Standalone backup agent for Microsoft Windows servers and workstations (formerly Veeam Endpoint Backup FREE)
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alanwbaker
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Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by alanwbaker »

Hello,

My customer wants to replace his Windows 10 system's 1 TB mechanical drive with a 256GB SSD. He did a full backup, which contains about 90 GB of data. When he tried a bare metal backup to the SSD, he could not restore the C: partition either automatically or manually. What do you suggest?

Alan
alanwbaker
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by alanwbaker »

These are the steps he followed within the bare metal recovery dialog:

Restore mode: Manual restore (advanced) > Next
At Disk Mapping: Click Customize disk mapping link.
Child window Disk Mapping: Right click Unallocated area.
Box with "Restore" > Disk 0 > List of partitions
Click C: partition > This volume is larger than the specified destination. Shrink the volume to fit the destination? > OK
Returns error message "Failed to set disk layout, disk physical drive 2. Failed to set drive layout. Win32 error: the paramenter is incorrect. Code: 87"

Alan
Mike Resseler
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Mike Resseler »

Hi Alan,

It is practically impossible to solve this over the forum with only that error message :-). Was the SSD formatted upfront and already contains information? Is that drive bitlockered? There could be many things so instead of just trying out different things...

I assume your customer is using our latest version (1.5)? If that is the case, can you let him perform the procedure again and save the logs from the BMR dialog (you can save the logs while on the recovery media through the tools...). After that, let him create a support case through the UI and let him / her explain the procedure there. Our engineers will (most probably) contact the customer and get those specific logs that were gathered during the BMR attempt. Post the Case-ID here and hopefully the solution also ;-)

Thanks
Mike
alanwbaker
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by alanwbaker »

Yes, the customer is using the latest (1.5). I contacted support on case # 01964425 and sent the logs. Veeam's bare metal recovery uses Microsoft's shrinking software, which cannot move Windows 10's non-contiguous "unmovable" files. This seriously limits the amount that it can shrink a partition.

The workaround was to shrink the original partition using a third-party tool, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It was able to move the "unmovable" files to be contiguous with the other partitions, then shrink it all. Then we were able to back up the shrunken volume and do the bare metal restore.

Alan
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Mike Resseler »

Alan,

Thanks for coming back to us with the solution. Good to know that windows 10 has non-contiguous unmovable files that standard shrinking software can't handle!

Thanks

Mike
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by skochetkov »

Hello Alan,

The reason why Windows won’t let you shrink the volume is because there are immovable system files at the very end of the volume. If you don't want to use 3rd party software you can use Windows tools, but you'll have to re-create the backup. To absolutely ensure that you can shrink the volume, you should disable as many of the system files as you can, at least temporarily. Here’s the list of steps:

1.Run the Disk Cleanup Wizard, making sure to remove the hibernation file and all restore points.
2.Disable System Restore
3.Disable the pagefile ( Open up System in Control Panel, then Advanced System Settings \ Advanced \ Performance \ Advanced \ Change \ No Paging File.
In the same Advanced Settings, go to Startup and Recovery \ Settings and then change the Write debugging information drop-down to “None” to disable the kernel memory dump.
4.Disable Hibernation mode in your power options \ advanced power options screen.
5.Reboot the machine, and then delete your c:\pagefile.sys file.

6. Re-create the backup and try to restore it on the new disk
wallstrum
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by wallstrum »

The workaround was to shrink the original partition using a third-party tool, AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard. It was able to move the "unmovable" files to be contiguous with the other partitions, then shrink it all. Then we were able to back up the shrunken volume and do the bare metal restore.

Alan
Alan - FYI, I came across the same issue (interestingly, cloning a 64GB drive from a Core M5 Intel Compute Stick onto a 64GB drive in a Core M3 Compute stick which was apparently 100MB smaller). I was able, in the normal disk management console in Windows 10 on the original drive, to shrink the drive enough to where i was able to get the backup to restore onto the smaller drive.

Wally
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by bdelafouchardiere »

I initially had a 750Gb with 3 partition, 25G for Recovery, 300G for system and a hidden 450M partition for recovery boot. The rest of the disk was not allocated.
I change the 750G slow disk with a Crutial 275Gb SSD to fasten the PC but hit the issue while restoring since C drive was bigger than the disk and could not be shrinked even if it was not full.

AOMEI Partition Assistant Standard worked fine for me, the C drive was 300Gb, I reduced it to 100G, did the backup and restored successfully.
Once restored, I extended in W10 the C drive to the size of disk by expand function in disk manage. Now I have the 25G recovery + C drive of 230 Gb.

Bruno
Dima P.
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Dima P. »

Hi Bruno,

Thanks for sharing the workaround. Unfortunately, due unmovable blocks shrink sometimes may fail. In case you are using bare metal recovery as a migrate option its recommended to perform a defragmentation prior running backup and bare metal restore.
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by YourComputerGuy »

Sorry to resurrect this old topic but this is still an issue in version 2.1
Yes, I understand that there are workarounds, however, this seriously limits the usefulness of the BMR. If I understand correctly, Bare Metal Restore is very useful for cases when the original computer no longer boots and needs to be restored to either a new drive (which in most cases would be a smaller SSD) or another computer. How would you expect the users to go back to their Windows and shrink the original partitions in order to move "unmovable" files?

My customer has a failing hard drive and I tried using Veeam to make a full backup of their system before replacing it with an SSD. The backups completed successfully but it's sitting at "shrinking" screen now and from what I've read so far, it might not be able to do so!

By the way, Macrium Reflect doesn't have this limitation and I've used it in the past to do SSD migrations.
YourComputerGuy
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by YourComputerGuy » 1 person likes this post

Update, the restore has successfully completed. Took about an hour to shrink and the computer booted just fine.
Dima P.
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Dima P. »

Hello Sergey.

Indeed shrink procedure may take some noticable amount of time since the volume structure is being modified on the go. Thanks for sharing the update and glad to hear that it worked as expected!
humannate
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by humannate »

This is still a pretty significant problem when restoring GPT partitions to smaller drives. Can't really complain with a free product, but for a now paid backup solution this is kind of a deal breaker. Shadowprotect and Easeus can shrink GPT without issue (I'm assuming they both use custom GPT shrinking commands instead of the built-in Windows command).
zadrian
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by zadrian »

humannate wrote:This is still a pretty significant problem when restoring GPT partitions to smaller drives. Can't really complain with a free product, but for a now paid backup solution this is kind of a deal breaker. Shadowprotect and Easeus can shrink GPT without issue (I'm assuming they both use custom GPT shrinking commands instead of the built-in Windows command).
There are many products out there that can restore to smaller drives (with or without workaround options).
But in the earlier posts, if there are unmovable blocks or unmovable sectors as per required by installed application or encrypted applications and/or files....you will most likely need the exact size of larger so that the exact HDD/SSD size will be presented to the OSe.

For GPT vs MBR, there are some limitations as how the OSe will use the Partition tables especially for larger partitions (2TB etc)
Blue407
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[MERGED] Using Backup for server boot O/S drive replacement

Post by Blue407 »

I have a hyper-v cluster running server 2016.
The first blade (host) has 2 x temporary cheap Samsung SSD's I used as a RAID1 boot drive while I was initially testing Server 2016. (500GB ea)
The other 3 blades (hosts) have 2 x RAID1 enterprise class SSD's in (240GB ea)

I now want to replace the cheap Samsung SSD's with 2 more enterprise drives.

I have shrunk the boot O/S down to < 200GB, so will easily fit onto 240GB replacement drives.
I would like to use the Veeam recovery media to rebuild the server once I have replaced the cheap SSD's.

Can anybody see a problem going from 500GB to 240GB SSD?

I have no issue doing the RAID re-config etc, just concerned how well the Veeam recovery will work to smaller drive.
I'm assuming the Dell RAID controller would not accept me simply replacing one of the existing 500GB drives with a 240GB, doing a rebuild of the RAID1 and then swapping the other?
PTide
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by PTide »

Hi,

I certainly would not mess with rebuilding RAID using a different drive (especially with a smaller one) unless the vendor directly says it is a supported operation.

Regarding recovery to a smaller drive - currently it does not work out of the box, however there are workaround that work (as reported by fellow users), please check this thread for details. There is also a similar thread that is worth checking.

Thanks
Aisub7
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Aisub7 »

Hi there,

This problem still exists in the newest version of Veeam. The volume gets restored in the recovery environment, Veeam also says it has successfully shrunk the volume. But when trying to boot the pc it doesn't get into windows nor the recovery environment of windows. I hope there is just a setting that needs to be changed to make it boot, but I could not find it. Luckily Macrium Reflect was able to recover and boot into windows without problems.
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Gostev » 1 person likes this post

Hello, we would like to investigate your case closer. Could you please open a support case and let us know the case ID? Thanks!
Aisub7
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Aisub7 »

Hi Gostev, My apologies for the extremely late response. This is the case ID: 03866843 I'm trying to recreate the situation from an external drive bay but now with an HDD instead of an SSD
Dima P.
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Re: Bare metal restore to smaller drive

Post by Dima P. »

Hello Aisub7,

Thanks for sharing the case ID with us, I'll ask QA team to review it. Cheers!
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