Bare Metal Restore to Smaller SSD Failed to Shrink Partition

[henryl]

This is a technical issue, but I don't have a support case ID because the error is occurring in the recovery environment. So I can't submit a support case through Veeam Endpoint Backup, but I do have the Exported Logs available.


My SSD failed, and I got a replacement. The replacement is slightly smaller in size than the original (500gb vs 512gb). It was a warranty replacement, and that is all they had to offer.
I have the original drive backed up using Veeam Endpoint Backup v1.5. I also had created the recovery media, which I use to boot into the recovery environment.

When I get to the step for Disk Mapping, I get the warning "Cannot find original disk layout. Do you want to partition the disk manually?". I click yes, and go through the manual partitioning.
When I select the backed up partition, I get the warning "This volume is larger than the specified destination. Shrink the volume to fit the destination?". I click ok, and get this error:
"Failed to set disk layout, disk '\\.\PhysicalDrive1. Failed to set drive layout. Win32 error: The parameter is incorrect. Code:87"

I thoroughly searched the forum, and only found one other thread with this problem. veeam-agent-for-windows-f33/bare-metal- ... 38516.html
The conclusion is that Windows has non-contiguous non-movable files, so the volume image can't be resized. In the OP's case though, he has the working original drive, so he was able to resize the original partition using a third-party software, create a new back up with Veeam, and restore from that. That's not an option for me unfortunately.

How do I get around the failure to shrink the volume image created by Veeam?

[Dima P.]

Hi henryl,

Any chance you are using Veeam B&R? Maybe you have a temporary drive (larger capacity) to perform the recovery, run a defrag (check the block map of your drive), backup and restore this drive to the desired one?

[henryl]

Hi henryl,

Any chance you are using Veeam B&R? Maybe you have a temporary drive (larger capacity) to perform the recovery, run a defrag (check the block map of your drive), backup and restore this drive to the desired one?

No I'm not using Veeam B&R, just the free Veeam Endpoint Backup.

I don't have a spare SSD that's 512gb or larger, unfortunately. Those are too pricey to be kept around as spared.
I have plenty of HDDs though, but there's an issue of data sector alignment when migrating between HDD & SSD. Is Veeam able to handle the alignment issue going both ways?

[Bisi]

Hi,

The bare metal restore option is not even coming up on my installation of Veeam Agent for Windows. I installed it on Windows 10 and just concluded my backup. I wanted to do a bare metal restore but could not find that option. I can only see File Level restore and Volume level restore. Can anyone help where to locate bare metal restore as is stated in this recovery options publication - https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint- ... -free.html

Thank you,

Bisi.

[henryl]

Hi,

The bare metal restore option is not even coming up on my installation of Veeam Agent for Windows. I installed it on Windows 10 and just concluded my backup. I wanted to do a bare metal restore but could not find that option. I can only see File Level restore and Volume level restore. Can anyone help where to locate bare metal restore as is stated in this recovery options publication - https://www.veeam.com/windows-endpoint- ... -free.html

Thank you,

Bisi.

Bare metal restore is done in the Recovery Environment which can be run from the Recovery Media CD that you created during installation of Veeam Agent. The Recovery Environment is independent of your OS.

[Mike Resseler]

@Bisi: HenryL is correct. You need to boot on the recovery media (it is kind of difficult to do bare metal restore on a running OS )

@HenryL: Since you have the exported logs available, do you have somewhere a machine (can be a different one) that has VEB or VAW running on it? Submit a case from there, and state in the notes that you have exported logs for a BMR recovery. Then our engineers will work with you and ask to upload them to a certain location. If you don't have VEB or VAW available, PM me with your email address and I will ask our engineers to get into contact with you directly

[henryl]

@HenryL: Since you have the exported logs available, do you have somewhere a machine (can be a different one) that has VEB or VAW running on it? Submit a case from there, and state in the notes that you have exported logs for a BMR recovery. Then our engineers will work with you and ask to upload them to a certain location.

Good idea, I'll do that. I thought it wouldn't be possible to do it that way since the logs sent with the ticket would be for a different computer.