Create recovery media after every update?

[Mickeyxx]

Is it really necessary to create a recovery media after every software update?

[Dima P.]

Hello Michael,
No, it’s not. We advise to recreate a recovery media only when needed – for instance with last update we added shrink/expand functionality to recovery media, which was not presented in the previous versions.

[almya]

I read somewhere that Veeam can update the Bootable Recovery partition without wiping out the other partition that holds previously generated backup files. After updating with Veeam Windows Agent V6.0.2.1090 I was notified that the Recovery Media must be recreated. When I ran Veeam Recovery Media tool I got a popup message that warned me about losing all my existing data.
Is there a way to update the recovery partition and yet keeping my month long backup files?

[Dima P.]

Hello almya,

Can you share the screenshot of dialog you are referring to? Likely this message indicates that the removable USB stick you are using for recovery media creation will be formatted, thus all excising data on the media you use for Recovery Media will be gone (including other partitions). Thank you!

[BackupBytesTim]

I believe what almya is asking about is if Veeam has a way to update only the bootable partition on the drive because the backups are stored on another partition on the same drive. And the Veeam recovery media creator formats the entire drive instead of just updating or formatting the bootable partition.

[Dima P.]

Hi Tim,

If that's about multiple volumes, say one RE volume and another is a data volume on the same removable drive, then yes. Unfortunately the recovery partition can easily grow in size either due MS patching (they do that from time to time) or due to drivers being included by the user. Such unfortunate circumstance require more space and with existing data volume occupying the rest of the disk layout we would need to format the drive and re-partition it.