppose down the road either my OS gets corrupted or HD crashes and I need a new one. I boot up with the thumbdrive Boot Media, select Restore and navigate to my Image. If for whatever reason, Backupper does restore to Disk0 as E:OSDisk and C:Recovery, does Windows know to boot from E: instead of C, since that is where all the boot files are? Later, can I just go in and change E: to C: using Disk Management since C is hardwired into my brain as the boot drive? If that is possible, then I have my answers.
If they are wrong for some reason (for example if you clone the OS partition to another partition on the same disk and then boot from the clone), you could also delete all keys (assignments) in the registry and boot again.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\MountedDevices
They will be assigned again at boot time.
Since the letter assignments are stored in the registry (which is in the backup), they can never be changed or assigned by Aomei from the bootable media.
The registry records something like Disk ID + Partition ID = letter X
When restored on the same disk as where the backup is made from, the same letters are used because they are read from the registry at boot time.
When restored on another disk, which has another Disk ID so the registry does not hold usefull information about drive letters, they are assigned at boot time and the OS partition becomes C
You can clean a disk wth diskpart.exe
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Then in Diskpart issue these commands:
list disk
select disk # (the internal disk that should be cleaned, often number 0)
clean
convert gpt (only if you are on an UEFI machine and you do a System Restore. A Disk restore can do that for you autom.)
exit
exit
I now see that you did a system backup/restore and not a disk backup/restore. Then you do see letters if the destination disk is not cleaned. Even if the disk is clean and you restore, then the USB bootable Aomei assigns temporarily a letter to the partitions, but that is only for use in the bootable media. As soon as you boot from the HDD/SSD all will be fine and the OS will be on C.
.
Mind that Clean wipes the complete disk. So if you have other partitions (data) on it, they should be backuped first!
This is what I see when doing a system restore on a Clean disk:
Cheers
Just buy a new HD or SDD that is identical to the one currently in your laptop and clone this new disc from your existing one using a readily obtainable USB to SATA connector lead to connect the new disc to your laptop for the cloning. Then repeat this cloning every month or so, so it is kept up to date with the status of your laptop.
Then, if your laptop's HD fails to boot you just swap it for the cloned drive and you're immediately up and running again!
If this failure occurs just before the month's re-cloning, then just restore that month's files from the cloud where you say you back them up.