Windows 10: Windows image restore nuked all my partitions...

Good day guys,


Under Disk Management, I noticed that there was an empty unallocated partition about 500 MB in size. This was located left most on the layout, so there was no built-in way to merge it with other partitions without deleting those of course, which is not possible. My laptop is over 7 years old, and in this time I have reinstalled/ upgraded Windows several times, which lead to the creation of this unknown partition somehow.


So I installed Windows on a new partition because I didn't want to touch my existing Windows installation, then installed MiniTool partition wizard, and relocated & subsequently merged that empty partition with one of my other partitions. I also tried to move my recovery partition from the right of the Windows partition to its left. This is where a mistake happened. I did that by copying the recovery partition to my external SSD, shrunk my Windows partition creating unallocated space on its left, and then restored the recovery partition backup to this unallocated space. Although the partition layout now looked like how I wanted, Disk Management now showed the recovery partition as 'Basic Data Partition', instead of recognizing it as a recovery partition. I was not sure if this would have consequences in future if I need to repair/ restore Windows.


In this whole process, the size of all these partitions changed slightly and I didn't know this will create problems when restoring a system image. Here comes the big deal. I thought by restoring my Windows system image which I created just a day back, the 3 partitions EFI, Recovery & Windows/ System that were part of the System Image would simply replace the 1st 3 partitions in my current layout. On my system image, the recovery partition was to the right of the Windows partition, but now my 2nd Windows installation was sitting to the right of the main Windows installation.


As was unexpected, the image restore formatted my whole SSD, and installed the system image back to how it was when I created it, and this brought back the unallocated space to the leftmost which is what I was trying to remove in this whole exercise, and nuked all my other partitions which included my 2nd Windows installation as well as the partition that contained all my data files. Now all my data is gone, and none of the data recovery softwares I tried can see the deleted files. I think the system image restore overwrote my data files with the Windows image.


1. Is there a way to recover my data?

2. Is there a way to keep the recovery partition to the left of my Windows partition using built-in tools?


Thanks.

:)

 

Windows 10 System Image restore did not restore D partition

Yes, there is a way to create a partition with unused space and copy the image from the backup. Windows Operating system is our expertise so regarding about the steps, we suggest contacting your OEM about the backup and restore process to get the best
assistance.

Let us know if you have other questions.

 

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.

 

[HELP]Image recovery issues

Guys i am trying to fix my cousins Asus Eee netbook. It has a backup image file that is partitioned on the hard drive but when I go to use it the app will run through a few steps and stop. It is running Vista . Any suggestions?