BMR Partition Layout Change (MBR instead of GPT)

[lfrei]

Hi

I am trying to restore a virtual machine in a hypervisor environment (emulated bios), that does not support boot from GPT. The problem is, my backed up system is an windows 2012 r2 machine with GTP partition layout.

After starting the recovery environment of Veeam, I cleaned up the disks where i want to restore to and changed the layout to MBR with "diskpart". Then I tried a manual restore and only recover the system partition. However, veeam BMR seems to apply the original partition layout to the disks, as soon as the write process starts. Can i somehow work around this? Otherwise i will not be able to boot that VM.


thanks a lot,

lauro

[Dima P.]

Hi Lauro,

Yes, its possible. You can boot from recovery media, then follow the approach desribed in this article: Change a GUID Partition Table Disk into a Master Boot Record Disk. Once done restore only the data or operating system volume to the said disk.

[lfrei]

Hi Dima

Thanks for your response. So I've done the following steps:

1) Boot from veeam recovery disk
2) load drivers and use diskpart to convert disk to MBR
3) started BMR for restore from Veeam Backup & Replication server
4) Message about GPT disk and boot issues appears
5) Choose: System volumes only

After those steps, before rebooting, I went back to the "cmd -> diskpart -> list disks" and there was the GPT Flag again.

So I tried another method:

1) Boot from veeam recovery disk
2) load drivers and use diskpart to convert disk to MBR
3) started BMR for restore from Veeam Backup & Replication server
4) Message about GPT disk and boot issues appears
5) Choose: manual restore (advanced)
6) customize disk mapping -> Disk 0 -> Erase
7) choose only to restore system C:\

Again went back to cmd and the disk was GPT layout again.

So it definetly seems, that veeam is recovering the partition layout anyways.

[Dima P.]

Here is a step by step instruction:

1. Boot the Recovery Media
2. Go to Tools and start Command Prompt utility
3. Type to following commands one by one

Code: Select all

diskpart
list disk    // find the disk you are going to use as a restore destination. In this example its going to be disk 0       
select disk 0
clean // erasing this disk completely
convert mbr
create partition primary size=100
select part 1
format fs=ntfs label=”System reserved” quick
active
assign letter=S
exit // exit from disk part utility    

Close Command Prompt utility

4. Start restore but while allocating the volumes do not delete the system reserved partition
5. Do not reboot once restore is completed
6. Go back to Tools > Command Prompt utility
7. Type to following commands one by one

Code: Select all

diskpart
list vol                 // find the volume with restored operating system. In my example its going to be volume C
exit                    // exit from disk part utility 

8. In remaining Command Prompt utility type

Code: Select all

bcdboot C:\Windows /S S: //volume letter I got from previous list vol in disk part

9. Now its safe to reboot and start restored OS

[lfrei]

That's it. Thanks!

[Dima P.]

Great! Thanks for the heads up.