I have a fresh install of Windows 11 Pro (25H2) on a Framework Desktop PC (AMD Ryzen AI Max) at factory BIOS 3.02 settings (so UEFI is on).
I followed Framework's recommended Windows 11 Installation procedure exactly of my Windows 11 Pro 25H2 install media, which resulted in a straight-forward installation onto my 8TB WD M.2 NVMe SSD with Bitlocker automatically on. Windows was automatically partitioned by the installer like this, as expected:
200 MB Healthy (EFI System Partition)
7451 GB NTFS (BitLocker Encrypted) C: drive
735 MB Health (Recovery Partition)
Before doing ANY customizations or software installs, and without applying my Windows 11 Pro license, I installed Veaam Agent Veeam 6.3.2.1302, then did my first full backup of "Entire computer (recommended)" with encryption turned on. That completed without any issues, taking up a mere 36GB of space on a network share. The creation of bare metal bootable 32GB USB drive went smoothly from 6.3.2.1302. I then shut down and swapped out the 8TB SSD for an empty, spare 0.5TB SSD (512GB) SSD, as a bare-metal-restore test. NO other SSDs or HDDs were present during any of my tests, keeping things simpler.
The 32GB USB drive booted Veeam Recovery environment just fine, and since Automatic restore wasn't an option, I chose Manual then chose "Apply Backup Layout," then the restore completed without error in under minutes. I then removed the USB drive, and rebooted, and the BIOS found no bootable operation systems.
I then powered the system back on, but no bootable drives are found by the BIOS (latest 3.02), therefore, Windows doesn't start from my 512GB SSD. So I put the original 8TB drive back in, it boots fine, then opened this ticket from the problematic Framework Desktop, with the log file auto-uploaded to Case #07852591.
Poking around Veeam forums yielded similar but not identical posts, spanning over a decade.
Doing some deeper also didn't result in any successful bcbd-based workarounds (using Veeam Recovery, Command Prompt), most of which I tried after opening this case #, and making sure to do a fresh bare metal restore before each one.
For Disk Mapping, in manual restore mode, I tried removing all 512GB drive's partitions, then "Apply Backup Layout" and "Apply Disk Layout" and that finished restore without error, but wasn't bootable. Later fresh restores, then trying "Apply Disk Layout" of a Volume (instead of Full Computer) also succeeded, but weren't bootable either.
Does anybody have any other suggestions I may want to consider, even "creative" workarounds like commands to try in the Veeam Recovery Command Prompt, or perhaps even more "creative" post-restore work-around fixes by 3rd party products (Aomei, EaseUS, etc.) to successfully get bare-metal restores to boot?
I want to be sure I can restore my system for when my 8TB drive has a bad day sometime in the future, and nothing like doing a test restore to be much more confident I'll succeed. I sometimes even do such crazy things if I want to back out of something I regret doing, and revert to the previous day's backup.
Let me know if you have any questions, and note that I have an out of band KVM solution (GLKVM), so I can screenshot from the bare metal Veeam restore environment, if needed/helpful for root cause/problem determination.
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tinkererguy
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tinkererguy
- Enthusiast
- Posts: 44
- Liked: 16 times
- Joined: Jun 16, 2011 2:14 am
- Full Name: Paul Braren
- Location: Wethersfield, CT
- Contact:
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