Windows 10: Restore from a Win 10 Backup Image - Password Protected

Hello Forum,

I used Windows 10 Backup to backup my system with an image to an external drive. I then reset my system and started again with minimal setup.

I attempted to restore from the backup image, but Windows 10 wants a password to restore the image.

Of course I can't remember that particular password. I'm not even sure what password it wants.

What's the solution to restore from the Win 10 backup image?

Regards

:)

 

Restoring Windows 10 Image using Macrium Reflect


In addition to the above. Here's my suggestion in step by step.
I assume you have Macrium Installed in your current HD and already made a backup copy.

1. Connect your new HD via USB port and boot up.
2. Run Macrium, click on Restore tab then select the Backup Image that you made to restore
3. click on "select a different target disk" then select your new HD as destination
   
   
   
4. Proceed to restore then Shutdown and disconnect the old HD and replace with the new HD
5. Boot up with your new HD.

 

Win 7 image restore breaks ability to see Win 10 image backups

I have a multi-boot system, XP Pro (32 bit), XP Pro X64 (64 bit), Win 7 Pro (64 bit), Win 10 Pro (64 bit). Each OS is on a separate hard drive and partition. The C: partition is boot only (no operating system on it).

I did a system image backup from Win 10 and also from Win 7. Once I do a Win 7 image restore using Win 7 repair (dvd), the Win 10 images backups no longer appear in the list of backups if I later run Win 10 repair or Win 7 repair.

The workaround for this bug is to do a system image backup from Win 7 and include the Win 10 partition in the Win 7 image backup (to Win 7, the Win 10 partition is a "data" partition). The the Win 7 repair will restore the Win 10 partition unless restore to "non-system" partitions is turned off. I confirmed this works by formatting both the Win 7 and Win 10 partitions before doing a repair / restore test.

What I don't understand is what the Win 7 restore changes to my system that prevents the Win 10 backup system images from appearing in the list of image backups. The Win 10 image folders are still present on my hard drive(s).

 

Reflect image password protection and encryption...

The schedule ran just fine last night, there has been no overlap with the image backups. Performance wise, it's a mixed bag.

The first scheduled image backup is for the data drive (Samsung EVO PCIe x4 NVMe, 68GBs):





The read I/O performance dropped, while the write increased which does not make much sense. Maybe the data is compressed prior to encryption, like most encryption software does. In either case, it's about 30% increase in backup time.

The next scheduled backup is for the system drive (Samsung EVO PCIe x4 NVMe, 52GBs) and it's interesting:





That's only a five second increase in image backup and minor changes in read/write I/O performance.

The last scheduled image backup is for the personal drive (Samsung EVO Sata III, 158GBs) and it gets more interesting:





There's no change in the I/O performance and yet, the encrypted image backup finished faster than the no encryption. That makes even less sense...

Mounting any of the last night's images does ask for password:





Seemingly, unlimited number of passwords can be entered, I tried more than a dozen different password, and the password is case sensitive. Once the correct password entered, the image is mounted. Presumably, the same window would pup up within the Reflect recovery environment, but it has not been tested.