Problems after a macrium restore

Stigg · Jun 5, 2022

@einstein1969
If the gurus on this forum can't help, PM me, and I'll tell you where you can get very good help where I know some people who live and breathe backup applications.

cereberus · Jun 5, 2022

Bree said:
I thought it might be that too, so I deliberately created unallocated space in the middle of my disk for the screenshot in post #15. No bug there. That was an MBR disk though so I've tried the same on a GPT disk, with the same result.

View attachment 30739

Problem with bugs is they do not affect everybody the same. As you say, there may be some corruption in the gpt partition table on OP's pc that is throwing off Reflect. I had that in mind when suggesting moving partitions as that may "repair" and corruption. Having said that gpt partitioning tables are supposedly more robust than mbr.

einstein1969 · Jun 5, 2022

cereberus said:
Hmmm - it looks like a bug to me due to presence of unallocated space in middle on your pc.

You could try moving the three partitions at end to the left so no unallocated space in middle using tool like minitool partition wizard free.

Then see if Reflect sees the partitions.

Another thing you could try is create a partition in unallocated space.

Bree said:
I thought it might be that too, so I deliberately created unallocated space in the middle of my disk for the screenshot in post #15. No bug there. That was an MBR disk though so I've tried the same on a GPT disk, with the same result.

View attachment 30739

cereberus said:
Problem with bugs is they do not affect everybody the same. As you say, there may be some corruption in the gpt partition table on OP's pc that is throwing off Reflect. I had that in mind when suggesting moving partitions as that may "repair" and corruption. Having said that gpt partitioning tables are supposedly more robust than mbr.

I shrunk 80GB partition to less than 60GB with windows disk management and rebooted and now macrium sees all partition!

Perhaps some information was lost during the macrium recovery regarding the GPT partition chain.

I shrunk the partition to see if I can recover windows 10 and disappeared recovery partitions using minitools partition wizard.

Meanwhile I am also using AOMEI to backup.

When I did the restore of the C: partition only I forgot to do the resize and it deleted the partitions below.

I think it happened like this, but I didn't know it could be done or how to do it, then I read the manual and found out how to do it with both macrium and aomei.

If I can't recover partitions, is there a way to rebuild them?

Do I open another thread?

einstein1969 · Jun 5, 2022

glasskuter said:
@einstein1969 We are not ignoring your dilemma. I think it's that we've run out of ideas. Like @Bree I believe it has something to do with your partitioning table and you do have a space problem. You have had ideas thrown at you right and left which you have dealt with admirably.

I know you want to make everything work as is, but I would bite the bullet and do exactly what I did with my secondary PC. I would remove that drive and install another drive (preferably a ssd) to clean install Windows 11 on. You can get a Crucial 2.5 inch 480 gb sata III ssd for $45 on Amazon. (In your case you would use one of the readily available tutorials on how to install on incompatible hardware.) Getting a good working Windows 11 is first and foremost, even though a clean install is a pain in the posterior but the installation process builds the boot drive partitions for you in the proper order.

I would then install the old drive in a usb 3.1 hard drive enclosure which costs about $20. At this point you could move any of the data used on a regular basis (small data) back to their corresponding folders on C: because you have plenty of space. Using Minitool Partition Wizard boot flash drive I would deal with the partitions on the external drive, one at a time. Minitool is great for removing and resizing partitions when there is non-consecutive space involved.

You end up with a good clean installation of Windows on a fast ssd and space to play with on the usb drive. With 2 drives you can more easily manipulate the size of your partitions, keeping the secondary drive for obscure stuff and backups of your primary drive.

Before I would start this endeavor, I would lay it all out on paper so it makes sense and deal with it one thing at a time, all the while hoping that bullet doesn't break my 2 front teeth off.
Nah, not really. It not hard, just time consuming.
This worked for me. I leave the external drive plugged in all the time. I wish I had something else to offer. Best of luck to you.

I anticipated. I got the case and the disk 5 days ago. But the price in Italy (where I am) is higher or maybe I have chosen a better brand / model at around 60 $ (57 €).

anyway thank you so much, you are really supporting me and I feel it. Thank you so much.

cereberus · Jun 5, 2022

einstein1969 said:
I shrunk 80GB partition to less than 60GB with windows disk management and rebooted and now macrium sees all partition!

Perhaps some information was lost during the macrium recovery regarding the GPT partition chain.

I shrunk the partition to see if I can recover windows 10 and disappeared recovery partitions using minitools partition wizard.

Meanwhile I am also using AOMEI to backup.

When I did the restore of the C: partition only I forgot to do the resize and it deleted the partitions below.

I think it happened like this, but I didn't know it could be done or how to do it, then I read the manual and found out how to do it with both macrium and aomei.

If I can't recover partitions, is there a way to rebuild them?

Do I open another thread?

No need to open a new thread on this. It is not clear what you are saying - can you post image of partitions.
At least we seem to have resolved one issue - certainly sounds like a corrupted gpt partition - I doubt that was Macrium Reflect causing it but I guess we will never know.

einstein1969 · Jun 6, 2022

cereberus said:
No need to open a new thread on this. It is not clear what you are saying - can you post image of partitions.
At least we seem to have resolved one issue - certainly sounds like a corrupted gpt partition - I doubt that was Macrium Reflect causing it but I guess we will never know.

I try to explain better. Perhaps you can reproduce the problem with this information on a virtual machine.

I started from this situation:

I installed macrium and backed up the ones marked red / ticked on16/5/2022

then I enlarged partition C: because I needed space

I did an on-place upgrade by reinstalling window 11 as recommended in the thread. (place upgrade repair while in clean boot)

I resized G / M

then I redid another backup with macrium

I took out partition N, resized M

then I just did a restore of partition C:

but it was my first macrium restore, i don't know macrium

the result in disk management was

but on macrium was

I rebootted into macrium rescue disk (on USB) and macrium said

but if I clicked on select image, it saw all volumes correctly

then I resized C: and rebooted and macrium now work well

the situation now is

it took me several hours to make this post

einstein1969 · Jun 6, 2022

but now I am with the missing recovery partitions and also a partition with windows 10 that is no longer there.

Excluding the bug can someone help me to recover the partition "Volume" with windows 10?

glasskuter · Jun 8, 2022

I've jumped back and forth between your 2 threads and stared at these screenshots for hours and I think I see the problem. Now being cross-eyed may have my perception off so everyone else may see it differently. Here’s the chain of events as I see them. What has caused this problem has been marked in bold..

In your other post dated 5/16, you said that you had Windows 10 on a 46gb partition marked 'volume' with no drive letter. You also said that your E: partition of 51 gb contained your backup of 10.

In post #15 of that thread you gave a disk management screenshot showing C: drive as 58gb>Recovery 713MB>Volume(Windows 10) 46 b. There was a Macrium screenshot where volume with no drive letter (Win10) was not selected as part of your backup..

In post #39 you enlarged C: using minitool to 82gb incorrectly. To enlarge a partition you have to do so into CONTIGUOUS unallocated space. You had none. Therefore, it enlarged into your recovery partition and into the Volume(Windows 10) partition, thereby destroying both. This is what accounts for the 35 gb of unallocated space. The gigabytes add up.

Now with this thread.

Post #1 and Post# 8-From the backup made on 5/16 you restored only C: drive. You can fix the missing recovery partition by doing another image restore and dragging ONLY the recovery partition from the image into the 35 gb of unallocated space.

Post #3-Your question, does the Windows 10 partition still exist. NO and you can’t restore it because you failed to back it up when you did the Macrium backup.

Per post #18 of your first thread you indicated you had a “temporary” backup of Windows 10 in E: This was before you started using Macrium so I’m wondering what method you used for that and how old the backup is. The thing is you have little space to restore it to. Even if you did somehow manage to restore it, if it happens to be a dual boot partition, then you would have to deal with correcting your bootloader.

Whew, I need a beer.

einstein1969 · Jun 9, 2022

You're actually right, you have to go crazy following everything and I need a beer too!

Anyway, thanks to your suggestions I can start moving.

Meanwhile, I managed to recover the "volume" partition with windows 10 using a trial of paragon diskmanager.

The file system is damaged but I am trying to recover the recoverable.

I'll let you know for the rest, I'm re-reading your post to understand better ...

glasskuter · Jun 9, 2022

Good job on recovering Windows 10.

A piece of advice. Minitool is a powerful tool in partitioning as long as the user understands how partitioning works. It has to be used carefully, and in cases where multiple partitions exist, planned out in advance as you can easily get into a nightmare situation. The golden rule is "partitions can only be extended into CONTIGUOUS unallocated space." When no contiguous unallocated space exists directly to the right of the partition you are trying to extend, you have to resize as many partitions to the right of that partition as is necessary to gain the space you need.

Since you say you managed to recover Windows 10, I am now assuming you used all the unallocated space in the middle of the drive for 10. You should have recovered your recovery partition first in the space immediately after C: and then used the remaining space for WIndows 10.

einstein1969 · Jun 11, 2022

Sorry I didn't understand the golden rule for minitools. (By the way is it a bug of minitools? I have version 12.6). I have reread several times but even with the help of the translator I cannot understand. Can you give me an example where he can fail or go crazy? I thought of having the recovery partitions recreated in windows with an on-place reinstallation. I believe they are compromised. This is the situation but i want make a backup of windows 10 partition in raw mode , sector by sector, for future recovery attempts.

glasskuter · Jun 11, 2022

einstein1969 said:
golden rule for minitools

einstein1969 said:
example where he can fail or go crazy

Minitool did not go crazy. It did exactly what you told it to do. I"m sorry but I never expected you would use Minitool without reading on their site
how to use it for your specific need .

It is not the golden rule for minitool, but for partitioning in general. Disk Management is a basic partitioning tool which can add, delete, resize, etc. If there is not unallocated space at the trailing end of a partition, it can not enlarge it, simple as that. That's because disk management follows the golden rule to the letter. Another thing DM cannot do is move working data around on a drive in order to acquire the unallocated space where you would need it

Minitool can do both those things, PLUS it CAN extend a partition into non-contiguous unallocated space if that space exists on the drive. However, you have to set your options correctly for it to do this. Otherwise, it follows the golden rule and enlarges into the space to the right . This is what happened to you. It enlarged into working space.
Had you used Minitool's tutorial How to Extend Partition to Non Contiguous Space Effectively the partition could have been enlarged into unallocated space wherever it happened to be on the drive.

cereberus · Jun 11, 2022

glasskuter said:
Minitool did not go crazy. It did exactly what you told it to do. I"m sorry but I never expected you would use Minitool without reading on their site
how to use it for your specific need .

It is not the golden rule for minitool, but for partitioning in general. Disk Management is a basic partitioning tool which can add, delete, resize, etc. If there is not unallocated space at the trailing end of a partition, it can not enlarge it, simple as that. That's because disk management follows the golden rule to the letter. Another thing DM cannot do is move working data around on a drive in order to acquire the unallocated space where you would need it

Minitool can do both those things, PLUS it CAN extend a partition into non-contiguous unallocated space if that space exists on the drive. However, you have to set your options correctly for it to do this. Otherwise, it follows the golden rule and enlarges into the space to the right . This is what happened to you. It enlarged into working space.
Had you used Minitool's tutorial How to Extend Partition to Non Contiguous Space Effectively the partition could have been enlarged into unallocated space wherever it happened to be on the drive.

For clarification, extending drives into unallocated space not adjacent to the partition in question can be done BUT it means drive is changed from a basic drive to a dynamic drive.

I strongly recommend you steer clear of dynamic drives as this is now a deprecated feature.

glasskuter · Jun 12, 2022

I have searched the web for an EASY explanation of disk management for you but haven't come up with anything that probably would not confuse you more. My own limited knowledge has not been a result of any proper training but built through many, many of hours reading on the web and trial and error (lots of errors). I made up a very basic chart which I am attaching that I hope will help you understand how partitioning works.

einstein1969 · Jun 12, 2022

I read your document and understood it. Thank you so much. Windows 10 obviously does not start but I did a chkdsk /F and now I'm trying to recover the EDGE installation which is the only thing that interests me.

I just have a problem, I don't know how to access the windows 10 installation log (offline). I am following the tutorial on how to backup edge

glasskuter · Jun 12, 2022

einstein1969 said:
trying to recover the EDGE installation which is the only thing that interests me.

Wait!!! Why??? What are you trying to accomplish? 11 has Edge and if you signed in with a MS account on 10 and were syncing, all your favorites and history should already be in 11.
Edge stores its data in your user appdata folder, not in Edge. Microsoft Edge History Location | Edge History Viewer

Don't willy-nilly start copying files into appdata unless you are certain what you're doing or you'll break edge in 11 . The new edge is a different version than the old win10 one..

einstein1969 · Jun 12, 2022

in windows 11 i accidentally closed hundreds of EDGE tabs. I didn't notice and backed up partition C: right after with macrium.

The only place they are left is in windows 10.
To retrieve them I have to make a copy of edge, reinstall windows 10 since it doesn't start (I think I'm using a virtual machine) and then reinsert the copy of edge.
At that point I recover the open tabs and somehow bring them to windows 11.

What do you think of it as a countertop?

in the meantime i also made an edge backup script for windows 10 How to Backup and Restore Everything in Microsoft Edge in Windows

glasskuter · Jun 12, 2022

But the data you are interested in retrieving is not stored in Edge. It is in your appdata folder.
Wouldn't it be easier to mount the Macrium backup and browse to your appdata folder. Copy this entire folder to a flash drive
\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data

While your at it also copy the same folder in Windows 11 as a precautionary measure.. If you mess something up you can copy it back.

According to that link I gave you before it lists where Edge in Windows 10 stores everything.
In Windows 10 your session data is stored in one of these 2 folders.
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Cache

In Windows 11 they are in the same folder. \Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data
but the sub folders may be a different. My session data and tabs appear to be in C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Sessions (I think this is the folder you are interested in.)

I truly do not know if it will let you alter these folders, but since is in YOUR appdata, hopefully you can.
I guess you will have to compare the 2 appdata folders side by side(all sub and sub-sub folders as well) to see the difference. If all the subfolders are the same you might could copy the entire appdata folder from 10 to 11. (or just the sub folders you are interested in)

einstein1969 · Jun 13, 2022

glasskuter said:
But the data you are interested in retrieving is not stored in Edge. It is in your appdata folder.
Wouldn't it be easier to mount the Macrium backup and browse to your appdata folder. Copy this entire folder to a flash drive
\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data

While your at it also copy the same folder in Windows 11 as a precautionary measure.. If you mess something up you can copy it back.

According to that link I gave you before it lists where Edge in Windows 10 stores everything.
In Windows 10 your session data is stored in one of these 2 folders.
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Cache

In Windows 11 they are in the same folder. \Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data
but the sub folders may be a different. My session data and tabs appear to be in C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Edge\User Data\Default\Sessions (I think this is the folder you are interested in.)

I truly do not know if it will let you alter these folders, but since is in YOUR appdata, hopefully you can.
I guess you will have to compare the 2 appdata folders side by side(all sub and sub-sub folders as well) to see the difference. If all the subfolders are the same you might could copy the entire appdata folder from 10 to 11. (or just the sub folders you are interested in)

I have only ONE backup made with macrium. And that's what I'm talking about in this thread and what I've restored and am using. There are no TABS in edge.

glasskuter · Jun 13, 2022

If you can get 10 working, see if this article can help you open closed tabs.

How to reopen tabs from last browsing session in the new Microsoft Edge [Windows/Mac]

Are you closing the browser instead of the tabs on the new Microsoft Edge browser? Ever happened to you that you have accidentally closed the Edge browser and

www.mobigyaan.com