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I have a 1 TB hard drive with OS installed (Windows Server 2012 R2), several partitions, dynamic disk.

All I want to do is back everything up so I can basically clone it to a bigger drive. However, so far Windows Server Backup and Paragon Hard Disk Manager have proven to be useless. For some reason I can’t restore a backup I created in Paragon to another disk, even though the back up is on a different drive. I get a metadata collision error.

I just need the simplest way that will let me take a live image of that entire 1 TB drive and just re-apply it to another drive. Suggestions?

Giacomo1968
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Christopher Bruce
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  • `dd` command from any Linux liveCD. It just makes raw copy. – kestasx Dec 23 '14 at 21:01
  • Veeam Replication. – Ben Plont Dec 23 '14 at 21:03
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    Windows Server Backup should work fine for this, what problem are you running into exactly when you try to use it? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Dec 23 '14 at 21:04
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    Include the exact error you get from both things you tried.. so from Windows Server Backup and from Paragon. Also try another destination disk as it may be an issue with that. – barlop Dec 23 '14 at 21:06
  • @kestasx or a dd spin-off like ddrescue as that has a progress bar and says if any issues in the copy. – barlop Dec 23 '14 at 21:07
  • i dont want a back up i just want to take an image of a drive and apply it to another. – Christopher Bruce Dec 23 '14 at 21:14
  • Windows Server backup does image backups, I assumed that's why you tried it. You still haven't told us what happened when you tried. :) – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Dec 23 '14 at 21:19
  • Windows Server does full drive back ups but you can't just take the entire volume and re-apply it as an image to a blank drive. At least from what I've seen. So it doesn't fulfill my needs. – Christopher Bruce Dec 23 '14 at 21:30
  • I would use dsim or imagex but I'd have to detach the original drive which honestly isn't an option at this point – Christopher Bruce Dec 23 '14 at 21:36
  • I was going to recommend imagex with sysprep. I'm not aware of any imaging programs for Windows that don't require you to boot from another drive since an image can't be taken when files are in use/changing during the imaging process. –  Dec 23 '14 at 22:10
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    @ChristopherBruce You certainly should be able to, that's kind of the point of making the image backup, so you can restore it as a whole to a blank drive (in case of drive failure). :) What did you try exactly? See this for some steps on how to restore: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/data-center/how-to-restore-a-system-image-in-windows-server-2012/ Where did you get stymied? – Ƭᴇcʜιᴇ007 Dec 24 '14 at 20:26
  • http://superuser.com/questions/585804/restore-windows-7-image-to-different-hard-disk http://superuser.com/questions/750847/can-a-system-image-be-restored-to-a-drive-with-a-different-storage-capacity http://superuser.com/questions/533182/can-i-copy-an-image-of-a-partition-into-a-new-partition-of-different-size http://superuser.com/questions/511929/transfer-disk-image-to-larger-smaller-disk2 http://superuser.com/questions/401847/easiest-drive-imaging-solution http://superuser.com/questions/306820/restore-a-smaller-hard-drive-320gb-image-to-a-larger-harddrive-1tb – random Dec 26 '14 at 05:54

2 Answers2

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Regarding your issue. I suggest you to download any windows server backup software which normally comes with 30 days minimum trails. Where you can backup the whole windows machine as image backup in vhd file format and restore it in another disk which is equal or bigger in size(during restore the layout should be written where it can not be smaller than source machine disk size layout).

The restoring can be done using recovery cd or you can convert that vhd files in to iso file and do booting in new machine.

Note : I can not recommend software for this but you can google it and take the software which suits you well

BDRSuite
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Both Macrium Reflect Free edition and free DriveImage XML (https://www.runtime.org/driveimage-xml.htm) have worked well for me, though I'm not sure if Reflect Free can restore to a disk of different size.

DrMoishe Pippik
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