Windows 10: Does anyone know how to restore a drive using Paragon 17 Backup?

Why is this so hard? This should require no thinking at all, which from the videos of version 16, that's what it looked like. Now with version 17 I have 5 different volumes to select from and only 2 volume destinations. Here is what it looks like. the D: is a separate backup drive. The C: volume and the other Local Disk NFTS volume are the only possible destinations I have. I have reinstalled Windows 10 on the same computer that this backup was made on. I had to install a new m.2 drive after a devil killed my last one. Can anyone help with this?





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Well, I thought I was figuring it out, but of course not. Why would it be easy? That would be stupid if it made sense and was easy. I selected the C: for the recovery volume. Then a new destination volume appeared i.e. NO NAME. So I selected that for the NO NAME backup volume destination. Then no matter what destinations I select on the remaining 3 volumes, when I get to the 5th volume, the Local Disk one, the only destination left is the D: backup drive.


:)

 

Paragon Backup and Recovery 17 - New

I found Paragon 17 Free to be easy to use to save a backup on my network. However, it is not easy to figure out how to access the network for a restore. The icons and places to click are not obvious. And you cannot restore the OS from within Windows (which makes sense.) You have to load a bootable version in order to restore the OS. But if your file is not saved on you local computer, it looks like you can't access those files with the bootable restore disk,...unless you include drivers for the LAN card on your machine. (I don't think it will work with a wireless connection.) ...So, backing up is made easy; not so with how to restore what is backed up, particularly if you backed up to a network location.

I still haven't figured out all the steps required to make this work. Has anyone been successful with Paragon 17 Free?

 

Paragon Backup and Recovery 17 - New

I have used Macrium Reflect to backup to an image on my archive drive (USB Elements) but not restore from image. I have cloned my OS directly to another internal drive, and that went smoothly. I use FreeFileSync to backup files which before I had the 14TB I never had the option. However I came to the conclusion that even doing a format and complete fresh copy my partitions would have fragmented MFT unless there was an absolutely massive partition size for the data set (I tried this:
"322756 How to back up and restore the registry in Windows


To add this value, perform the following steps:

Run Registry Editor (Regedt32.exe), and go to the following subkey:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem
From the Edit menu, click Add Value.
Type the following information in the dialog box:
Value Name: NtfsMftZoneReservation
Data Type : REG_DWORD
Data : (valid range is 1-4)
Quit Registry Editor and restart your computer.

Note This is a run-time parameter and does not affect the actual format of a volume. Rather, it affects the way NTFS allocates space on all volumes on a given system. Therefore, to be completely effective, the parameter must be in effect from the time that a volume is formatted and throughout the life of the volume. If the registry parameter is adjusted downward or removed, the MFT zone will be reduced accordingly, but this will not have any affect on MFT space already allocated and used.

"
but it made no difference to having a contiguous MFT.

I've just downloaded the trial of Paragon hard disk manager 17 and I'm itching to pull the trigger on a full licence because it does what no other defragmentation tool I've tried can achieve - defragment the MFT let alone compact it. I have some screenshots of the MFT before and after using Paragon HDM 17.



You can see the MFT has been shrunk, and this is the very minimum it can do because this drive was not altered much since I used FreeFileSync to restore after a format of partition. Doing alot of move, rename, defrag and simply adding files increases the MFT which windows can't reduce and every change is catalogued in the USNJournal (zap it with this command line instruction: " fsutil usn deletejournal /n c: ", it can become very fragmented as most tools ignore it. I was spending hours trying to copy data back and forth with FreeFIleSync and be left with a contiguous file table.

I have found IObit smart defrag as my defrag of choice for its abillity to fire and forget all my drives at once. Then I find Priform Defraggler the best at representing the state of the hard drive (and a fast file search). Now with Paragon HDM 17 my disk optimisation toolkit is complete.

But yes this topic is about backup and I'm just about to learn how to backup with Paragon HDM 17 and compare filesize with Macrium reflect. They both do scheduled backups full, incremental and differential. I also don't have any recovery media yet.

 

Paragon Backup and Recovery 17 - New

I found Paragon to be unreliable and would not recommend it. It completely failed to handle devices using 32bit uefi installation.