Issue with backup software & VC
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Hopefully you all can assist, as it relates to my earlier ? about updating my HDD firmware with full system disk encryption with bootloader enabled. Before I started using VC, I used no encryption. I have been using EaseUSTodo Backup for years (paid subscription) as my backup software and its worked perfectly and saved me numerous times. It has it’s own encryption option that I would use, but you could only use up to a 8 character pword and their encryption method is proprietary. When I encrypted my entire drive C: (no partitions) with VC, no issues with using/loading Windows.
When I went to do a full backup with my normal software, I didn’t use their encryption option (didn’t want 2 encryption progs) and it showed my C: as empty, which it obviously was not. It required I do a sector by sector backup, which I did. The process took the same amount of time as ‘normal’ and I had it verify the full bck up and it found no errors. The issue is, I have no idea if the backup is valid or not. As without VC, I could browse for any file in my backups if I entered the pword correctly or if no TodoBackup encryption was used.
I still should be able to do that, even with VC being in place, as from what I’ve read Win & the file system act if it’s not there after I pass the bootloader with my creds. So I don’t know if I have reliable backups and don’t want to try and restore and have it fail. Then I have a big mess, which is fixable, but a long nightmare. I have another drive I could move all the data off and try restoring to that and see what happens, but I think VC will want to see some specifics of my hardware or original HDD.
What is your advice on how I should proceed and how do you all do your full system backups with VC installed. I emailed all of this to VC on their website three times, but no response.
I also emailed my backup software vendor on what they recommended, which is below. Apologize for the long email, but wanted to give all the details. Thx, Jay
From EaseUSTodoBackup:
“The encryption function can basically be categorized into two types:
1. Encrypt the whole disk and therefore the access to the disk is denied. According to your description, Veracrypt, when encrypting the drive, works in this manner.As the file system can not be parsed, the Todo Backup may not be able to write to it unless it is encrypted.
2. Encrypt the files/folders so that although the files can be stole by others, the contents will not be revealed. Todo Backup image encryption works in this way.
We have other users utilize Bitlocker to encrypt their files. As the device can be set to automatically unlock to write files to it when connected to the computer and user logged in. The Todo Backup can normally work on these devices to save backup images in the device.
We would recommend that you check if Veracrypt has similar function to allow access or write files to the device so that the schedule of the Todo Backup can normally run.”
Any advice would greatly help!! If no one has an answer to my specific issue, how do you back up your full drive system encrypted with VC?
Hi Jay,
The last time I evaluated backup software (2 or 3 years ago), I remember looking at EaseUS Todo Backup, but I really don't remember whether I rejected it because it didn't meet my criteria or because I just found something better. Either way, I settled on Macrium Reflect, which seems to be highly compatible with disk encryption like VeraCrypt.
However, I will give you some notes on testing your backups made by EaseUS. You're absolutely correct to be concerned about the validity of the reportedly valid backup. As a late U.S. president famously said, "Trust, but verify." So take that extra hard drive that you said you have available, and test the restoration process on it. Restoring from a sector-based backup of an encrypted drive requires you to also restore the boot record created by VeraCrypt for that drive. In your post above, you said "I think VC will want to see some specifics of my hardware or original HDD." Restoring that boot record satisfies VeraCrypt on that count, but there's one more issue regarding booting Windows. In order for a restored backup of Windows to start smoothly, the boot drive must have the same disk signature as the drive that was backed up. This 4-byte signature is located at the absolute disk address starting at 0x1B8. Keep in mind that Windows will not tolerate two different disks with the same disk signature connected simultaneously, and it will probably change one of the signatures without even notifying you, so don't boot Windows with two connected disks having identical signatures.
When setting the disk signature, any sector-editing software should work. I usually use Pargon Hard Disk Manager, but WinHex and others are also up to the task. The trick is that you need this sector-editing tool to run from an environment other than your full Windows system, so you can change the disk signature before your fully-restored system begins booting. I change the signature on a restored target disk while booted up from a WinPE CD or thumbdrive, and then I'm ready to exit and boot from that target hard drive. There are probably many linux-based recovery environments and tools that can accomplish the same thing, but I've always preferred WinPE.
So to sum up, there should be just 3 main elements of restoring your sector-based backup to a different hard drive from the original... 1) the basic data sectors which comprise the vast majority of the backup, 2) the VeraCrypt boot record, and 3) the disk signature from the original drive. Restoring those elements should result in a bootable system if EaseUS Todo is compatible with VeraCrypt and backing up your system correctly.
Now a disclaimer with a few areas where my experience differs from your situation... You seem to have implemented full drive encryption, whereas I gave up full drive encryption at least 7 years ago in favor of volume or partition encryption. Also, I've only restored from sector-based backups a couple of times in unusual circumstances, and the last time was in the olden days of TrueCrypt. All my regular backups are made from within Windows, and not sector-based, so when they are restored (I do verify occasionally), I restore a standard Windows boot record to the target drive because the restored partitions are not encrypted the way that a sector-based restoration would be. Hopefully though, my suggestions above may help you give EaseUS Todo backups a chance to prove their validity on a separate disk without putting your system and data at risk.
Gary,
Wow, thank you for that in depth explanation! You're the first person I've been able to get an answer from. I have used WinPE many times, as it's a boot option with EaseUSTodo backup and they highly recommemd creating multiple WinPE CD's in case of any trouble with booting or restoring. I know my way around Windows well, DOS, and some Linux, but have never used sector-editing software or setting disk signatures. I'm a quick learner and willing to try though. I assume those programs are freeware. Is it basically modifying the very start of the disk, before the MBR? Would I need to do this every time I restore a full backup, if in fact I can verify that my EaseUSToDo backup restores properly to a spare formatted external HDD? If I restore a backup to an external drive in a USB enclosure, can I just F8 or change my BIOS to boot to my USB first without modifying any disk sigs? That way Windows doesn't see the two same sigs and or change one. I'm concerned that since I have the boot loader running, it will go straight to the BL before allowing me to boot into another environment. I guess adjusting my boot first BIOS will solve that issue.
I've never heard of 'Macrium Reflect' backup software, but will look into it. I've heard Acronis is a good free backup product. Wonder if anyone on here has used it with VC full system backups . So you basically backup 'containers'? I did that a long time ago with TrueCrypt and used my same EaseUSToDo backup software (older ver) and had no issues. I'm assuming I don't need to encrypt my full system backups on the seperate drive(s) I save them to. As it should just be jibberish and that person would also need to know my 30+ character pword for VC. I'm not 100% sure though. I've already copied my entire profile to an external drive unencrypted (as Windows was running) and was able to access and read those files in case of VC disk failure/major backup probs..All I can do is try my external drive restore experiment and go from there. I hope you'll be around, as I'm sure I'll have some questions if successful.
Thank you again for your help! I'm sure you've helped others.
Jay
Hi Jay,
To recap a bit for clarity, you can connect your external USB disk to your computer and use EaseUS to restore your system image to that external disk, and because it's a sector-based backup, EaseUS must also restore the VeraCrypt boot record to the external disk. So far, that should be fairly standard, but then it gets a little tricky -- in order to make your external drive bootable, you'll have to duplicate your system drive's signature on the external drive, so you'll need to reboot from a thumbdrive or CD with a disk sector editing tool. You could physically disconnect your system drive before you change the disk signature on the external drive, and this would prevent the signature collision that Windows will not tolerate. Depending on your computer, this may be easy to do, or not. Another way to avoid that collision (without disconnecting the system drive) is to temporarily change the system drive signature to an arbitrary value so you can then change the signature on the external drive to the correct value taken from the system drive. Be sure to keep a record of the correct boot signature value.
Here's a partial screenshot from my sector editor showing the location of a boot drive's disk signature. I tinkered with the disk when I first set up Windows so I would have a signature that was easy to remember. You can also see the "VeraCrypt Boot Loader" label near the top, starting at disk location 0x06...
Now here's a screenshot of what you'll likely see if the signature doesn't match what Windows expects when it first starts booting, and this can be a real showstopper with an encrypted system. I don't know what exactly would happen when Windows tries to "repair" your encrypted system drive, but it won't be pretty...
After taking the above screenshot, I rebooted with a WinPE disk and changed the signature back to its correct value, and then Windows booted up just fine.
Hi Gary,
Thanks for clarifying for me. I should have my attempt finished by Monday It took forever to backup an old external drive (that I'm going to use as my test restore HDD), since I was going from USB 2.0 to USB 2.0 connected drives. Now I just need to format it and begin the restore of the VC backup. My laptop doesn't have an internal CD/DVD drive, so I have to use a USB external CD/DVD o load WinPE and then put the editing software on a flash drive. I vaguely remember the WinPE interface, but how do I access my flash drive containing the editing software from WinPE? Also are there updated versions of WinPE? As I've only seen the one I've created from EaseToDoBackup. I checked out the backuo software you referenced and it looks solid, even the free version I probably will switch, as I bet it's faster and has more options. One step at a time though. It's nice to have a fully encrypted system drive with VC, but it adds in a whole ball of 'potential' problems and extra steps just to do full backups. I assume I just change that 4 byte sig (which is 8 digits) from your example and the software allows me to save it to the disk...Will this dig sig change every time I do a new backup or is permanent? I assume its permanent and that's why I just to need to edit the restored backup dig sig on a different HDD. Finally, if everthing is successful, I won't have to do any dig sig editing when restoring a VC backup of the same drive that was backed up correct? Which is what I've been doing previously before using VC...
I'll provide an update and 'possibly' :) some questions monday. Thank you for your in depth help!! It's invaluble and educational.
Jay
Well Jay, I have to admire your persistence to verify the validity of your system backups. So now that I know a little more about your system, don't bother chasing down sector-editing software and installing it on a flashdrive if you have no other use for it. Even a bare-bones WinPE system already has a command line program that can change the disk signature. It's "diskpart.exe" and you'll have to get to a command prompt in order to run it. Your EaseUS Todo WinPE disk should be able to give you to a command prompt. Below is the full contents of a session where I changed the disk signature from "12345678" to "02345678" and then verified the change (the attached disk happens to be a VMware 8GB Windows XP boot drive, but the results are identical to a physical drive):
========================================
X:\windows\system32>diskpart
Microsoft DiskPart version 6.1.7601
Copyright (C) 1999-2008 Microsoft Corporation.
On computer: MININT-ECA2F3N
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
Disk 0 Online 8 GB 1024 KB
Disk 1 Online 8 GB 1024 KB
DISKPART> sel disk 0
Disk 0 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> detail disk
Disk ID: 12345678
Type : ATA
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(0701)#ATA(C00T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
Volume 1 C WinXP-Boot NTFS Partition 8189 MB Healthy
DISKPART> uniqueid disk id=02345678
DISKPART> detail disk
Disk ID: 02345678
Type : ATA
Status : Online
Path : 0
Target : 0
LUN ID : 0
Location Path : PCIROOT(0)#PCI(0701)#ATA(C00T00L00)
Current Read-only State : No
Read-only : No
Boot Disk : No
Pagefile Disk : No
Hibernation File Disk : No
Crashdump Disk : No
Clustered Disk : No
Volume ### Ltr Label Fs Type Size Status Info
Volume 1 C WinXP-Boot NTFS Partition 8189 MB Healthy
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...
X:\windows\system32>
========================================
One more thing -- some of your questions relate to the permanence of any changes you make to the disk signature, but that's dependent on how your EaseUS Todo software handles the issue. Just keep in mind that if you don't take your own steps to prevent a disk signature collision when your external USB drive is connected to your laptop, Windows will make its own adjustment to the USB drive's ID, making it unbootable until you again change it to match the correct booting signature.
Last edit: Gary Marks 2018-04-28
Hi Gary, I wanted to provide an update as you've helped me so much. Unfortunately I haven't got that far and ran into unexpected space problems. I knew restoring a sector by sector back up would take forever going from two USB 2.0 external HDD's, so I created a fresh sector by sector backup of my full system disk encryption C: with no partitions to my large 2TB external. I then used 'Teracopy' to copy the massive backup file 198GB to my VC laptop. All in effort to speed things along..As restoring the file from my laptop to this other external
would be much faster I then backed up the unencrypted external drive (the one to use in my test) to the 2TB external. Without thinking of the space req, as I'd saved multiple other non VC sector by sector backups to it, I formated it a couple times and was ready to attempt my restore to that external. After hitting proceed, I get an error that I don't have enough space. It's a WD 250GB, but since it's a sector by sector backup I need 298GB free! The entire size of my laptop HDD C:. I have other drives, just none close to the size required.
All 250GB or less, except my Seagate 2TB external. Hopefully you're not lost yet. Here's my dilemma. My 2TB drive has all my backups and other data on it, from moving files off others and freeing up the drive that's too small. I could partition my Seagate 2TB drive that has 1.3TB free with 'MiniTool Partition Wizard Professional', but I run the risk of trashing all my backup data. I normally have 2 backup drives, but didn't forsee this. Would you recommend me partitioning it? Also, do I have to make the empty partition 'active', since that's where I'd be restoring my full VC system backup file to? I've partitioned many drives before (dual boots, & 2-3 data logical partitions on externals), but never restoring a backup to it, especially with VC . I may just go buy another external drive if I can get one for cheap. As if this restore is successful, I'm going to need a lot of space to have just 2-4 backups. Probably 1TB just to hold those. If it doesn't work, then I will have 3-4TB of free space. What are your thoughts recommendations? I've gone this far, and refuse not to have reliable backups that I have to find out if this bck procedure will work for me. Sorry for the long post, but wanted to 'try' & explain my situation clearly.. Thanks as always Jay..
By the way, my laptop drive has 13GB free of 300GB from copying the VC backup on it, so I need to decide quickly. As I've read it's not good for your main HDD to be running at almost capacity.
Hi Jay -- I think you need to revisit one of the choices that you've made, because it's causing you a lot of problems. Unless you have a very good reason to make sector-based backups, you should start making the more normal kind. Depending on the software, this method is typically called "intelligent" or "smart" image backup, backing up only the used portion of any partition included in the backup. These backups are done while Windows is running, so they see the decrypted data rather than the encrypted sectors, and so they skip the free space and ephemeral files like the hibernation and paging files. This also allows them to compress the data, which is something that sector-based backups cannot do with encrypted sectors.
My point is that your sector-based backups are unnecessarily large for someone who has such limited disk space, and copying them over a USB 2 connection takes way too long. Now, you seem to have come up against one more limitation of sector-based backups that I hadn't even thought of -- the target for a restoration has to be at least as large as the source, or at least that appears to be the case, even if the contained files won't need that much space. A normal "intelligent" backup image can be restored to a drive that's smaller than the source partition, providing it has enough space for all the files. The restore process shrinks the new partition as needed to fit the target disk.
Here's an example... Just last night I finished setting up a new Windows 10 "Spring Update" system on an old 640GB Western Digital spinner of mine. When I finally had enough programs set up so the new system was ready for prime time, I did one of my normal system backups with Macrium Reflect (the free version). Then I restored it to my main SSD, fully overwriting my old system (which I had also backed up). The compression level for the backup was set at high, and the size of Macrium's image file was just 60% of the total USED space (as reported by Windows) for the 2 partitions in the backup image. A sector-based backup for that same system would have been massive compared to what it was, because it would have included so much free space, and I think I would have seen the same error message you saw -- insufficent space on my restoration target SSD. Unless you have a good reason for them, you should consider giving up your sector-by-sector backups.
Regarding your questions about possibly restoring your backup to the free space of your external 2TB Seagate for the test, it might work but I wouldn't risk it. If I understand correctly, you'd be restoring from a sector-by-sector image made of a drive with whole drive encryption, and the restoration target is the free space of a drive containing important data with no backups. Everything about that is out of my wheelhouse, and it sounds like a recipe for potential data loss. Cheer up, Jay, you'll get this all sorted out.
Thanks for the reply Gary. What you described above about doing backups and how you recently did one, is exactly how I used to do my backups for years using 'EasyToDoBackup'. It would ignore the free space and compress the entire backup making it much much smaller & faster. Maybe 1-2GB's max of 170GB of used space on myC: . I only started doing a sector by sector backup after doing a full system disk encryption with VC. My backup software wouldn't allow a regular backup and required a sector backup. If I could get around this requirement by using Macrium Reflect I would. It sounded like from your earlier posts that to do a backup of a full system encrypted with VC that the sector backup was required to be able to restore on to the same drive or other. If this is possible with other backup software, then I should be good to go. So I guess I need clarification if it's possible to do a normal backup with a VC full system encryption ( as mine is) with different backup software, or do I need to decrypt the whole drive and just create VC containers.
FYI: When I do any backups, even the required sector, Windows is fully up and running as if I was doing backups without VC . It's hard for me to believe that the many people who have full system encryption like myself, can't do a full backup without it being a sector by sector bck. What options do they have? I'm sure I can probably backup specific files 'as is', but I like to have entire backups, so if Windows goes on the frits I don't have to troubleshoot for hours/days. Just restore my most recent backup. As I don't do icremental or differential backups. What I was thinking of doing is partitioning my 2TB external drive in half (one partition with all my data and backups, and the other empty and large enough to try and restore my sector backup to. I actually have another 1.5 TB drive that has mainly dupicate data and can move it. You're right though, the sector backups are a pain for multiple reasons. Is it possible to leave my full VC system drive as is, and back it up without the sector by sector req by other means? Obviously I'm a tad confused. I understand eveything you've said, but seems like there aren't options for what I'm trying to do.
Thx! Jay
Jay, I certainly never meant to endorse sector-based backups as a good idea, but I just tried to help you figure out how to test-restore the sector backups you were already making as part of your backup plan. If EaseUS Todo Backup insists on making sector backups of your encrypted disk, it's time to euthanize that program like a lame horse and find software that has better legs. I thought you might be making that choice because you wanted it. If you decide to try Macrium Reflect, I won't try to talk you out of it (hint, hint). As a matter of fact, EaseUS's insistence on sector backups is probably the reason I rejected EaseUS the last time I evaluated backup software -- that would be a deal-breaker for me, and that was the reason I rejected several programs that I tried.
Anyway, since I didn't have any recent experience with whole-drive encryption and backup, I just now used VMware to do a little testing. I started up a virtual machine with Windows 7 (SP1) installed, but with very few programs so it has a small footprint, and I installed VeraCrypt. Then I encrypted the machine using whole drive encryption, just like you have. After that was finished, I installed Macrium Reflect Free. It offered "intelligent" full system backup on the encrypted disk, so that's what I chose, along with highest level compression. Windows disk management says that 14.0 GB of the 30 GB system disk is used, and the size of the final backup file (on a separate virtual disk) ended up at 7.22 GB, so it's an excellent compression ratio. A sector backup of that same encrypted disk would take over 30 GB, as you know all too well. And here's another thing you might not have with EaseUS Todo software... whenever I right-click on one of my backup image files, there's an item at the top of the context menu to "Explore image." All I have to do is pick the partition (from the backup list) and pick an available drive letter, and I instantly have access in Windows Explorer to all the folders and files from that backup, to copy to another location at will.
Then, for the final part of the test, I created yet another virtual disk to be a target for restoration of the system disk. The new target disk is only 20GB, but that should be enough, right? We're not bound by sector-based rules, so there was no problem restoring to a smaller disk with enough space for the files. But here's something that seems to be new, at least I've never noticed it before. Macrium Reflect makes an adjustment for a target disk signature that's different from the source disk of the backup. But instead of changing the signature on the disk, it actually changes the BCD and then mounts the registry hive of the restored system and changes the signature that Windows is expecting for the boot signature. I pasted several lines from the restoration log file below:
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
BCD Update - From Disk ID - 0xAAAAAAAA, New Disk ID - 0x00075CF2
BCD Update - Success
Registry Update - Offline hive found
Registry Update - RegSetValueEx Success
Registry Update - RegSetValueEx Success
Registry Update - Success
Registry Update - Success
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
So after it does the image restoration, Reflect actually changes the registry of the new system so it will boot properly from the different disk. The ironic thing is that for people like me who aren't expecting this, manually changing the disk signature to match the signature from the source disk actually makes the system unbootable, whereas leaving the entire process to Macrium Reflect is the perfect solution. The one thing that Macrium doesn't do perfectly, though, has to do with the boot record -- you'll get VeraCrypt's password prompt, even though the restored system is no longer encrypted. Just press 'ESC' at the prompt and it will boot normally, and you'll want to re-encrypt the drive in the near future. Now go shoot that lame "EaseUS Todo" horse, and put it out of YOUR misery, Jay.
Last edit: Gary Marks 2018-05-06
Hey Gary, I didn't mean any negativity in my last post. You were just trying to help me accomplish what I was attempting. I really do appreciate all your help!! You've done all the homework now, so EaseToDo Backup will be retired ASAP. and I'll go to Macrium Reflect and follow your above process. I'm betting without issues. I'm glad I didnt't buy another HDD!! I'll report back once I've completed a backup & retore with Macrium. One more question. How do you suggest I protect my backups on external drives? Use the encryption that comes with Macrium or put the backups in VC containters. As I obviously don't want those backup easily accessible to anyone. Since it would be pointless to use VC on my main C: drive and have plain text backups on my backup drives. Appreciate it Gary!
Last edit: Jay 2018-05-06
You've probably already discovered that the free version of Reflect doesn't offer any password protection or encryption, so just store your backups in VeraCrypt-protected space as you've anticipated. Nearly all of the partitions on my own extra drives are now encrypted, so the free version has all the features I really need. It also includes differential backup capability as well, and those can go really quickly if there aren't a lot of changes. One more thing -- even the free version can build you a WinPE rescue disk with Macrium Reflect in it. With no prior installation of any WinPE-building software in my virtual machine, Reflect just built me a bootable .iso image file in a little under 5 minutes, including the time required for a few automated downloads directly from Microsoft servers (that's how they circumvent licensing issues). Some other programs require separate download and installation of the full Microsoft WAIK or ADK in order to build a WinPE rescue disk, so this is really easy by comparison.
Congratulations, Jay -- my crystal ball reveals a lot less backup hassle in your future. But still think about picking up an extra hard drive the next time you see a really good sale price. The cost is always higher in an emergency.
Hello Gary,
I am guessing you added VeraCrypt program to the WinPE so you can unlock the external volume so Macrium Reflect can access the backups in order to perform a system restore. Correct?
EDIT:
You can add VeraCrypt to Macrium Reflect's Rescue Disk at the following link below by substituting TrueCrypt with VeraCrypt.
http://kb.macrium.com/KnowledgebaseArticle50140.aspx
See the section called "How to add TrueCrypt features to the rescue environment".
The winpe.wim for Windows 10 64-bit is located in:
The winpe.wim for Windows 10 32-bit is located in:
Last edit: Enigma2Illusion 2018-05-07
Good call, Enigma2Illusion -- the reminder I forgot to issue. Yes, I've got a collection of twenty-some tools in a single WinPE image, and VeraCrypt traveller files are most definitely prominent in that collection, along with Macrium Reflect.
Gary, I followed your advice and dumped EasyToDo Backup. FYI, you can explore a backup with my old software, but it's gone. Installed Macrium and did an 'Intelligent Backup' on my Seagate external HDD with medium compression. I then restored the image to my WD HDD to test. USB 2 to USB 2. Took 24 hours! I know it's because my WD external is slow, but mainly because of the 2.0 to 2.0. Macrium said it was successful. I could view the restoration from a reboot as it looked just like my C: from C: . I then changed my BIOS to boot from USB or removable drive first. Still got the boot loader pword screen. Hit ESC like you suggested and nothing. Entered the pword and it said 'OK' and just sat there with no activity on my external drive. Should I try from the WinPE CD that I created from Macrium with my external HDD connected? I have confidence the backup is solid, but just wanted to test first. Suggestions? Logs to check to make sure Macrium changed the proper registry settings & MBR? Thank you as always!
Jay
@Jay
I'll give you my right advice.
Use a hard disk of 80 GB or at most one of 160 Gb.
Already for programs use laptops like the Platform PortablesApp.com with container files or all encrypted disk.
Since you would have the Hds mentioned above, it would be possible to create a sector-by-sector backup (I use Aomei Backupper) on the portable programs PortablesApp.com HD. Aomei Backupper has never failed me, but it would be nice to have an exact same HD to clone Windows sector by sector.
PS. If you use portable programs an 80 GB hard drive or 160 Gb is very sufficient for Windows and it would not take so much a sector-by-sector backup.
PS2. Yes an image backup sector by sector, but fast because of the hard disk sizes. 80 or one of 160 GB.
Jay -- Now that you've got a good restoration of your system drive (in terms of files anyway), I think the problem you're seeing is caused by transplanting the system from what I assume is probably a SATA internal drive to the USB external drive, and it may be a driver issue. If the external USB drive requires any driver not already used by your laptop's SATA drive, even though you have the driver installed in the system, it may not have the proper "start" value required by boot drives. Drivers for external drives don't normally have to be available for booting, so their loading can be delayed. Transplanting a system originally installed to a SATA drive to this previously non-essential external drive may require manually changing the start value of some drivers in the system registry. Anyway, that's my best guess as to why your transplanted system won't boot. I'm afraid that identifying all the drivers necessary for booting from the USB subsystem is beyond my expertise. The limit of my similar experience was migrating between a SATA drive and an IDE drive, and it turned out that changing the "start" value in the registry for one of the disk drivers from "3" to "0" made the difference between BSOD and a smooth boot after migration.
Although that seems most likely to me, there's something much easier that you should try. We already know that you still have the VeraCrypt boot record that asks for a password, and entering the password fails, just as we would expect. If it weren't for some other issue, bypassing the password screen with ESC should result in a normal boot, but that failed as well. So try this -- boot from your Macrium Reflect WinPE CD with the USB drive attached. When the Macrium screen comes up, go to the "Restore" menu and choose "Fix Windows Boot Problems." The first screen shows the name of the systems found (make SURE you don't inadvertently mess with your laptop system), and the second screen lets you confirm the correct boot partition. The last screen shows what will be fixed as needed (leave all 4 boxes checked). Then hit "Finish" and shut down. If this doesn't fix your boot problem, then it's most likely the aforementioned driver issue. I tested Macrium's boot repair program on a virtual disk where I had changed the disk signature, trashed the boot record, and marked the system partition as inactive. The repair worked perfectly and the virtual machine booted right up, albeit Windows was making a few adjustments during that first boot. May the gods smile on you, Jay.
Thanks Gary. I'm sure it's a driver issue, as it's a WD drive in a generic enclosure..Shows up as 'ATAPDI' (I may have the appreviation wrong) USB bridge in Win 7. I'll try what you mentioned and if doesn't work I'm not going to worry about it I'll just keep making regular backups, as I'm 95% sure I won't have an issue restoring an image to my laptop. Regardless I have all my files and programs backed up on 2 other drives. I'll just make Veracrypt containers and put my backups into them. I'll report back what happens after using the WinPE boot fix attempt. I definitely need to make a donation to VC as well for keeping it free, open source, updated, and for these support forums. The supporting VC community is critical in helping users like myself.
Cheers, Jay
Jay -- I have a pretty high level of confidence that if you had a hard drive failure or system corruption and were restoring your backup to a drive that's more similar to your current system drive (and not attached by USB), you would have no problem booting from the resulting restored system. And Macrium Reflect gives you a few boot repair tools to help assure that outcome. It's just a shame you don't have the hardware for a definitive test.
Thanks also for remembering the VeraCrypt developers. Their dedication amazes me as well.
Gary- Well I got a partial confirmation. Loaded the Macrium WinPE CD and choose 'fix boot issues'. My USB external drive was connected and WinPE found just 1 drive and showed it as C: . I was concerned this was my laptop HDD, but noticed the size & actual name was different. The external is a WD Black and saw that in the long drive name. I decided to go into DOS from WinPE and examine what it was calling C: ..I downloaded a couple programs earlier tonight and went to that folder where I store my 'programs'. They wern't present and all the May dates were a couple weeks old, so I knew it was looking at the external. I assume my laptop drive wasn't listed because of the full disk encryption with the boot loader. Choose all 4 fix options, and were successful. Instructed to restart and no VC boot loader showed up and then came the Win 7 booting screen, along with my activity light on the external going nuts. It did this for 5 min, then gave me a blue screen. Unplugged external, rebooted and my normal VC boot loader came up, pwd entered, and successfully booted into my 'normal laptop'. It's definitely a enclosure driver/USB issue, but at least I know if I had to restore to my laptop from a Macrium image, I'd be good to go. Would just need to encrypt again. So, after a LONG thread, I've got a successful way of creating backups of my VC full encrypted drive and restoring them/grabbing specific data...
I can't thank you enough for all your help! I would be lost otherwise. Definitely learned a few things too. Only issue is I have old data in a EaseToDo Backup image, so I'm going to have to reinstall it to get thst data off. Hopefully Macrium and EaseToDo can coexist on the same drive for just a couple hours. I may be able to get away with using a WinPE EaseToDo CD that I have and grab the data off the image instead of reinstalling the whole program . Glad to have these issues understood/ resolved!
Cheers, Jay
The sector by sector backups you guys make in first place - you do them outside of the windows environment, or? Doing it within Windows strikes me as wrong. Thanks!