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I'm deploying some Lenovo ThinkPads for a small organisation. I want a simple recovery option if a user munges up their system. Luckily, they come preconfigured with the windows recovery partition which includes an option to restore from backup. Unluckily, the partition has no backups to restore from, so if a user messes up their system, we have to reinstall from scratch. It would be much nicer if we could point them to the restore backup option.

It's been a long time since I've administered a Windows System, so I'm re-acquainting myself with the "joy" of finding windows documentation.

I believe I've found the answer here: http://www.howtogeek.com/167984/how-to-create-and-restore-system-image-backups-on-windows-8.1/

But if I understand correctly, the image I create will have to be saved to the recovery partition.

The recovery partition is hidden and not mounted, so I cannot specify it as a destination by drive letter (eg F:)

Reading the documentation for wbAdmin, it seems I can also specify the destination by UUID. But I cannot discover how to find the UUID of the partition.

Any help?

I'm open to other solutions that don't involve the process in the How To Geek article.

The key thing is I want users to be able to boot into the windows recovery partition (which is easy and already figured out) and be able to select a working backup (as stated, we currently have no backups available for them to choose from).

ChrisJ
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You can use wbadmin to create Bare-Metal Recovery as you've provided in link. I'm using it as scheduled job script which makes Bare-Metal Recovery (usually C: and System Reserved partition which are needed to restore system) on windows servers (also works on desktops with less functions) where my backups target to network storage. With this solution I'm able to restore system "as it was" from recovery drive or install disc - there I'll mount network storage where is backup saved. It can also make BMR on local HDD, you'll need just partition which will be reserved for backups.

For example you have one fully used 200 GB HDD with 2 partitions - 1. System Reserved, 2. C:. You can't touch on System Reserved but on C: drive yes. So you'll shrink C: volume via diskmgmt (Run > diskmgmt.msc > Right click on C: > Shrink volume). After successful shrink operation, make from your free space new volume drive (for example E:, with sufficient space for future backup). After this operation run wbadmin command and backup whole system (Run > cmd)

wbAdmin start backup -backupTarget:E: -include:C: -allCritical -quiet

Now you have BMR image to restore system "as it was" when you backed it up, located on volume E:. You can simply unmount drive via diskmgmt.msc.

From this point user should be able to boot into recovery mode from system drive or from install disc and begin restore whole system from E: volume drive.

But this is not recommended scenario. You should keep backups on another HDD or network storage.

When you'll make backup to another HDD, you can apply attributes (read only / hidden) (doesn't work on same drive where is system, MBR or pagefile):

  • cmd > diskpart
  • list volume
  • select volume X (it's number of volume from list volume command)
  • att vol set readonly hidden
  • detail vol

If you wish to remove read only / hidden attribute, use instead of set attribute clear.

  • att vol clear readonly hidden
MyKE
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